THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT

I've been making note of the number of times a single scumbag simply derails the entire course of government and the will of the people and throws them all into the deepest and vilest shit on the planet and always does it, "in the name of justice." I hope everyone realizes that absolutely nothing is ever going to change until 100% of the powers of these so-called judges is withdrawn or the judges themselves are fired because they will not allow a single violent killer to be deported without spending a trillion dollars and that simply is not how this is supposed to work.

When I casually mention that England needs a Cromwell again this is why.  Their judges are even worse than ours. America has never had a Cromwell, largely because it never needed one because men of integrity were the final arbiters of justice but the judicial caste is now 100% of the lefty bent and given how the left owns and operates all the law schools, controls the American Bar Association and writes all the laws controlling the courts, that is a problem that will never go away on its own and it cannot be legislated out of existence or crushed by Executive Orders.

In other words, those creeps are now so dug into the warp and the weft of our republic that there is almost no way to get rid of them and they will not change. They will never change. I'll have to modify this drawing, again. It is a very useful little thing I found hanging on the wall of my long time barbershop here in metroparkcentralis.

Just substitute Judge for Climate Denier. We won that one.

 On the other hand, the inhabitants of a place usually define the standard they expect of their politicians and it is becoming dismally clear that the disaster of an education system in this country has produced a largely useless mass of ignorant, intolerant leftists who hate themselves, their country and anybody and everybody who does not fully agree with them. That is the typical route leading to civil war and those have been documented for millennia. Drat, now I'll have to read up on the Social Wars of Rome. 

On the gripping hand, you'll never ever guess who has all the guns..... 

ON THE DESERT NATURE OF WAR

 There are some reports that water supplies and infrastructure were attacked in the last round of missile and drone attacks in the Middle East. This is the sort of thing that made war so unpleasant for everybody. Attacks like this were not banned but they do get a solid wave of condemnation from the usual supporters of infinitely long wars. Once the water runs out, the people don't usually last more than 3 or 4 days, tops. 

On the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone being foolish enough to launch attacks on the potable water supplies of any civilization in the desert. That sort of thing is really frowned on and it might invite something almost as strong as a Demarche and perhaps even a certain amount of 'viewing with alarm.'

On the gripping hand, the day that the Iranians fired a barrage of missiles and drones into my critical oil infrastructure in the current unpleasantness is the day I would have ordered the immediate installation of anti-drone netting and the hardening of my water supplies, desalination plants and the various maintenance and support facilities to keep both the oil and water moving.* The mullahs in Iran are a known quantity of pure evil and there is literally nothing they will not do in the name of their God. 

The River War Quotes, 

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. 

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

 I think anybody might profit from reading the observations of a young military man, young reporter and man solidly grounded in the scientific world created by the science and engineering that flourished in Britain. He wrote this book in 1899 and it is probably the last honest and forthright words written about that part of Africa and the people who made it and lived there. You can find The River War here. Simply read the first chapter. 

I can attest to the words he wrote over 120 years ago. Very little has changed in Omdurman or Khartoum and the people not at all. You could say much the same about Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen and even the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. Change and growth are simply incompatible with islam. 

Ordinarily I would think them the very last to lay waste to water supplies but they have innovated so magnificently in just the last 20 or 21 months so who knows? Of the mullahs and other evil man controlling the Persian weapons, well, we know them by their actions.

Oh, and if you have family in the arabian peninsula, it might be time to think about having them relocate to someplace a little more blessed with potable surface water. Just saying.

*The effects of inshallah have to be seen to be believed. So, an order to immediately protect infrastructure will make it out of the palace sometime next month, sit on desks for a month or two unless it is vacation time in which case add 2 months and then it will be carefully considered and relatives consulted to see which family member is best positioned to 'win' this bid and make money when he starts building the defenses which will be sometime in late 2029....inshallah.

ON THE OLD VIRTUES

 It looks like a spiral sometimes but I don't think that's how it really works. History is way messier than that. 

According to the lore, Nelson threw another signal in the air to his captains during the Battle of Trafalgar.

 "In case signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy." 

He suspected that all of his captains were intelligent naval officers stuffed with all of the virtues decades of waging naval war against France had to offer them and content that they all recognized the enemy and knew what to do once they got alongside.

