HAPPY HALLOWEEN

and, did you know that even before grokipedia there was 'answers by tigers' which was just as valid.

 Enjoy.

NIGHTMARES MADE REAL

I see that President Trump has ordered the United States to resume nuclear weapon testing for the first time since President Bush ended the practice in 1992. It will be nice to know if the damned things work, demonstrate that they work and perhaps reawaken a spirit long dead in the Strategic Weapons Commands that fell so low that we lost any meaningful control of nuclear weapons in our own magazines much less the growing arsenals of nuclear weapons in the Far East, Middle East and Soviet Union Russia.

There are some obvious concerns given the depth of the fall in the ranks of those who are charged with developing and controlling nuclear weapons. I have no idea how any sane person can begin to imagine whatever the Hell the Personnel Reliability Program has turned into in the hands of men like Milley and the tools that gave DEI free rein and also found that there are no grounds for refusing a clearance to anybody no matter how deviant or dishonorable they are. 

I wonder who is really watching over the nuclear weapons these days. I'd be happy to learn that the Marines were given the job because I know they don't fuck around. I think the Army and Air Force are compromised at every level from General and SES down to PFC with actual enemies of the United States and enemies of the West. The same goes for the Navy. Thanks to the abysmal failures of the FBI, Office of Personnel Management and others, the country and the armed forces are stuffed with foreign agents who owe their true allegiance to other countries. We're not talking spies here, we're talking actual enemies wearing our uniforms and serving at every level in our military.

I will begin to think we are taking steps to correct this when they re-institute the old bottom blow program and give Commanders carte blanche to administratively separate up to 10% of their people for the Good of the Service but that old thing only applied to E-3 and below and we need to purge every level without having to summon anyone to the bar of justice and bring in the lawyers because that just won't work. 

When the nations start to send signals using nuclear weapons we're back to the Cold War again. The obvious next step is to resume redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to ships and bases overseas. We won't like the color of that smoke signal.

And you thought the conflagration was all behind you and safely in the past, didn't you?  

PUNDITS BAFFLED

 I find it interesting that the war against Hamas in Gaza went on as long as it did and took such a terrible toll and ended when,

 it turns out that all it ever took to end the war was to release all the hostages and stop attacking the State of Israel. This is worth keeping around and using every single time you encounter one of the proto-hamas terrorists here in this country. All the marching, rioting, burning, looting and occupying tame schools was for nothing at all and just made everybody hate hamas and liberals even more than they did before the Seventh of October.

In an ideal or better world this would serve as a valuable lesson on terminating hostilities the easy way. In this world we're all just going to forget it ever happened. That's a shame. 

Of course, the previous lesson about BLM was also completely swept under the rug and we all pretend it meant something. Not me of course. That was hatred unleashed but with training wheels in order to get the new thug class up to speed on intimidation, violence, fund raising and propaganda.  

GEE THANKS, UKRAINE

 Thank you Ukraine for totally normalizing the production and distribution of advanced missiles worldwide that can be used to smash infrastructure and cities everywhere and not be viewed by anyone as an act of war. You have enabled any country to now lash out at any other country with everyone else's long range missiles and drones and attack any and all targets secure in the knowledge that the world only tolerates proportional responses. In the old days of course, an attack on a superpower invited retaliation along the lines of Dresden or Tokyo or even something more immature like Nagasaki.

To any veteran of the old Cold War it is obvious that President Putin and Russia are playing a game with Ukraine that is simply invisible to 99%. I have long thought the game was simply to blood the army, rebuild the actual military ethos and officer corps and to develop advanced weapons and tactics and techniques and to wage a kind of war unlike anything in the past. I still think that is what is happening even as they exterminate all of that in Ukraine and cripple NATO's war machine. But there is something changing now that makes me think that the old ways will come back to the fore.

