DAY IN THE LIFE OF

 14 April 1988                                                u/w enroute Samuel B. Roberts

USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine today in the central Persian Gulf. There were 10 people injured, one very seriously. They were part of the Earnest Will convoy. I hope this means we are going to send naval aviation in to clean out these vipers in Bushir, Shiraz, and Bandar Abbas.

We got the word just as I was boarding the bus for the Military Training Mission Compound for the party tonight at 1800. We lit off main engines, shifted the load and were ready to get underway in 30 minutes. Spent the last 30 minutes waiting for Haverstick and Palmer to return.

We are on our way now to the SBR location. She reported 3 other mines in the area where she was struck. She had gone to all zero and apparently drifted into an unseen mine.The mine blew up the Main Engine Room and Auxiliary 1.

I was up at 0530 this morning because I had to ensure GMG2 Hall went up to see the CO about his liberty incident with Fearless sailors on the bus last night. The CO and XO left at 0600 for a 7 hour trip to the desert. I put down Liberty Call at 1015 and even held an Officer's Call. We challenged Fearless to a softball game at 1130 and played from 1215 to 1435 and beat their regular team 20-15. We spent a couple hours at the pool but got kicked out for prayer time.

Well, I just got off the midwatch and all the swimming and diving this afternoon wore me out.

SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY

 Driving back home from the hardware store this weekend we spotted on the car in front of us a license plate that looked suspiciously biblical. I think it was and it seems appropriate for the times. Srsly, 

916 KINGS was the plate. I looked it up later just to see if it was and sure enough; timely and relevant.

I only had the one year of Catholic schooling. This is probably reflected in this blog from time to time. Mispellings, gad grammer and stuff like that.

AN UNTIMELY HYSTERICAL FRENZY

 In a day or two it is going to occur to the orcs that run the uniparty that having all the little orcs still misbehaving like only terrorists can at the formerly elite U.S. universities is not going to look at all good when they bring it to the Democratic Party’s Führer  Rally this fall in Chicago. Shades of ‘68 without a Daly there to suggest that waving swastikas really isn’t a good look and might tend to make sane people think that the democrats are just a bunch nazi hooligans getting ready to burn down the Reichstag Capital.

The funny thing of course is that the real orcs know this and have to be tearing their hair out and trying to find some way to end it and to blame it on the Jews. Or, you know, Trump.

THE OLDEST MUSIC

 

LOAD SHEDDING

Oracle is relocating its offices to Nashville. It's hard to believe how hard the democratic legislators and governors have worked to drive even hi-tech out of California. I remember thinking how nice it was when I arrived in San Mateo over that bridge from the East Bay and drove past Oracle. 

This story reminds me of the days long ago when I shared an apartment with my brother who worked for Home Fed Bank back in the mid-80s and he would come home day after day, week after week and tell me that Home Fed had written off another 1 or 2% of assets as nonperforming and I finally asked him, "when does Home Fed go out of business and he was shocked at the idea that his bank could fail as so many of the S&Ls were going under. Yeah, Home Fed failed thanks to the Fed changing the rules (Unexpectedly!!!)

I saw the other day that California went from a $100 billion surplus to a $73 Billion deficit in a year. They've done this again and again over the last few decades and kept getting bailed out but at some point, the State is going to get written off by everyone as a non-performing asset and it will collapse. I don't know what happens after that. It would be nice to think that flamethrowers will be involved but I kind of doubt we'll be that lucky.

Oracle HQ in San Mateo

 On the gripping hand I remember learning from my new colleagues at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command that many of the employees of its predecessor (NAVELEX) when told that they were relocating to a new headquarters in San Diego, elected to stay in Northern Virginia rather than take the move and live in America's Finest City.

And then there is the sad truth about Texas. I’m reminded of the quote by General Philip Henry Sheridan: “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.” 

One of the funniest speeches I ever heard happened at the Expeditionary Warfare Conference where the Deputy Commander at TRADOC interspersed little unrelated (seemingly) snippets about Sheridan after the War and some of the problems with fielding truly long range weapons. I'll have to write it down and share it.

A LITTLE JAUNT

 Good news! NASA has approved the mission to explore a bit of Titan. The spacecraft will be launched in 2028 and arrive in 2034 and then we will see what a proper moon truly looks like. 