Wouldn't it be nice if Western Civilization shared a similar outlook on dealing with the enemy? 

LONG TIME COMING

 I have to admit that I let the whole rock and roll era of my youth pretty much slip by without ever once taking it up and really paying attention. The music was always there in the background and for me that is just what it was, background. In just the last year or two I have slowly come to discover what almost everyone else probably picked up right about the time they turned 15. I just want to say in my own defense, I was poor, could never read music, never played an instrument and there wasn't much of a musical nature out on the water which is where I spent most of my time.

I think I might have first heard it the first time I heard John Prine when I was 19. I just want to say that I definitely hear it when I hear John Prine and quite a few other musicians now. I now stop and take notice when the noise stops and the music starts to play. I still have no idea why people go to concerts but I can hear why they might be inclined to go.

I'm glad that 3 engineering tours of duty didn't damage my hearing and that I can still hear the music. 

RED IN TOOTH

 I lived there for almost 30 years and even I cannot comprehend how legislators in a state can seriously propose releasing the largest apex predator on its own constituents but then, we are talking about California. This is their next trick.

I would have no problem with this if there was a mandatory requirement that all bears be released and left undisturbed in Sacramento. It's close enough to the mountains that the bears interested in returning to the wild could make it on their own and there's plenty of stupid animals  to eat in the valley of the American River.

Another fine proposal that has not left the legislature calls for all of them to be paid in gold but contains an ironclad provision that mandates that every ounce of gold has to travel from Los Angeles main train station in downtown Los Angeles on the High Speed Rail Line and disembarked only after its arrival at San Francisco Station at 4th and King. They only get the money if the train sustains an average speed from LA to San Francisco of 140 mph.

Can you imagine the uproar? The station in LA is another beautiful remnant of a better time and the idea of blasting a high speed train up the San Francisco peninsula to downtown San Francisco is just ludicrous. The Caltrain from San Jose to the City averages about 60 mph on a good day.

So I don't know about you but I'd be happy to see impoverished California legislators hiding from famished grizzly bears while waiting for their train to come in. 
 

OLDEN DAYS

 I run across this video every couple of years and it shows the ridiculous Bailey's Beach Club in Newport, RI which Senior Klansman and Senator Whitehouse belongs to in his spare moments between advocating for the armed overthrow of the United States and giving free killer drugs to everybody under the age of 12. What I like though, is those two little cottages you see in the immediate background behind the beach. Those were where I dropped off the last half dozen newspapers on my paper route back in 1975.

 The mansions were both very posh back then and probably even posher these days but they really had nothing to do with the beach. We used to go there all the time and nobody ever bothered to tell us about it being members only. If they had, we simply wouldn't have cared. Our house was directly behind the one with the white chimneys and lay alongside the one with the red chimneys. We shared the driveway.

The beach is one end of Cliff Walk and there was no special markings or anything to keep people out of the beach. The enforcement that may have existed probably simply extended to looking at stickers on the windshields of cars in the parking lot. Obviously, this was not a problem for us.

One of the other houses I lived in in Newport was at the other end of Cliff Walk. Back in the mid 70s and early 80s it was a very nice little coastal town on par with Solana Beach, Del Mar and Encinitas.

IN RETROSPECT

As you look back on our history you see a chain forged with links that are made from the bodies and bones of the people of this country and the one thing that makes you pause and wonder, is that again and again, we found it necessary to draft the youngest and most expendable and send them off to fight in our name. That right there is a sign of failure and it should have been addressed the first time it became 'necessary' to do something like that in a country that believed once so strongly in inalienable rights that it founded the greatest Republic the world has ever known and surely the first of those rights was the right to, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. You can see it here if you like: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

If the powers of reason and persuasion are not sufficient to sway the young men to fight and die for your cause perhaps yours is not a just or worthy cause. If the old soft words don't work to get enough men then that leaves the mercenary form as the final offer from a government that truly believes in inalienable rights. You can pay them what the measured worth of their lives is to them and see if they'll fight for gold.

This is one of those days of the year where we make mention of the men that fought and died at Normandy and they are the standard bearers for all the tens of thousands of young men that fought and died in our name and, I suppose, in the name of liberty and justice for all. That said, there is nothing American about drafting young men. It did not happen in the Revolution and it should not have happened in the Civil War. The idea that we were going to do it in World War I and did it in World War II, Korea and Vietnam is a crime against this country's young men.