If Russia wanted a dead and supine Ukraine they would drop every single highway bridge overnight and then destroy every power plant in the next week or two as Europe prepares for winter. They could have done this at any time but up until now I think that they were content to let the Ukrainians continue to push their men into the killing fields and exterminate them there. That changed recently when the sanctions became something right out of Brest-Litovsk or Versailles.

Once that Rubicon is crossed there is little point in continuing to fight with the gloves on and all the reason in the world to simply reach out and flatten your enemy or enemies. The sanctions that the West is insisting on imposing on Russia are the kind and type that a winner imposes by fiat on the loser and unlike Germany in 1918, there isn't a Russian alive who thinks they are losing in Ukraine. The Russians were very careful to distinguish what they were about by calling it a Special Military Operation. It's goals were to achieve a reincorporation of the ethnic Russian provinces back into Russia. That changed in March of 2024 when they announced that they were now entering a State of War because of the West's collective insistence in involving itself in and prolonging the agony of the SMO.

It is a cruel fact of history that nobody can sanction an undefeated opponent and most especially not without first declaring and waging war. The last time we tried anything like this Japan retaliated by launching all out military and naval operations against us in the Pacific. 

I have to say too, that as the idiots in the Baltic states continue to bleat about Soviet aggression because of minor violations of airspace over and around Kaliningrad it will probably come as news to the sheep that NATO increasing its fighter presence over the territory by adding one or two Dutch fighters is not really all that dramatic a sign of manifest will and a resolve to defend the Baltic states to the death. Seriously NATO, you need to send or at least be able to convincingly maintain a significant increase in combat power in the threatened area and a couple of old fighter planes is nothing.

I do kind of wonder what a ratissage by the Russians would look like coming out of the blue over the Baltics and perhaps even extending into Germany. That would be the moment of decision and can you imagine the elite ruling class of the EU springing into action to instantly retaliate and declare war? I can't. It will also demonstrate that there isn't a lot there when push comes to shove and people will notice.

Of us all I think only the United States can still mobilize and deploy modern mechanized forces and combat aircraft for immediately expanding military operations. Nobody else in NATO even has the pretense anymore that they could immediately mobilize brigade combat teams and air wings. 

Remember back in the 80s when the Soviets kept trying to tempt us by declaring that they would not be the first to use nukes? Back then they looked unstoppable and we were the ones that dithered about whether or not tactical nuclear weapons would be an immediate recourse if attacked. I wonder if any of them still work..... 

ON THE TIDE

 It is really very easy to find oneself beguiled by the history of the world as relayed by the likes of Miles Mathis. I mean one can literally sit and read for hours an entire history of the world that nobody ever talks about. I am however, all things considered, rather glad that my mind doesn't work like that and that the history I know is pretty detailed and complete and it would take something a lot more illuminating to change my mind. Still, it's an interesting world view and a nice way to pass a rainy day. 

I CAN SEE IT FROM HERE

It is easy to sense the allure of the autonomous drone fleets that will sail the world's oceans in the future to waylay the enemies of the cyber state but I don't expect to see them coming down the ways soon. 

The cybernautical has almost as rich a history with science and fantasy as the flying car and both are made of the same skillfully woven slush. The admiral in the Pentagon is snagged instantly by the scandalous savings that accrue to any fleet operator that doesn't actually have to recruit, train and pay sailors and retired sailors enormous amounts of money that the State no longer commands. It's a dream they all share.

The Fleet commander in his sun dappled headquarters at Makalapa or wherever his Supreme counterpart hangs his hat is happy to rejoice in operating fleets that don't have DUIs, normal hetersexual relations between men and women sharing quarters on small ships far out at sea and that never suffer from 'accidental' fires that seem to burn down the warship of the day whenever the crew isn't paying attention and unmindfully steering them into the paths of innocent merchant shipping. A responsive and nimble asset that he can command without fear of contradiction.

The Logistics and Maintenance commanders are Logistics and maintenance types and nobody really cares what they think about it.