Artis's rendition of Titan from the surface

 

WAR NEWS

 As I watch PBS Weekend News tonight I am struck by the NATO defense ministers all clustered around a picture of Saint Volodymyr and regaling him with stories about how NATO is leaping to defend Ukraine against the toothless tiger that Putin isn't. NATO fakir Stoltenberg is declaring how enthusiastic all of Germany is to stand united with Ukraine and is talking about sending one Patriot battery. I'm not clear if they mean the 24 volt DC battery or maybe a missile named Patriot or possibly some vehicles and radars but no missiles. These are diplomats and they are all trained and experienced liars so they could be doing something else. Nothing is ever clear.

What I never see from these champions of Totalitarian European Governments everywhere is any sign at all that they have a path to victory. I think if they had one that they'd at least try to share it with the people who are paying good money to force more killing and dying in the mud in Ukraine. Just how does Ukraine endeavor to persevere after being choked harder than Jeffrey Epstein in his jail cell?* 

The last time we confronted the Russians in a belligerent mood we had a massive Air Force, Army and Navy and most of our major cities in the United States had Nike/Hercules Anti-Aircraft missile batteries all around them. You can still see them in some places like Angel Island, Tennessee Valley. They were everywhere. Where are they now as we embrace war again? Are they all in Europe and Ukraine or did we leave a few spares in Saudi Arabia to defend Aramco?

*A wonderful phrase I picked up recently watching Hardthrasher's video on youtube about the Me-262

MORE FOR WAR

 The House caved and voted to support spending another 100 Billion $ that we don't have to fund the imperial wars in Europe and the Middle East. It's not really a surprise.  As usual, this was an interesting update and from there, this 'explanation'.

The problem boils down to the simple fact that America's heart is not in any of these wars. Nobody cares which means that we are simply drawing out the agony for people who really do wish that the war would end. This applies much more to Ukraine then to the 100% terrorist population of Gaza but even there the necessity to fund Israelis to exterminate terrorists is not a winning proposition and will never end successfully because one thing we can guarantee is that without US support and commitment neither side will finish off the other and that in the end is what is going to bring it to an end. 

To try to pitch the supplemental as somehow replacing war stocks in the US is stupidity. That was what all the trillions of $ in Cost of War supplementals that were off-budget for all 20 years of our imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan was supposed to do and what it should have done but it was all stolen, misappropriated, wasted, lost or embezzled.

There is no sense of commitment at any level for any of these adventures which means we should really do more than question why we continue to support them with the feeble funding that we screw out of the taxpayers. It would be different seeming if we just told the Fed to print off another 100 billion $ and sent the defense contractors pallets of cash like we sent our friends-the fiends who run Iran. Can you imagine any American bank accepting pallet loads of cash deposits without quibble?

For all I know though, quibble is an extremely rare delicacy and essential to keeping bankers alive after the bathing in the blood of virgins no longer works to keep them young or even vaguely humanoid.

The saddest line in the supplemental was about dry docks and the Defense Industrial Base. The reason that so many of our ships are welded to the piers and why so few submarines are being built and repaired boils down to the lack of skilled and qualified workmen who know how to build warships. That's how low we have gone. Now all our shipyards work like NASCO or Todd Shipyard or Southwest Marine which is to say extremely poorly and badly.

IMMUTABLE

 It is one of the very few places I've been that hasn't noticeably changed since I got there or since I left.

From the end of my street looking south to La Jolla in the far distance

KALEIDOSCOPE

I am listening to The Art of War by Stephen Coonts and I'm up now to disk 5 and it just now struck me that this was written back in a time when what the author is describing would have been seen as a very bad thing. Now? Well, not to spoil it since this is just the first 7 chapters but,

The Director of the CIA is murdered getting into his boat.

The former head of the FBI and neighbors are blown to pieces by a gas leak in his building.

Air Force One is brought down, crashing and killing all onboard but, mysteriously, not the president.

As I looked at that a second ago I was like, yep, yep, yep-darn.

Times sure have changed since Clinton left office.

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?

 You read the words, "based on a study conducted at UC Berkeley" or, "based on a study conducted by Harvard researchers" and you simply ignore the rest of the article because you have no confidence whatsoever that the research is accurate, repeatable, true or meaningful?