You see the brave battalions and divisions storm ashore at Normandy and also in Sicily, Italy and all the islands in the Pacific but you never ever hear about the collections of bodies that are simply moved en masse to the Replacement Depots you never heard of where they are parceled out to fill the gaps in the ranks left by days, weeks and months of fighting. They simply show up one day and fight and die right next to the guys that have been doing that since the first day. I found this thesis fascinating.

The idea that others may serve at the cost of their lives for no purposes of their own and however unwilling they may be is, on the face of it, unAmerican. It is hard to believe that we were drafting American teenagers to fight and die in Vietnam which as far as I could tell, never suffered from a shortage of Vietnamese soldiers.

I'm kind of displeased that the angry left has utterly failed to make the case that the draft is simply not an option in a free Republic like ours. It will either find the men to fight or it will have proven unworthy and it will fall away just as the Republics have since the beginning of time. That is the thing about a Republic. They ape the words and manners of a system of governance that makes men eager to keep it alive. When they don't come forward in sufficient numbers it is not a failure of the young men but of the Republic. 

I do not think we will ever be able to draft young men to fight again but it is still worth saying. This sort of thing flies in the face of every single thing this Republic was founded on. 

THE GUNGRABBER'S GRAVEYARD

 As long as this is the law of the land, and it is, there can be no argument for disarming people who have an inalienable right to arm themselves and see to their own defense.

 I remember being horrified that this was the approach the law took. The state of NEW YORK has disarmed the people and criminalized gun possession but also accepts zero responsibility for keeping the people safe even when the damned police are right there on the spot.

IF THIS GOES ON

 Seriously, this is how you get revolutions.

🚨🇺🇸The Senate just killed the SAVE Act, 48-50.

Voter ID and proof of citizenship, supported by over 80% of Americans, dead.

Four Republicans voted no: Tillis, Murkowski, McConnell, Collins.

The uniparty showed its face today...pic.twitter.com/A360Vy1Wny

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 4, 2026

JUST BETWEEN US NATIONS

 After the news of the last few days and a read of too much Instapundit I wondered if there was meeting or something where various countries spoke very frankly to each other, one ruling entity to another and spelled out exactly what each would take as justifiable causes to instantly resort to open warfare. We have reached the point in history where this might be more necessary than ever before because some things are simply intolerable and yet people seem to discuss doing them all the damned time. For some recent discoveries and speculation here's a few that caught my eye.

Did Trump hire Bessent at Treasury because he was part of the Soros team that broke the Bank of England? Could he do the same thing to China now with all the power of the Treasury?

Smugglers caught bringing in 'new' lethal biological organisms and viruses. Two more just caught after showing up in Detroit International. This is on top of seemingly dozens of other virus smugglers who keep bringing people and plant killing organisms to US as if we don't have plenty of our own.

I actually think those may be the only two out there right now and while somebody could imagine China calling in our Ambassador for a full and frank discussion I just don't see it happening because to worry about what we would do to them is pure speculation. As the world's only hyperpower or superpower we don't seek change. We are the Resistance to Change and we mean it.

That said, I do think it is pretty obvious that somebody well trusted by President Trump and possibly even Mr. Putin have sat down and had a few frank discussions. It has become clear over the last year or two that somebody very powerful had a word with all the idiots running the EU and all of the idiots running the nation/slaves within it and told them to end the practice of turning a blind eye to Ukrainians or Ukrainian partisans launching attack drones out of EU territories into Russia. That Russia would retaliate and that we would do absolutely nothing at all in response because they were literally waging undeclared warfare on all of Russia.

I think both sides of the China Futility have finally drunk the bitter dregs of their long divorce and are now set on inching back together. The writing is on the wall for all to see and it beautiful in my sight. If you cannot imagine tens of thousands of young Americans dying in a stupid, pointless, meaningless war in Vietnam that no American leader in the White House, Congress or the Pentagon actually fought to win, then imagine the tens of thousands of American sailors and Marines dying to fight one group of Chinese for another group of Chinese. It isn't going to happen.

