HAPPY EASTER

 One of the many Happy Returns.

 

We hope you have a happy and safe Easter.

CONSIDER DYNAMIC STABILITY

There is no detectable difference between a fanatic and an idealist who believes he is working for the good of humanity.

Rest assured, if you're not passionate about something you like, there are a thousand people who passionately hate it.

My new favorite from a commentator far away, "Say what you want about Hitler, at least he killed Hitler."

Why do so many horrible creatures go unkilled even after people know that they are evil unbound?

If a mob rounded up the top 1% of the wealthy and their families in this country and guillotined them, nobody would raise a finger to stop them. Hell, you could say that about every graduate of the Ivy League for the last 50 years.

Thanks to Biden and his friends, we have invited the mob. It is now just a matter of time.

THOSE UNPRINCIPLED THIEVES!

 It will come as no surprise to anybody that the US Government will leap in to assist those unprincipled thieves living in and around Baltimore just because some lousy ship ran into their bridge and will therefore divert maybe hundreds of millions/if not billions!!!!! to replacing that shoddy bridge and maybe even providing some kind of income for a scant handful (union members only I'm afraid) of people who lost their livelihoods when the Port was closed by force majeure.

Those rotten Tards in Washington will undoubtedly look to seize and divert that money from the righteous do-gooding enabling in Ukraine and Israel and that's just insufferable!!!

I'm sure the Department of Justice is going after the bridge builders who made that flaky shaky piece of junk flimsy ass bridge because no bridge should fall over after getting nudged by a ship of any size. I mean they'll do that just as sure as no Democrats were involved in the project.

A MAJOR FAILURE

 The ship lost power and went dark for a couple of minutes and then the lights came back on but it had swung significantly off course before the lights came back on which means the rudder must have been put over while there was power and when it went out there was no power to bring the rudder back amidships and then the ship regained power and a minute later lost it again and hit the bridge. 

The entire truss section of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is gone. Scroll over to see where the bridge is just gone and you can watch the collision.

A SIMPLE FAILURE

 I enjoy reading the Powerline Blog and never really had any problems even back when one of the staff was a complete imbecile. They usually rip the news out of the facts presented by the mainstream media and leave enough meat on the bone to enjoy getting the sense that one knows what's going on. Other times it is pretty clear that they still don't quite understand a significant portion of the electorate and that they don't care that they don't understand it. This pretty much sums up their thoughts on our current uniparty.

Mr. Johnson is making the same mistake that he and they always make because they are blind to what is really happening in our one party government. A lot of people have figured it out now and know that the uniparty is in power and that the only way to stop it is to actually STOP IT. They want the wrenches thrown in the gears and they want it to stop moving. Mr. Johnson and the rest of the liberal rethuglican wing of the uniparty simply pretend that by maintaining the appearance of being able to control the out-of-control government that they can somehow exert some moderating influence on it.

Every sane person sees and knows that this isn't so. The very instant that it appears that by united action and a firm stand the situation can be brought under control, the G03dadkdamgaond#@@!!!!! cave and do exactly what the maniac liberal wing of the uniparty demands and the liberal turds of the fake side of the uniparty think the real conservatives should just suck it up and shut up and keep playing ball. It's maddening. 

They do it every single damned time.

A TIME FOR CONCERN

 The Russians have just trashed the electrical power grid in Ukraine and done it in a more or less permanent way. They actually blew the generators apart this time instead of just attacking the power distribution grid. There is a wonderfully informative timeline of the the effects of war on operating nuclear reactors in Ukraine. It's worth a look and so is this: It gets going for our purposes at about the 6 minute mark. 

Nuclear power station require reliable electricity in the event of reactor shutdowns. It is critical that the cooling process be maintained even when the reactor loses power. That's what killed Chernobyl and Fukushima. They lost the power and thus the ability to cool the reactors which either exploded or melted down.

FINGERPRINTS

I don't really know if I hope that the people that just attacked a Moscow theater did a thorough job of cleaning their fingerprints off the operation designed to goad President Putin to lash out very strongly at whoever he thinks/believes is responsible. Sadly, in this fallen age, I think even the palestinians could leave a convincing enough evidence trail leading back to Langley that a child could follow it there. I don't doubt for a second that if Putin does find out who is ultimately responsible for this it will be followed by a tidal wave of unstoppable missiles.  

Right now I know of 3 men (nuclear power world leaders) who could push the nuclear button without a qualm or flicker of humanity. It used to be for generations that we only had the one madman and people left that madman alone or paid whatever was necessary to keep him in the game.