I have never really seen the allure of the minimally manned warship or the totally unmanned one for that matter. Never mind that they simply don't work and hopefully never will, just think about what they imply for the future of the Navy that owns/operates them. What Navy? Contrary to popular opinion, admirals do not spring fully formed from the loins of the CNO. Admirals are/were typically made by introducing them to the sea and then giving them increasingly complex things to do, men to do it with and goals that were almost deliberately set to be unobtainable without a good deal of lying, cheating and chicanery. Where will the admirals come from to guide these ships to their rendezvous with destiny?

There is no need for division officers since there are no divisions of men. There is no need for department heads since there are no divisions. There is no need for Executive Officers since there is no berthing areas or heads that need continual inspections to keep them clean and wholesome because there are no men and there is no need for the ultimate goal of the navy officer, a Commanding Officer because they simply cannot exist in such a vacuum.

And then we come to the real reason they cannot be and that boils down to the simple fact that nobody trusts them. Admirals and most officers have a horror about arming sailors that goes way back. Sailors are really trained to use rifles and pistols and it shows whenever someone gives them one. Nobody would believe the sheer number of accidental discharges that sailors are behind. (Usually behind but sometimes they get in front of them too.) They trust machines slightly less than sailors with guns.

The 'autonomous warship' will need continuous monitoring 24 hours a day and it will go on forever. I saw where the Navy seemed to be heading with this when a Pacific Fleet 05 serving as the Mine Countermeasures Task Group Chief of Staff ashore issued orders that the two COs in the little Task Group were not to so much as change course or think about putting anything over the side until they had received his permission to do so. It's possible he was a little stressed because one of the ships had just passed its umbilical connected little robot through the ship's propellers and things were ugly and one of the small boats was drifting away because it had not been tied up properly and the other ship needed to get underway and rescue the drifting boat and perhaps effect a bit of a tow, don't you know. 

Honestly, it was both one of the funniest and saddest moments to be sitting there in the bunker next to him and his idiot staffers as this went on and on. On the other hand, I sort of got a taste of this mindset when I went aboard one of our LCS in San Diego and the Duty Officer met me and I found that she was carrying 4 different radios on her belt so that her permission could be obtained immediately by any crewman considering doing anything at all out of the ordinary.

Initiative was not so much squelched, but beaten to death. A robot fleet without a single guiding thought as it operates in the narrow seas or the shipping lanes around Singapore or Japan is going to be an absolute nightmare for somebody and you have to wonder, when it goes completely wrong who is going to be held accountable? Yeah, I know that has become a foreign and disdained concept but it still matters.

Are they going to court martial the supervisor, the guy that wrote the code, the guy that integrated the code, the technician that wired it up backwards or upside down or the contractor who accidentally painted the sensor and blinded it? You know in the end they're going to blame the maintenance and the contractor. On a bright note, that's what they're going to spend every one of those saved sailor salaries on contract maintenance and spares that will probably only exist in modules the size of gas turbines for easy trouble shooting and replacement. 

It's the new Navy way. You can always check out how well it works by looking closely at the anti-shipping and the anti-air and the anti-submarine and mine countermeasures modules they installed on all the Little Crappy Ships over the last 20 years. 

And then there are the guys that are going to see a free ammo dump, technology bonanza and windfall out swanning around and they're going to pirate it right off the bat. I mean, do you really think the security on these things will be anywhere near as good and fiendishly efficient as the security at the Louvre? Come on... 

 

IT IS TO LAUGH

 So all those filthy bureaucratic mandarins that ran government for so long and who came up with the idea of the Energy Star and a higher standard for your dishwasher so that it would use less electricity are now standing around moaning about how crappy dishwashers are today compared to the 70s and going online to beat up their neighbors for not buying Teslas. You know, to save a couple of volts and thus the planet.