The fix for that is easy and also clearly visible. Taiwan does not now and never had needed American weapons to keep the Chinese out. All that was was theater to show that we were interested in keeping the islands communist free. Since China itself has been communist free since Chou en Lai there is little point to maintaining the charade and they can play among themselves now. Ditto Korea.

The only other player on the planet with untamed ferocity has made its position very clear without ever saying a word. It cannot allow an enemy state to develop nuclear weapons, ever. Every single one of its enemies has declared to the world that had they the power to do so they would wipe Israel off the face of the map and kill every person living there and all have an indifference to life that would astonish 99% of the Westerners that ever learned it.

So if everyone is clear on the situation, why are 'researchers' still smuggling deadly viruses into Detroit?  Why do we keep catching these smugglers again and again and again? You know that they are bringing them here in order to weaponize them which in this case means making them far more contagious since they're already plenty deadly enough so why do they keep bringing them here?  What the hell is going on?

The world is back on the cusp of ignorant and all out vicious war. One of the things few know is that naval developments in 1900 basically rendered Britain's command of the seas moot and made the naval arms race a game that any economically able and industrialized power could play at and win.  The all big gun dreadnoughts and battle cruisers made every previous battleship and battleship navy obsolete including their own. This was how the Allied Powers all had to negotiate after the War to limit construction because they were all bankrupting themselves to build the most powerful navy. The process was intense and makes fascinating reading.

The same thing happened when people finally weaponized the drones that technology made possible about 20 years ago. People, companies, countries, nations can make ten thousand drones a day, arm them and fly them on attack profiles anywhere. There is no defense at all. None. It does not exist.

You would think somebody would be working very hard on this problem but I'm concerned that I don't see Elon Musk working on it. That right there says a lot. 

ON PLOT REJECTION

 This is a problem.

The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe | Denis Stetskov, From The Trenches

The Apple Calculator leaked 32GB of RAM.

Not used. Not allocated. Leaked. A basic calculator app is hemorrhaging more memory than most computers had a decade ago.

Twenty… pic.twitter.com/GMQa3jRpBm

— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) April 21, 2026

It would be a good use of your time to read the whole thing. He describes problem that has a number of perfectly acceptable solutions and fixes that would correct the problem and goes on to show that virtually none of the solutions will be implemented and that nobody will even try to implement one. It is really quite sad but predictable what happened at Apple after Jobs died there. There is literally nobody running the top 3 tiers there who cares about the customer or the product except as a method to put money in their pockets.

My own solution to this problem has been a very low level campaign of rejection. Starting even back when Mr. Jobs was alive and turning out awesome products, I wasn't buying cutting edge. My unique philosophy was that only an idiot would stand in line all night to buy the latest and greatest iphone or very best top of the line computer systems that came with a brand new OS. When my 14 year old Workbook Pro died I replaced it with a 12 year old Workbook Pro which has served me very well these last 4 years. My phone was an iPhone4 but I upgraded a couple of years ago to an iPhone 8 because the networks purged my phone's ability to connect to their networks.

The hidden underlying and unstated reason for this wholesale rejection of cutting edge tech was not the prices blowing through the roof but the disdain for 99% of the 'improvements' that were making the new stuff not better....for me. I don't need it.

This kind of reminds me of watching the Tactical Action Officer simply reach out and hit 'reject' every time the satellite navigation system updated our geographic location on the planet. Mind you, he was rejecting the navigation data that showed where we actually were on the planet and he did it over and over again.

"Why"

"We have 300 sonobuoys out there, all shown in our master plot relative to where we thought we were back when they were dropped. If we let the system change our position it will adjust all of them too."

Since we were hunting Soviet ballistic missile submarines very quietly this seemed, on the face of it, reasonable. As I thought it over though the obvious question floated to the top and wondered, 'what kind of idiot designs a navigation system that seamlessly adjusts everything on a plot just because the master reference location shifted?

Obviously, its exactly the thing a software developer would do and never think twice about. Our ability to guide sensors to target based on a relative plot would be destroyed the instant we converted it to a true plot. 

Nevertheless, it used to gall me that I all of Microsoft Word 4.0 fit on a single floppy disk and that it has now grown into such a kluge of a tool that it takes over your entire computer. Fortunately for me, when Microsoft destroyed my ownership of Office I simply gave it up and went elsewhere for my software needs. That was over 30 years ago and I never looked back.