AND BIDEN AND DEMS LET THESE PEOPLE IN OUR COUNTRY

I just saw this from one of the blog links.

If I lived in Martha's Vineyard I'd take that very seriously for several reasons. I don't believe that Governor DeSantis has a sense of humor and he's already done it once before and there is nothing that can stop him from sharing the gustatory delights of Haitian BBQ with his good friends in Massachusetts. I would vote for him for President if he simply sends all of Florida's illegals to Massachusetts. I cannot think of any state that is more deserving of such enlightenment and civilizing influencers.

NOW UNLEASHED IN GAZA

CRAZY BARKING MAD

 The latest broadside from the Navy and Department of Defense reflects the infected mind that dominates Washington, DC and the political elites running the country. It is summed up by two different documents that recently flew over the transom. They lay out in no uncertain terms the 'self-licking ice-cream cone' that is so thinly disguised as Defense planning by the people that are lining us up for the next unwinnable war and let's be honest, these guys are masters at losing unwinnable wars. Their record since the Korean War speaks for itself. It has been an endless stream of pointless and stupid wars that we failed to win. The last one was a first class debacle on par with Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Let's take a quick look at the Defense Department's proposal for the next 25 years of building USN capabilities and then look at what the Commander-in-Chief Pacific has to say about the near future and current events. It's eye opening.

Here is the Report to Congress on the Long Range Plan for Naval Construction and here is the takeaway I mean to give for this work of complete fiction.

    "Lastly, the DoN recognizes the significant strategic opportunity presented by the
Australia, United Kingdom, and United States (AUKUS) trilateral security pact. AUKUS
will advance peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region and strengthen deterrence by
enhancing all three nations’ technical capabilities, expanding allied fleet capacity, and
deepening cooperation. "

You can see that the intent of our expansion of fleet capabilities will lead to all good things and deterrence too! Now let us have a look at what CINCPAC lays out in his testimony to Congress on the doings of the Pacific Area under his benevolent command:

You probably noticed how America building up all of its expeditionary warfare capabilities and lodging them just as close as we can to China constitutes peace and good will but China exercising the same sort of defense buildup is a Peril to World Peace!!!!!

I think there are some hidden adults pulling a few strings out of sight from you and me and mostly from the them because the morons running things openly have to be seeing that they don't begin to have anywhere near the capabilities to fight a war against China or Russia without losing outright in a matter of weeks and they have to know that the Norks will launch nuclear attacks at the first sign of US crossing the Demilitarized Zone. As badly made and directed as you might think their ballistic missiles are, they won't have any trouble hitting the Greater Seoul Metropolitan Area and Japan is almost impossible to miss.

Speaking of them both, these are another two countries that the ignoratti insist on calling our "allies". Let's be very clear here. They and Israel count on us but they are no more an ally of America than NATO or the EU is our ally. Should we get stuck into a fight anywhere else on the planet they will be conspicuous by their total and complete absence.

The time for working out the little details like for instance, just what are the conditions under which we declare that we won and proclaim our victory over Russia or China or both of them? Be specific. Use plenty of words to describe the conditions in full so everyone can see just what it is you are setting out to do by jumping into a war with either country and how you mean to extract us from it after losing 40,000 to 100,000 people and battle groups and most of our Air Force. Enquiring minds want to know.

Let's not have another Milley laying it out before Congress saying absolutely nobody is/was to blame for the fiasco of our withdrawal from Afghanistan or the tragedy that was Iraq. In a much larger war, our war aims were stated upfront and in no uncertain terms and what's more our generals, our allies and even our enemies knew what they were and we saw them through to the end. Let's not putter about muttering 'regime change'. under our breath even as we're getting our asses kicked by hyper-sonic missiles and an endless stream of ship-killers launched out of China.

Our secret masters who are somehow refusing even now to open the spigot and fund a massive weapons procurement and military buildup have decided that there is nobody left in the Pentagon or in the hinterlands that can be trusted with such a thing. That's really sad when you think about it and when you realize they saw the writing on the wall right around the time they saw the political animal, General Wesley Clark try to start World War III in Yugoslavia and Vern Clarke strip mine the Navy of ships and talent. I hope our "allies" are giving it a lot of thought because despite the news and rhetoric coming out of our dismal media and think tanks, the situation on the ground, in the air and at sea is bleak and growing bleaker every day. 

We may be the last people in America who know that we never formally ended the war with China in 1952 and that is why we still keep US forces in Korea and Japan to this day. We could not win a war with China then and we cannot win a war with China today. 