Sometime in the next ten years the kids are going to round up every single bureaucrat and school teacher and every college professor and college trustee and send them to the borax and uranium mines. 

ON THE BIZARRE

 I am seeing reports from all the completely unreliable and useless news sources such as ABC, CBS and the New York Times that the Marines at Camp Pendleton were firing artillery over Interstate 5 and somehow a 155mm round exploded prematurely over the highway and rained shrapnel down on a Highway Patrol Car manned by some of California's stalwarts.

I cannot imagine anyone in the USMC ever suggesting or approving firing artillery over I-5 for any reason short of an actual invasion or bombardment off Red Beach. To say I'm doubtful is an understatement. Task and Purpose ran the story too but I think that merely reflects something long suspected is true and that they have come to the end of their utility.

The herd of make-believe news all claim that a single highway patrol car reports that shrapnel rained down on them and hit their car from a shell that exploded prematurely in flight over the highway.

I think the whole thing is bizarre given the nature of impact areas, the Marines from the 11th Regiment that I used to observe firing and the really bizarre notion that someone would let them fire artillery over MCTSSA, Las Pulgas, Red Beach or the marina and I MEF Headquarters and I'm sure the guys at ACU-5 would be unhappy. There is also all the family housing, the air strip and hangers and a host of other really good things not to fire artillery over lining the highway.

I wonder if Jussie Smollet was involved and if the highway patrol guys were bleating about cannon cockers screaming, "This is MAGA country!" as the alleged explosion allegedly happened.

On the other hand I've driven by the checkpoint there by Las Pulgas hundreds of times and watched the helos ferrying out the Landing Force Munitions load to the amphibs waiting off the coast. I know they do that to avoid having to truck an incredible amount of high explosive down I-5, through San Diego County and City to 32nd Street Naval Base to onload prior to the ship's getting underway. Those operations involving an enormous amount of explosives are happening just a few hundred yards to seaward of the highway.  That ammo had to traverse the highway to get there.

IN THE INTEREST OF THE PEOPLE

 I note this morning that the Federal Courts have announced that they are out of money and they will have to be more circumspect about the workload they take up in light of that fact. I suspect this means that the bulk of the Court will have plenty of time, money and effort to indict Trump and to frustrate his Executive decisions and to issue the TROs so dearly beloved by the legal class who have found a damned near bottomless well of money and law cases in frustrating real Americans.

I also see hints that Maduro may be headed down the Noriega rathole to Hell as he deals with the rapier held in the hands of at least one master class swordsman playing games with Venezuela. It is worth recalling that Panama was probably free and clear of the Bush/Cheney lust for war until he was stupid enough to publicly declare war on the United States. I remember that moment well. It was a really stupid thing to do. I suspect Maduro is also just exactly that stupid.

On the gripping hand, this might well be a time when the US tries a new trick in the endless fields of war and decides to topple Venezuela's ruler by using an endless succession of drones until they get their man. I await the charming story made for television audiences about the Great Ruler who gets hounded everyday of the rest of his short life by exploding drones that come closer and ever closer to taking him out. Gosh, I can feel the unbearable tension building even now..... 

The people watching the pending communist, and white and police hating takeover of the upper echelons of NYC are probably anticipating a disaster there along the lines of what happened when the NYC liberals cheered the destruction of one small rural town after another by the massive dumping there of illegal immigrants imported by them to ruin the lives and demographics of their perceived enemies. We're hoping it is every bit as bad as what was done to the rural towns in Red States. 

THIS BLOGGING STUFF IS EASY

 Yes, I'm working on it.

 

I'M GOING TO MISS KIEV

 I've never been there and I never really planned to go since there is very little I need or want from one of the most corrupt capitals outside of Africa. On the other hand it is a relic with a little bit of history and I am a bit of history buff so there is that. On the gripping hand, if Trump sells Ukraine Tomahawk missiles and they shoot even one of them at a Russian city I think Colonel Putin is going to decide that enough is enough and he'll just nuke Kiev to make the point that people that are not involved in a fight should really stay the Hell out of it unless they are looking for a fight.