In the old days I would have given research preceded by those words the same weight that I would have given to a Rand study or analysis.

END OF THE BEGINNING?

 As I look around the world tonight I see a number of countries are now basically involved in overt warfare with neighbors or other countries they truly hate and despise. This has happened before and likely always will but I wonder if there is some sort of mystical tipping point where when the number of countries exceeds the X do other countries feel free to get all bellicose too and attack their neighbors or the allies? 

You have to admit that based on press reports many of the countries in Europe have gone barking mad and all in a froth to attack/wage war on Russia and the thing I wonder about is, Why? More than that, what do they plan to use in this attack on the petrol station with a burger joint? The diplomats (if one can refer to the idiotic fascist morons like Verhofstadt as a diplomat) are thoroughly enraged and demand that others immediately suffer and die until he is happy. He wants Europe=NATO to attack Russia. Various idiots in the rest of greatly expanded and much less useful NATO also want to carve up Putin and don't seem to be aware that he is the one holding the knife while they're just holding bags of hot air.

It's interesting in that South and Central America are flickering on the point of collapse of civilization as they know it. Brazil is back in the hands of the lunatic left, Venezuela is a mad dog and is either at war or just winding one up that no one has ever heard of when they elected to try to slice off the oily part of Guyana and it is only a matter of time until a coup topples Milei in Argentina. Oligarchs never like the likes of that guy and they figure they screwed up massively when they followed Peron and don't want to do that again even if it leads to a Chavez moment in Buenos Aires.

At home we have an enormous collection of dedicated fools and jackasses who want to fight China. I have yet to hear even one single reason why we should provoke China over any little thing and to be honest, there is no major thing out their that is soiling our relations. Nobody in America really cares about the South China Sea and by that I mean NOBODY CARES AT ALL.

As I've written before, I'd be a little more concerned if any of the warmongers actually had any kind of military legs to stand on but the only remaining powers are the rational ones acting in their own rational best interests. The odd man out may be Israel but I don't know enough about that but I will speculate,

there is a field of study that very carefully looks at trends and projects them into the future. One of the trends that affects the state of Israel is all too easy to project and it isn't pretty. Yes they got the neighbors all calmed down and the divisions between the shiite, sunni and the outright nationalists like Egypt have limited the scale of the conflict in recent decades the trend for induced war from far away has been accelerating without letup and shows every sign of doom. You saw the Iranian overt attack and now you know, if they had the capability to drop a weapon of mass destruction on Israel they wouldn't hesitate for a moment.

You see, they were once a pariah and then they got something incredibly damaging on the people that run the Democratic Party and they started to reenter the fold but then the West threw them an incredible bone and jacked up Russia and China to the point that they decided to go all-in to destroy the existing Bretton-Woods World Order and Iran was one of the first to join them. 

Now Iran has an air defense system that doesn't just rival America's, it exceeds it by dozens of orders of magnitude. There is nothing at all between any enemy missile or drone and any American city except vaporware. 

What changed in the world since 2013 that has a significance that nobody even knows about because they don't understand it? A private company relaunched the space age and anything that can put a payload into orbit can put a warhead anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes.  You better hope they don't share their technology or know-how with anyone.

It's time to consider that the old ABM treaties are dead as doornails and ponder what if anything we can do to provide missile defenses in America.

WITHOUT SOUL OR FEELING

 I think it’s amusing that the team that always does it also fails to notice how destructive it can really be when the other real enemy inserts its sleeper partisans into any organization and uses them to take over or take down the organization from within. The history of the 20th Century is rich with examples of organizations toppled by their own arrogance and assumption that everyone is really all the same deep down and inside.

The Catholic Church

Mainline Protestant churches

The American Library Association

NAACP

ACLU

US Military

Every single public and most private universities

The list is really endless. Just look what they did to Boeing and NASA.

WELL NOW WHAT?

 The ruling elite have engineered a war between nuclear powers now and it seems that somewhere in Israel a room full of ruling elites are pondering just wtf do they do now. Much like the feckless idiots in Europe who seem to want a war with Russia or our own feckless morons who seem to want a war with China, the Israelis have got what was wished upon them. Now what? I'm curious how a nation of 6 million with endless frontier of nothing but hostile powers is going to wage any kind of meaningful war against Iran.