Endnote. When you read the bits I pasted in from CINCPAC note that the People's Liberation Army and China started to increase the size and complexity and the sheer numbers of their forces as they watched the United States collapse internally by the twisted machinations of those we call the neocons. They saw an out of control America that did not hesitate to throw its armed forces into action against literally every country in the world. Maybe next we'll look at the countless and endless cruise missile attacks and all the rest of them that we know about and we'll wonder forever who killed Kennedy and just who blew up the Russian-European gas pipelines in the Baltic.

Thomas Patten Stafford

 Thomas Stafford stepped into the clearing on Monday. He was one of the most select group America ever fielded. I was looking at his various biographies this morning and was struck by how different it is from the biographies of the men and women of similar position but significantly less stature and I decided to include this biography of the man because it enables links that let you scroll through the related topics that concern his life and times.

Thomas Stafford (right) shakes hands with cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in the docking tunnel between Apollo and Soyuz in July 1975.Credit: AFP

 When you read the link to his biography and I urge you to, I think you will find it fascinating at how routinely close he came to death in pursuit of the technology and capability we now view as so routine it no longer even makes the news.

Thomas Patten Stafford (September 17, 1930 – March 18, 2024)

One of the last of the Pioneers of my times.

RADIANT

 At a little workshop down by the reservoir the other day. Looks like a sliding ladder from a fine old library.

The metal work is amazing.

WHERE I LIVE AND BANK

 I stopped at the bank to get some cash for my new barber and found this friendly notice giving us plenty of time to prepare for the coming ‘sun blotted out’ darkness. Good thing, eh? Wouldn’t want be standing around in the twilight and have to kick myself for not getting to the bank before darkness falls.

THIS IS AMAZING

 

A MODEST PROPOSAL

 What if every public school was forced at gunpoint to comply with the law that permits every teacher and every student to vote to expel one student every month? Those expelled could not attend any normal school and would have to go to jail school for at least one school year before being allowed to return to a real school.

Teacher votes would each equal ten student votes. There would be no other weighting. The student with the most votes every month would be drop-kicked right out of the school district and might as well start reporting to a parole officer.

I found that 10% of the people that work for you really are 90% of the problem and things go much more smoothly when you either get rid of that 10% or keep it under complete control. I think every place would work better if they simply pruned that 10%/.

COULD IT BE EASIER

 Instead of being made to look like world class jackasses in Gaza wouldn’t it be easier to dump all the supplies we mean to give to the terrorists into the sea off the coast and let the terrorists wrangle it ashore?    That would give the evil fucks something useful to do before they all get slaughtered. Alternatively, simply dump the goodies just inside the gate to the land of overt terrorism and tell them to distribute it. Problem solver, that’s what I am.

I used to be part of the security forces for Joint Logistics Over the Shore and I cannot imagine how horrible this is going to be. On the other hand just watching the USFK staff go berserk trying to dodge responsibility for any and all aspects of FREEDOM BANNER every year where we did JLOTS was endlessly amusing to the rest of us that were not actually members of any Korea based headquarters staff.

Watching CINCPAC goon it up in furtherance of whatever the goal of the week was during COBRA GOLD was also good fun. Telling that jackass in Songkla that given the revised parameters of the exercise we were all planning on returning to San Diego and advising our bosses to decline the opportunity to participate in the exercise was really the best fun I’ve had at a meeting of the minds. He h kept thinking we could put up an elevated causeway using under 20 people and without bringing Amphibious CB ONE and their gear. “ Have you considered leasing all those vehicles and equipment  here or contracting with the Thais to do all that?” 

Us repeatedly telling him that this is not the point was wasted. Oddly enough, all the stolen sealift was restored and we did the exercise much like we did it in Korea but without all the damned drama.it still blows my mind that they simply got rid of the amphibious CB in the east coast. What in the world do they do with all the money they get for a navy every year?

OLD LEARNING

 Try to understand war before you are forced to experience it.

MODERN COMMAND AND CONTROL

 President Biden assured the nation that he would build a port on the Gaza coast and that it would require no American boots on the ground!!!!!!!!

At the JCS in Top Secret conference the generals are trying to decide how best to implement this order and it isn't pretty folks.

-'I think we can satisfy the Commander's Intent by just using our Chinese made boots. The soldiers already wear them, they're the only boots we've issued for the last 13 years and I think it is safe to say they are not American....'

-'No General, I disagree spoke up another General, simply by buying them Chinesium boots they became American and we can't walk that away.....'

-'You're right chimed in a 3rd General, the only safe course of action is to send the troops in barefoot.'