I don't think anyone is crazy enough to give Ukraine nuclear weapons so they can extend the war a little more and kill some more Russians in retaliation, do you? 

I don't think there is enough bribe left on the planet to make Putin stop short of victory. The planet has reached out and tried to break, swipe, steal or destroy everything Russia has left since the collapse of the Soviet Union and there is no nuclear shield over Ukraine and people might see just why that is if they persist in wanting a war.

LEGALITY

 Should we ask our federal judges to work without pay or should they be ordered to take an unpaid furlough alongside all others formerly on the government payroll? I only ask because it seems that there is no way to get any relief from the endless tide of backbiting and pernicious judgements dribbling out of our nation's courts and one way might just be to pull an Obama and lock up the Federal Courts and all Federal Court buildings and post armed guards denying entry to EVERYBODY that tries to get in. After all, if Obama could lock up little things like Yellowstone Park and the WWII Memorial on the National Mall then we can easily lock up the courthouses and turn off the lights until the government resumes its functions again.

Just my $2. 

ON MEDIA MELTDOWN

It looks like a number of self confessed spies  working at The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, The Atlantic, Politico, The Hill, The Guardian, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, HuffPost, Breaking Defense and some other spy agencies have declared their total dissatisfaction with the War Department requiring them to sign a piece of paper that declares that they will not spy while in the Pentagon and are refusing to play ball. I'm not sure if they understand how amusing they are. I'm sure that's not their intent.

They appear to conflate being allowed access to a building with their First Amendment Rights and are prepared to wage war to continue their "right" to enter the Headquarters of the United States War Department. Of course, nothing actually says that they have some sort of God given right to enter or work in the Pentagon but they hope that you won't notice that sticky little point.

On the whole, I approve of what the War Department is trying to accomplish here and I'm kind of surprised at the media meltdown. All the badges and free entry mean is that the total fake and bogus "reporters" can get into the building and schmooze with their "friends and natural communist allies." That's all the credential means. 

We know that the only real reporting comes when actual reporters and investigators dig deep into the things that others are trying to hide and even then only when their editors and publishers have the guts to publish it. In looking at the long list of the nazgulpetters I don't see any that have actually been of much use in busting loose with the real facts and presenting them to the public. A few may think some are resting on their laurels but too many times those laurels were won by dipshits posing as journalists who reported that there was no famine in Ukraine.

Credentialed media are nothing more than press secretaries and mostly unpaid shills for whoever badged them. We can do better. This is what investigative journalists really imagine themselves to be and the better ones are.

ANOTHER NAME FOR THAT

 This is a little confounding since I thought he and his advisors knew better than this. This is the opening salvo in an economic war that could very easily lead to regime change which is another word for war.

 If the intent on both sides was to insist that the other side focus a little more on maintaining the current Armistice, this could be seen in no other light than that one side (China) is being pushed to the wall over Trade and, much like Japan in 1940, sees no option but to push back very forcefully because to do anything else will see the fall of Xi and grave damage to China.

I know why China is tripling the number of nuclear weapons they have in their arsenal and potentially doubling or tripling that in a year. If you think about it, you would know too. China is not anything like the USSR or Russia. It holds just two clubs and nothing else. It was the world's storehouse of manufactured goods and it has weapons of mass destruction. It does not have the best military or anything like it and it has no organic markets to make up for the loss or reduction of its international markets and it has very few resources to provide for its own economic engine. 

The vast fishing fleets hoovering up the world's fish are an essential component of Chinese food production and will be for some time. They represent just another incredibly weak link that sustains China that is vulnerable to outside action. 

Given the nature of President Trump and some of his advisors, the next step will be one that he will probably be more than willing to take and it will hurt here almost as much as it hurts China. He will simply tell all the Chinese to leave and to not come back. That is going to roll back his second greatest enemy (after the institutional media) and leave the Universities minus roughly 60% of their current student revenue.