IDLING THE WAR MACHINE

 As I heard it, one of the reasons that the democrats did not get away with stealing the vote in 2024 was because Trump and his team had lawyers, guns and money standing by in every precinct to make sure that the vote was fairly and honestly held, administered, counted and reported. 

I think he made that happen.

Is that same machine going to be in place for the next Presidential election or are we going straight back to precincts and cities that take 48 hours to count the vote and exercise exclusive control using democrats on the counting and reporting? I think that the Republican verifty the vote machine is the exact same shower of feces that the SAVE Act is showing us it still remains. The squishy party will go back to doing what it does so tolerantly well, viewing with alarm and doing nothing.

IN THE DARK

 I see that we may be moving back into a shooting war with Iran and it strikes me that we never hear about America applying the Dark Arts to our enemies. When are we going to see the EBO* of our cyber warriors, or will we? All through the 90s we were told that our 'enemies' had the power to remotely shut down our electrical distribution and generation simply by sending 'commands' over the internet. Can we do that?

The best part of the Dark War is that I spent the last couple of years of the last millennium fighting bravely in the Y2K trenches at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command where we diligently went crazy doing every kind of regression testing you could imagine and then doing it again and again and again and tried to justify hooking up to an OTCIXS network while also using the internal network to merge our graphical data fusion, sensors, C2 and OTCIXS over a purely one way link. Our method and our approach didn't fail any arcane tests, they just got disconnected by fiat.

It was 'way too dangerous' to our national cyber security. We'd point out that there was no physical means for any data to leave our network computers because they were fully isolated; all to no avail. The connection was severed and that was that, the Nation was once again cyberly secure.

So, as we move into more explodey operations in the Gulf and Iran, is it possible that they will be proceeded or accompanied by a sort of network fire that wreaks havoc on the oil pumping, distribution and storage systems via the computers that control all that in Iran and lays them waste or do we actually have to bomb the crap out of all that?

Just asking, for a friend.  

*Effects Based Operations. A cruel mirage perped by the Planning Class who brought you COAs. 

MARCHING TO TYCHO PURPLE PENAL COLONY

 Well it seems we are finally back on track to establishing penal colonies on the moon. First step of course was to set up the means to get there and then it is just a matter of time before some bright spark discovers that sending the dregs of humanity to the Moon is the answer to the question that has dogged liberals since they were dropped on their heads as babies. What do we do with the people who are truly horrible despite the fact that there is no such thing as a bad kid?

That's right, Comrade, We send them to the Moon!

I enjoyed The Ring of Charon by Roger MacBride Allen and was really delighted to find both that book and the sequel, The Shattered Sphere in a very odd used book store south and east of Zanesville. The story featured some wonderful bits from the Naked Purple Movement and their takeover of the Soviet Penal Colony on the Moon. Once the Purples hit there was no coming back.

So now it looks like, at long last, we are on our way to Penal Colonies on the Moon and I for one wonder if they'll take after the place described by Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or something else along those lines but you know, there's going to be people that find the idea of sending horrible people to the moon is a grand idea. Out of sight is out of mind.

On the gripping hand, which is closer, the moon or Chicago? 

Well duuh, you can see the moon......

 

INTERPRETIVE SMOKE SIGNALS

There is another feel good story out of the the New York Post that could use a little modifier or explanation for those who are not familiar with the term, 'process is the punishment.' On the face of it Bolt CEO fired his Human Resources Department because they were "creating problems that didn't exist." He's not wrong in his thinking, merely in his approach.

HR is the modern version of the process that used to require a record of at least 2 counseling sessions before lowering the boom on a man who was screwing things up in the workplace. What I learned as a new officer was that if it wasn't documented previously, it could not be used as justification for non-administrative punishment. With some of the knuckleheads this was not a problem. You could literally tell them not to do X any more and they'd do it before they left my office and 4 more times walking back to the workcenter.

As I used to see it, HR was the permanent recording secretary documenting the little crimes that would safely see you rid of people that you and your colleagues really did not want to work with anymore. They were the corporate version of the ship's XO. 