"All in agreement say aye, aye. The ayes have it. General, tell the soldiers that they are forbidden to wear boots during the port construction and cargo offload operations in Gaza."

One general was heard muttering about flipflops as they all filed out of the room and went to lunch.

REVERSION TO THE NORM

 As we idly watch Haiti burn we cannot but be struck by how things always seem to go awry and then for some reason they return to balance if left alone....or at least if we can keep our fingerprints off it and don't look like we had anything to do with it. I realize that this is impossible given the feckless idiots we have running and manning the State Department, USAID, the CIA and the other nullwits and halfwits that tend to barge into any given situation and make them orders of magnitude worse. That said, have a look at the demons in our old United Fruit Stomping Grounds and further south and wonder with me as something extraordinary is happening.

The Argentine's appear to have elected a President who is essentially nothing at all like any other president in history and appears to be doing a bang up job of bringing order out of the chaos engineered by every clown government since Peron. In El Salvador the people have done the same thing and made enormous and dramatic and positive changes to what used to be a hellhole.

Contrast with Venezuela which is now a hopeless basket case and playing the games such places always do and trying to make their problems disappear in a cloud of smoke and angry meaningless war. And finally there is Haiti, there is always Haiti and to be honest the rest of the Caribbean isn't looking so good these days.

Did things work and appear more civilized and like one could do business and survive the day to day activities of a normal state back when people like Samoza and Baby Doc and Noriega were running their little pocket empires of graft and corruption? I think so but then the Congress got involved and screwed those countries so thoroughly that I'm sure some people thought could be fixed only by the likes of the Clintons and the likes of Obama.

We know how that turns out. Still it won't turn totally to crap until Europe goes all feckless and stupid like they did in 1914 and again in 1939 and again in 1956 and again in 1968 and again when the Wall came down and for a brief shining moment everyone stopped demonizing the Russians.

What's that you say? Europe even more stupid and feckless now than all those periods put together, laid end to end, stacked on top of each and covered with napalm?

You don't say.

KIND OF FUNNY

 I scanned this bit of fluff and found it amusing.

"One of Harvard University’s former top officials has been named in two ethics complaints over his law firm billing the school $42 million while he held office.

The Massachusetts Attorney General is looking into whether or not Harvard was right to pay law firm Wilmer Hale the money while partner William Lee was a member of the Board of Overseers and director of the Harvard Corporation, the New York Post reported.

The news outlet reported Thursday “that the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and the state’s attorney general have been sent formal complaints accusing Lee of ‘possible conflict of interest by trustee/director with pecuniary interest in service provider to Harvard.’”

“Lee, who graduated from Harvard in 1972, served on the university’s board of directors from July 2010 to June 2022, and was senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation from 2014 to 202

 Every single bit of cachet and raison d'être that the Ivy League has/had is about making connections to allow its graduates to feather their nests at the public's expense through insider deals and trading on favors. Now they notice that this looks unethical? 

You know at some point these rocket scientists are going to begin to wonder why NASA is still procuring services from United Launch and then there will be some serious law suits and NASA people going to jail and it won't do much good to point at Congress and shouting about how "they made us do it!"

NEW SIGGINS AND POORTENTS

 I hear that the Resident is planning on ordering the Army to launch a seaborne invasion of Gaza. Just think! The idiots that brought us the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan are going to rush to supply the enemies of man and God in the Holy Land.

After looking at history for one and a half seconds it occurs me that not even an imbecile can screw this up. They can do it just like the Aliyah Bet did it. God knows we have plenty of scrap ships we could load up with some MREs and meticulously preserved old blankets Joe’s people found on some reservation somewhere and run them aground all over the Gaza shore.

A NEW WAR INFLECTION POINT

 There are some people that view what is happening in Gaza very much the way they are viewing what is going on in Ukraine and the Black Sea. The two are not really connected by anything except the exposure of the latest generation of war doctrine on display in each area. The United States did away with it's old fashioned and sensible approach to urban combat a long time ago by simply refusing to engage in it or to believe that it mattered since they controlled the cities that mattered. The Israelis are showing a massive contempt for all the whiny shibboleths about not inconveniencing the 'poor innocent civilians' and it shows that there really is no other way to root out dug in combatants who couldn't care less about damage to civilians and/or civilian infrastructure. At heart they are like the Nazis and the Soviets. Destruction is an end to be desired and not something to be eschewed or feared.