You know the absolutely worst thing about doing that? Yeah, it would almost certainly be good for America. Democrats hate that. 

CLOCK'S TICKING

 I heard a report on the radio that the IDF has withdrawn to the Phase Line specified in the Cease Fire and that the ball is now in the court of Hamas who has 72 hours from that moment to produce all the hostages, dead and alive. I hate to sound cynical but I don't think Hamas can do it and to be honest, it requires that the faithful all be faithful and follow the orders from Doha to bring the hostages and the bodies to the turnover point not later than the deadline. There is always some lunatic that the war never ends for. One might even suppose that when it comes to terrorist gangs, there's a lot more than one lunatic for whom the war never ends.

I hope that it works. I don't see any way on earth that it will.

 UPDATE: As of the agreed date for the release of the hostages, dead and alive, 24 hostages are still missing somewhere in Gaza and as expected, the whole world seems to think that the Cease Fire deal was honored by the terrorists in Gaza.

MISSING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

 Phib dismisses the idea of TLAMs to Ukraine and he uses some of his irreducible logic constructs to do it but overall the idea of sending our Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is a non-starter. The part that Sal failed to point out was that providing strategic weapons to a combatant involved in a war with another combatant power is grounds for being declared a combatant and attacked at will anywhere in the world as a fellow combatant. Some might argue that Russia is already in enough trouble so why would it want to increase its adversaries but they also fail to miss that by any reasonable method of calculating, most of NATO has already declared themselves, and more importantly, crossed the line into becoming actual adversaries of the Soviet Union Russia.

In 1984 when I signed up with the Navy we had a pretty good understanding of the actual strategic situation with the Soviet Union and one of the things we really worked quite hard to do was to avoid any hint of initiating strategic warfare against actual targets in actual downtown Moscow. We did that for a very particular reason now that I think about it. Oh what could it have been? What was it that kept us and the Soviets from just busting heads and tangling over some petty little place that still eats people......It will come to me.

You know what hasn't changed significantly in the last 40 years? Guess.* 

 You know what the funny thing here is, right? We have various supposedly intelligent groups of people who are proposing to send each other diplomatic smoke signals using 'strategic' weapons as their counters. Russia still has lots of the real deal strategic weapons and they don't have to get fancy and talk about employing them or deploying them because they can send one of those diplomatic smoke signals right back at us by simply announcing that they have decided to sell Iran half a dozen or 100 nukes in order to deter further Israeli aggression and our answer to this kind of threat would be what, exactly? 

It's like every stupid moron in the world thinks that the nukes are all off the table now because nobody ever talks about them but they are always like a fire banked against the need to repel the cold. They are always there and they are always ready to use and anybody who says different is a liar. 

*Keep in mind we are dealing with the Soviets and the numbers people use about their inventory come from the clowns in the CIA and NSA and are about as believable as English speaking salt water crocodiles. 

QUESTION DU JOUR

Why do 100% of liberal progressives back antifa to the hilt?

OBSERVATION DU JOUR

Congress still hasn’t figured out yet that anyone they summon to testify under oath about anything isn’t going to take so much as one microgram of shit from them about ANYTHING. I really enjoy watching the vicious scumbags in both the Senate and House get ripped to shreds by President Trump’s appointees. The testifiers all know that the people asking the questions wouldn’t cross the street to pee on them if they were on fire. They know they will get nothing and they know something the swine herd doesn’t. They can do their jobs despite anything the Minority tries to do to them and they don’t have to crawl before Congress to do it.

You know who they learned that from? Yep, they learned that from Obama’s Attorney General and from Biden’s. 