Here we may see the 'sleepers' awake and not just promise to murder the Bakersfield City Council in their homes for not passing a binding resolution supporting the terrorists murderers in Hamas. We can hope that they will focus their effort on those who deserve it most. You know the people in New York City and Washington, DC, aka, the usual targets but I suspect they'll go after the infrastructure (power and water supplies and critical bridges). Everybody just saw again just how easy it is to make a steel structure collapse and we are a nation of elderly steel bridges and buildings.

We'll see how the hysteria plays out in the UN councils and in StupidLand which meets in either Strasbourg or Belgium.

Between the two of them, Iran and Russia control just how much of the worlds fossil fuels? Interesting question. We will see if the pirates can shut down the fuel deliveries out of the rest of the Gulf that didn't buy into pipelines across the Kingdom (good friend of Uncle Jo Biden) and see what the oil port of Yanbu is up to in terms of millions of tons of crude oil shipped/month. Pipelines are safe of course. They're inviolate. On the gripping hand, the Houthis started this drone attack 'malarky' when they started targeting, attacking and destroying Saudi Aramco oil production and distribution systems a few years ago. You remember our response was to question the Saudi's request for PATRIOT missile systems.

For those watching at home you are about to experience the shrieks of denial as the ruling elite suddenly understand that somehow the bad actors in the Pentagon and Intel Community since 2001 have destroyed 100% of America's forcible entry capability, gutted the Marine Expeditionary Force (also gutted almost 100% of the Amphibious lift needed to get the Marines to the scene of the crime) and of course gutted the Maritime Preposition Forces and the old POMCUS sites. NATO isn't a shadow of what it was even in 1996 as it started to discard 100% of the War Reserve materials that USAREUCOM had maintained for  generations. 

I had a friend back in San Diego who was Supply Corps captain who was called to Hawaii every year for a month or two to conduct a complete review of CINCPAC's ammunition requirements and capabilities. I never asked how bad it was because it was classified and because I didn't want to know. Years earlier as a fire control officer I watched as we cross-decked our cruise missiles from ship to ship because we didn't have nearly enough to outfit every launcher we had even back in 1985 and of course, we shut down our cruise missile production lines years ago and don't actually make any of them anymore. The clever bean counter solution to the problem was proposed and acted on. They reasoned that if they slashed the number of ships that carried cruise missiles, they could reduce both inventory and the number of cross-decked missiles.....

Americans and Westerners believe that there is this enormous latent power that we can draw upon to save ourselves with and it's not really worth convincing them that what the Congress and BRAC started at the end of the Cold War has left US much less capable than when we started World War II. Historians will know that we started to rearm shortly after great Britain but without much intensity until Pearl Harbor. All of that then latent war production is long gone. We shipped it over to China like the Globalists and ruling elite desired along with little things like our ability to make steel.

We are looking at a world at war and we have almost nothing forward deployed outside of a tripwire in Korea. We have less then 100 warships to tangle with the navies of Russia, China and Iran and how many of them have a sleeper in the crews that knows that all it takes is one little fire to destroy a nuclear submarine or a big deck amphibious ship? Used to wonder if the sleepers were Russians but now I wonder if they are Russian, Chinese, mercenary, muslims, communists/anarchists or EcoFreaks.

I cannot imagine the process for conducting a background check on a person for a TS clearance today. Just what abhorrent and disgusting behavior in a person's background now would disqualify them from being granted a security clearance. Off the top of my head, nothing. Our secrets now are our enemies secrets or at least their morning reading materials with breakfast and coffee.

I wonder how soon we will hear the ruling class decide that bringing back the DRAFT is now necessary.

Interesting times.

I WON'T BE SURPRISED

 It almost defies belief just how badly democrats and their bureaucrats in the Deep State and State Department can fuck things up in the international realm. If you thought things were bad with a war in Ukraine, war in Gaza and a wide open border invasion in the United States, you ain't seen nothing yet.

If the Iran decides to go all belligerent it will be because it decided that it could, once again, get away with it. Where in the world would they come up with the idea that Biden, Blinken and Austin are too feckless to carry off a successful deterrence or war? Really the headline says it all.