The other massive difference that is showing up is happening in Ukraine where the introduction of the totally expendable one-way targeting and killing drone is shaping the new battlefields of the 21st century just about the way most of us predicted. Admittedly, I'm still waiting for those killer drones to start making an impact on the political scene in various cities in the West. Let's be honest, if a cook with a limited bank account and access to some RC parts can cobble together killer drones from kits so can enemies as sophisticated as Baader Meinhof or the Red Brigades or the IRA or all those scary White Christian nationalists. Of course the ones that will be the first to thrust themselves out onto the killing stage will be the likes of anti-fa and our fresh crop of home-grown muslim discontented death to America types.

With any luck they'll practice and hone their skills closer to home and use their local officials as training aids. 

On the gripping hand, one cannot fail to notice that the most involved party of rabid killer lunatics don't seem to have any luck at all with this sort of modern warfare. Even the houthis can make it work somehow but palestinians in Gaza appear to have failed to launch even a single successful drone attack. I join the rest of the world in hoping that that is because somebody like Elbit has deployed a system that makes that impossible.

I still like that the first time I read about this it was fiction.

I wonder how the generals can sleep at night knowing that they have no more defense against the Kinzal and Zircon missiles then the British had against the V2 in 1945. As far as I can see there is nobody making any effort to counter the threat if it can even be countered. This might be one weapon that will always get through simply because the detect-to-engage loop is an unbreakable barrier that cannot be resolved without directed energy weapons of enormous power. Hell, we might be going back to Terrier-BTN type defensive tactics and wouldn't that be a nightmare. It wouldn't work though so they probably won't try it again....

SO WE'LL JUST DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

The Supreme Court has unanimously declared Colorado is stuffed with corrupt, stupid and inept imbeciles and has also tossed out their ridiculous democracy-saving idiocy of disqualifying a man running for office because....butt hurt. What this means for us in the saner parts of America is that just as they do with their moronic and endless butt hurting about guns, the democrat morons are going to continue and redouble their efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot in every other democrat controlled state because.... yeah, butt hurt. 

It's like the stupid never ever ends with these morons. It's so disheartening and yet it is a pure and honest reflection of the level of fail that our public education has instituted across this nation for the last 50 years that so many people can be so ignorant of the Constitution and Civics and never suffer so much as a hint of shame or public embarrassment for being so damned stupid.

Every single moron sitting as the RULERS OF COLORADO LAW were just told that they are quite possibly too stupid to breath without assistance. Will they resign in shame? Hang their heads down? No, they'll just moan about how unfair it is. Yes, some of the idiots voted against it but it speaks volumes that they could fail to articulate the law to the other Colorado Supreme morons who supposedly had more than a passing familiarity with the Law. That level of inarticulate arrgle barrgle is enough to disqualify them too.

I look for California and Illinois and the rest to press on with their efforts to shed Trump from their ballots in the same name of saving democracy.

I MIGHT TUNE IN

 Thursday night is Biden delivering the State of the Union Address. I once would have presumed that it is broadcast but nowadays it may be something I have to pay a subscription fee to watch in which case it will go unwatched by me. It will be interesting to see:

1. Biden actually talk for 6 minutes without flubbing it dramatically and declaring war on the USSR.

2. Biden flail around for more than one or two minutes trying to say "it" just exactly right, like Bill did.

3. What the most imaginative reason offered is for Biden's no-show and non-appearance at the SoTU.

4. How many times the reason is officially changed by the White House's Speaker to Morons.

 There!!!! Light and fluffy like I wanted it to be.

AMONG THE OLDEST ADVICE

 I read bit of fluff and laughed because the grown up in me knows that there is literally nothing Trump can do to the Deep State. He cannot fire even one of them because they're all in the Civil Service and therefore untouchable even if they commit felony crimes and anger the people. He can't send them to Adak and nothing Alaska ever did deserves finding itself buried in a sea of incompetent thuggish bureaucrats who seem to occupy every government position from GS-9 up to the SES.

For the little scaredy cats who don't understand that Trump is harmless I'm sure they're plotting like crazy. They forgot the ancient advice about never leaving a live enemy behind them.

On the gripping hand there is always the hope that Trump will come in and tell the top 8 levels of all the bureaucracies that they're redundant and tell them to go home and take away their government cars, their government jets, their government helicopters and all their stationary and mail accounts and let them sue him in Court to return to the office because he can tie them up in court for years and then do what he should have done and just ignored the court.

If rule by decree is good enough for Biden and the left, it is good enough for Trump and I don't care what Alaska wants, there's plenty of room on Adak for at least 59,000 bureaucrats. They'd have to share the telephone and God only knows how they'll keep warm in the winter when we turn the contract for services  to Adak over to Hunter Biden and give him $20.00 to cover them all.