THEY WILL GET WHAT THEY WANT

 Antifa and the scumbags that organized, trained and funded them are going to get what they want one way or another. They want antifa scumbags shot by ICE or law enforcement so they can bust out and run amok burning down the cities and creating a chaos that everyone will blame on Bush  President Trump. They are going to have a mass shooting of a gang attack if they have to send in some gunmen to do it themselves because they KNOW that every single broadcast media in the country will instantly blame Trump and ICE and demand that ICE stand down forever and most of the damned judges will order the end of immigration enforcement.

Some people say that the antiwar movement or the FBI did this at Kent State a million years ago. I've seen plenty of stories that claim it was actually an FBI agent or provocateur who fired a pistol at or near those poor National Guardsmen and they responded, poorly.

The facts unite to demonstrate the antifa is dedicated to the downfall of this Constitutional Republic and they and their supporters in the attorney generals offices, law courts and the media are bound and determined to see them succeed.  They are the enemy but shooting them will lead to the most dire consequences.

On that note, in a phone call this morning the deep left was heard from and was concerned that relatives wouldn't make it to Sardinia or back from Portugal and Spain because the TSA might not turn up for work since they're not being paid. I told her not to worry too much since this happily dovetails with President Trump's plans for dismantling the TSA forever and returning airliner safety back over to the people who have a real concern for real airline safety and not just pathetic theater. I think the day TSA stops showing up for work is the very day they are terminated with extreme prejudice.

I guess both sides can play games. Unfortunately, one side wants a revolution and the other side would like for people to grow up. 

RECORD BREAKING FRENCH COLLAPSE

 In a completely unsurprising way the government of France appointed by President Macron collapsed just 12 hours later leaving the French once more without any meaningful government. Sadly, this is a sign of times to come for all the West who have seen the left completely lose their minds and all credibility as they deny any possible chance or attempt to work across party lines and use the most flimsy and made up excuses to jail their opposition.

This cannot go on. This is when the barricades come out and serious people contemplate using artillery in town. More to the point, this is when the car bombs and assassins begin their deadly weave into what passes for politics in an age sundered from reason. 

WHERE ARE THEY?

 For the last couple of hundred years the world has been carried away by captivating speakers. There were men on all continents and in many countries that used the simple power of their voices speaking their words to change the world and while much of it ended in misery and destruction surely some good must have come out of it and I contrast that with the lame and dismal public speakers I see running America and most European countries where English is like a native tongue and I am far from captivated by their laboring, lame and mostly bucolic addresses to their nations. Speaking frankly, they suck at public speaking and I just wonder, how did they every con people into voting for them without cheating like all Hell?

For all his many fine qualities, President Trump is damned near inarticulate and his awful speeches are punctuated in all the wrong places. He simply never learned to speak publicly. Starmer in the UK is hopelessly inept at public speaking and so too has been every one of the last 9 Prime Ministers. They all suck.

I have to admit I really enjoyed listening to Nigel Farage back when he used to tear strips off the leadership of the EU as an EU Member of Parliament but even now he too has dwindled away into lame and labored speeches that neither uplift, amuse nor entertain. They certainly aren't believable.

I suspect public speaking in a communist Hell is not even a tertiary requirement for leading the masses but I imagine that if Xi opens his mouth and speaks, as with Putin, people listen. They pay attention. They might have noticed that at least one of those two and Donald Trump don't speak lightly and do mean what they say. I suppose that's something.

Is it possible that we no longer need the great orators like Hitler and Churchill or were they overrated? I don't really think they were overrated myself but it is possible. Have you noticed that it is actually quite difficult to actually find those speeches made by Herr Hitler translated into English? I wonder why....

It is hard to imagine a Frenchman rallying the people with the power of the voice and great oratorical skill but there must have been someone other than Napoleon that could do it over the last 200 years but it sure wasn't any of the men running the place in my lifetime and I don't recall that any of the 19th or early 20th century Frenchmen were considered skilled speakers. 