They would mandate training on a given topic, record who was present and then when there was a failure to adhere to the mandates and your peers and work colleagues despised you, the HR department was there to chop you into pieces and walk them out of the building.

I had several issues with the HR process. The first was the obvious one that the rules only applied to the people that they didn't like. The second was that any given training on, for instance, sexual harassment, could be safely and comprehensively covered in something less than 5 minutes. It did not take an hour and need to be repeated and beaten to death.

My final issue with the HR is perhaps only one of my imagination. In that place I would just assume that the HR we're talking about was staffed entirely by people who met all the specifications for enrolling in the Witchfinder's General Assembly and frankly, I never liked those guys.

The HR was top-cover for getting rid of people that you no longer wanted to work with and getting rid of HR means you're stuck with those people because there are arcane rules about disposing firing workers you no longer like or can't tolerate. So we're back to where I was as a young junior officer being told by the XO that no, I cannot throw Fireman X over the side or shitcan him because I need to document that he was counseled and I must also have a record showing that his counseling included all the steps he must take to avoid becoming shark food. Only after repeated failures to stay off the menu could I get rid of him in strict accordance with procedures.

The upshot though was a day after that little chat the Engineer sent me note asking if I wanted to keep another particular bane of my existence who had just left my office after trying to explain how it was that he missed the last liberty boat back to the ship and was 'forced' to remain overnight on Diego Garcia. It seems his Background Investigation had finally come in and he had a rap sheet 22 pages long and had therefore fraudulently enlisted. He was on the next boat back to Diego Garcia and the next plane back to the United States.

What Mr. Breslow and his HR failed to comprehend was that his HR was supposed to work for him. I'm sure he'll be able to replace them with something ten times better but then, when we are talking about HR, we can be talking about multiplying by zero.

LEGITIMATE PEACEFUL DEMOCRATS

 It speaks volumes that on seeing this I immediately concurred. Honestly, who would assassinate a candidate for Mayor in America?

As I read those words very early this morning at Chicago Boyz I was struck by the thought, this was the very first time I have ever seen somebody suggesting that a man doing nothing more than standing for public office as Mayor of some crappy little town in the United States could be assassinated for daring to stand up for himself and others in the environment created by liberal democrats.

I remember sitting in the airport in Manila as I was waiting to leave the country and reading about the discovery of this election massacre and thinking, "Wow! This sort of thing could never happen in America." I'm beginning to get the distinct feeling that I'm wrong.

REMEMBRANCE

 While the day comes around every year I find that it takes forever to write anything because once I start digging in I find hours pass as I look through the things I have and the places I have been to see what calls forth the memory this time. These were some of the most evocative words I ever ran across: 

It really doesn't take very much to evoke them. Sometimes it's the wind on the water or the leaves rustling and other times it's as simple as seeing something you've seen a dozen times in a different light. 

 

And then there is an item from sippican's cottage.  

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

 I see from the news so take that for what it's worth, that USS Nimitz is now operating in the Caribbean which, you must admit, is a strange place to find an aircraft carrier based out of Bremerton, Washington on the very point of a dignified retirement. I know, she is underway to her final homeport for decommissioning but it still seems odd to send a nuclear ship all the way around South America to commence its final act. Those who have read the Fighting Words to the top right know my connection with the ship but I liked this picture:

 and I never saw this one until now:

Catherine Nimitz Lay christened Nimitz on 13 May 1972.

She was the very first person outside the family that I worked for. I slaved away all through 7th grade as one of the assistant librarians at Thomson Junior High School in Newport, RI where she was the Head Librarian. She was a fascinating lady.

As the war got out of control and more and more wounded soldiers returned to the States I read about the 'disgraceful' conditions at Walter Reed Hospital and winced because I knew from one of my officers that closed down NAS Alameda and Treasure Island that the immediate effect of appearing on the BRAC list was deterioration of the buildings and infrastructure because nobody would approve contracts to spend money on 'dead' facilities. It was a shambles.

One can only hope that this is not how the delayed decommissioning has affected USS Nimitz. Getting jerked around like that at the end of service life is bound to have been a major pain in the ass. I saw that with the MSOs, an LST and the poor Destroyers. Bean counters are never kind but they are positively vicious at the end.

Good luck and Good Night Cuba. 