I've seen some people reference this attack and just causally drop in to the mix that the IRGN killers were in either the Iranian Embassy or a next door Iranian Consulate and therefore!!!!!! Causus Belli!!!!!

How quickly we forget, the USAF bombed Chinese Embassy in Belgrade but we only killed a small handful of young Chinese journalists who were sleeping in quarters in the Embassy while the USAF destroyed the building. But read the whole thing and then ponder the dimwits out there thriving as they malign the IDF for hitting civilians in their wildly out of control and disproportional attacks in Gaza. The below is from our friend at A Large Regular.

How has the entire Western World raised a mass of morons who think that somehow war is waged by only targeting men bearing weapons and just them? War is way more elemental than that which is why sane people go so far out of their way to avoid it. Our political class seem to see a profit in it though so that means that war will invariably and inevitably come for us now.

Going back to Iran at war with the IDF, you remember a little while ago I mentioned that there was a time when I only thought there there was one crazy maniac who was likely to see nukes as the go to weapon of choice and wouldn't hesitate? Yeah, that was Kim but the Mullahs are even worse than Kim and they have demonstrated an endless willingness to kill innocents on par with the USAF. They now have thousands of sleeper agents here in the United States and millions more on call. You thought the Tanker War saw a spike in oil prices? Wait until the Strait of Hormuz is completely closed and trapped in the Gulf are USN ships than now have no way out.

ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL

 I think every NPR host/hostess, servile purveyor of socialism, should introduce literally every single person as "an extreme right wing" or "far right" maniac of some sort. This includes interviews with the likes of the ghost of Madeline Albright or Hillary Clinton and also people like Al Sharpton. Every other time each person is mentioned but not interviewed that person needs to be described as either a racist or a closet/classic racist. Any NAACP or Southern Poverty Law maniacs must be described as supporting white supremacy and white privilege since it is after all their shtick and how they make their living. You know, racism.

You know the howls of sheer outrage could power SPACE X orbital launchs for the next 30 years if noise alone was needed for liftoff and orbit.

LOUD AND CLEAR

 There is a hateful class running this country and its media liars who regularly lie to the people every day. One thing that ought to make that crystal clear to everyone in this country and the world is a refusal by ANY PRESIDENTIAL candidate to debate the issues of the day with the candidate(s) of the other party.

If BIDEN refuses to meet in the open and debate with President Trump then the doors have blown off the scam we still call democracy in this republic. We have really become a 3rd world shithole.

INTERESTING

 Did you know if you type antifa.com into google it comes up WhiteHouse.gov? 

Figures.

DO YOU SEE IT NOW?

 This is not new but have you considered what it means to you personally?

That's right, the Godless morons who hate Life but hate Western Civilization more than you believe, are ready, willing and able to tamper with your food supply and are telling you that you cannot do anything about it.

I'd be very careful where I shop and I have concerns about the middle passage all my food makes on its way to the grocery store. The freaks will get jobs in food processing and handling and if you thought finding spit or detergent in your fast food was a real possibility or even food tainted with ptomaine and other diseases, just think about all the things that people without morals or conscience can add to the food you eat.

And here you thought that buying Tylenol was not without risk.

AWE AND WONDER

 I wonder what form of asymmetric nuclear attack platform will be used to incinerate parts of Iran? I haven’t really looked into their version of our SSBN and have no idea if they possess long range missiles. 

I also wonder if the US is positioning forces to reflect such a strike on the real axis of evil.

There is nothing so awful in the world today that it cannot be made infinitely worse by ‘decisive’ actions from the likes of Biden, Harris, Austin and Blinken.

It is probably not a good time to fly or visit DC and our whipping city.

And what irks me is that I’ve really been looking for some positive news to reflect on here. 

I'M STILL AMUSED BY IT ALL

 I think it is really amusing that literally everyone knew a certain thing would turn out exactly as it did except those most fanatically devoted to bringing about its obvious demise. Here is the story that announces that the Golden Gate Park funtime at Hippie Hill won't come off because, wait for it....

That's right, all the State Sponsored pot growers and sellers went broke trying to sell pot the only way that the government of California knows. In other words they were undercut and gutted by a marketplace that doesn't admit to and rejects the entire idea of paying taxes of any kind.

You knew that's how it would end too, didn't you?