Spain had Franco and there may have been something to his rallying speeches but I suspect it was mostly finding the kind of cold blooded killer one could expect to turn up in a place like Spain. I suspect that almost nobody alive recalls that if you stepped outside a Spanish city back before the EU it was like stepping back 2 centuries in time. My first visit there included taking a bus from Rota to Cadiz and back again and it was amazing how, shall we say, rural, Spain was back then. I'm sure it's much better now.

Here in our own country I see almost no sign of anybody who can speak the birds down from the trees. I used to hear the speeches of Martin Luther King but to be honest, nobody has ever come close to replacing him and his appeals to a reason that he alone seems to have seen and understood and despite the eloquence and meaning of his words, it is like they bounced off the heads of most here. That whole 'content of their character' which means so much to me was treated with enormous disdain and even hatred by just about every liberal and POC in America. Not one of the men who tried to step into his shoes ever came within shouting distance of the power of his voice, words and reason. Too bad, really.

Words may be too heady for the modern age of instant mass communication but if that was true I would not have seen the appeal of Mr. Farage and if it was true there would surely be some of the liberal persuasion who would wonder how they managed to get an inarticulate drunken idiot as their nominee in the last Presidential election. Mr. Farage has built a party from scratch in Britain that out polls both the Tory and Labor parties combined. He did that with what appears to be an innate ability to speak on his feet about the topics that matter to people. [Despite what I said above, he can still captivate and it doesn't hurt that the Tories and Labor leaders are the very worst lying and thieving scoundrels in history.] 

I can see where it could be very dangerous now to be an orator who gets up in front of crowds and attempts to bring them to share one vision but I believe that was once the sine qua non of democracies and republics. We were persuaded by reason and rhetoric and the spoken word backed up by the written words that laid out the case for change. There used to be two such men in any decent democracy or republic both standing for a competing point of view.

I wonder what happened to all that.... The current crop are so damned insipid.

IT CAN BE DONE

 We headed east to the nation's capital recently to celebrate a 90th birthday and a couple of others and the drive out and back was everything one could hope for and expect. We went our normal path to Hancock and then wended our way south to the most western crossing of the Potomac all so we could avoid even a single horrible moment on the Cabin John and capital beltway. It was a nice entry into the Shenandoah Valley and we enjoyed it a lot. The drive back was a return up the same route and all in all it was a very nice days drive in each direction and left us feeling rested and relaxed. I cannot imagine having anything remotely as nice if we had driven ourselves to the airport here and flown to Dulles or National. It used to be a nice way to travel but the bloom left that particular rose decades ago for me.

It was a family get together of the senior members to celebrate birthdays and then go about our separate ways. It was fun, enjoyable, memorable and relaxing. It also meant what with the driving and all that I took time off from keeping up with the news and world events and perhaps that was the most restful part of the whole trip. As I look at the news and events around the world I sense a kinship with H.L. Mencken I entirely failed to ever notice before.

So that's up next then! I have most of what he has written and now I'll read it and reread the rest of it. I mean, the news of the world is just the most dismal unending stream of people doing the wrong things, splitting and dividing like their lives depend on it and generally a sense that 20% of the people really do seem to strive everyday to make the world end in fire. I prefer to read about that in books, not the news.

UNIFORM REDEMPTION

 This was something else they did that was always wrong and they got away with it for almost 20 years. It took a Major to point out that flag officers and generals do not wear camouflage uniforms ever unless they are carrying weapons. For over 20 years the clowns running the show have appeared in field uniforms as if they are nothing more than privates or seamen and have even spent more than a decade trying to hide their actual rank insignia on the uniforms. They were all wearing cammo in the Pentagon and on ships at sea. It was disgraceful and it still is. I really hope this was part of the message, "put away the toy soldier costumes and wear the uniform that fully shows your background, history and experience."

This is what officers that are not repairing tanks out in the field wear to work.

 

It's no wonder everyone thinks you're fat out of shape privates, you dressed like one