MORE FOOLISH IMMORTALS

 I get some kind of weird kick out of taking a few minutes every now and then to listen to NPR. I know, I keep hoping that one day I'll turn the radio on and hear nothing but static on their channels but they still give that kind of amusement that draws a snort from most intelligent people. Today was no different.

The moderator got another moderate to discuss those whacky rethuglicans and. how they are viciously turning on the Sainted John Thune and his lackey Cornyn and it was kind of nice to hear the two lockstep fascists excoriating the rethuglicans for being anti-democratic and so stuffed with hate that they are TEARING DEMSELVES APART!!!!! I used to wonder at how anyone could be so simple as to believe a word they hear on NPR but this kind of thing makes me think there is still some room for idiots.

It's as if the only way democrats can think about politics is always 150% lockstep and any who ever doubt or waver or vote other than as directed by the Leadership are cast into the outer darkness forthwith with no dillydallying or foot dragging. 

They just cannot comprehend a party that allows for diverse opinions on every single topic and really does largely consist of a big tent in which all are welcome. They see any failure to obey as the rightful kiss of death and start cutting off heads, throwing firebombs and burning down anything that they haven't already toppled and peed on. Notice how they never set fire to universities or schools?

Republicans just see it as a time to winnow out some of the democrats who have been masquerading as republicans for too long. I don't know what it will take to get those idiots to finally approve a law that 85% of the entire country wants but they will one day and unlike the useless democrats, it's not going to involve a man with a gun shooting at politicians.

I'm looking forward to an actual Flight of the Starship tonight so the weather better hold on. 

IT WAS MAY 1919

 It was a fascinating time but then I say that about every time. This one though, was special. One of those things I like about real sailors is that no matter what, at the end of the day, a real sailor never gives up. Give them a chance to hoist sail and be a hero and they do it.

The NC flying boats were designed as aircraft that could fly across the Atlantic to the coastlines of Europe and be ready to patrol for German U-boats upon arrival. Too late for World War I, the NCs still took up the challenge of traversing the Atlantic by air, and in May 1919, the NC-4 made the first successful transatlantic flight, a milestone in aviation history that brought great acclaim to Naval Aviation. 

Originally built as a long-range antisubmarine warfare platform, the NC flying boats were delivered too late for World War I combat and appeared to be aircraft without a mission. Yet, even before the guns fell silent on the Western Front, a bold proposal written by Commander John H. Towers caught the imagination of the Navy Department. When peace returned, it called for the U.S. Navy to regain American prestige in aviation by achieving a feat that all who flew aspired to flying across the Atlantic. 

On 3 May 1919, crews of the NC-1, NC-3 and NC-4 gathered at Naval Air Station (NAS) Rockaway, Long Island, for the transatlantic attempt. In the ensuing days a series of mishaps cast a pall over the endeavor, including a fire that damaged the NC-1, and one of the NC-4's crewmen accidentally sticking his hand into one of the aircraft's whirring propellers during an engine test. 

By 8 May 1919, with a four leaf clover presented to each crew member for luck, the three flying boats launched on the first leg of the their flight from Rockaway to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Only two completed the nine-hour trip, the NC-4 being forced down off Massachusetts with engine trouble and the media giving her the nickname the "Lame Duck." Once reunited at Trepassey, Newfoundland, the flying boats launched into the early evening sky on 16 May 1919, bound for the Azores Islands, the longest and most demanding leg of the transatlantic flight, covering some 1,200 nautical miles. Increasing clouds and rain caused the aircraft to separate, with NC-1 and NC-3 making forced landings. Only NC-4 successfully reached the Azores, the crew of NC-1 rescued by a Greek freighter and the crew of NC-3 actually sailing their battered craft 205 miles to the Azores. 

Thus, the "Lame Duck" became the sole survivor of Seaplane Division One, and on 27 May 1919, the keel of the NC-4 flying boat sliced through the waters of the harbor in Lisbon, Portugal. The aircraft's commander, Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Read, later wrote to his wife that the successful flight represented "a continuous run of unadulterated luck," but indeed the skill and bravery of the crew combined with fortuity in making the NC-4 and her crew the first to fly the Atlantic.

 For those that never watched Top Gear, you missed a great show. One of the amusing bits was how whenever one of the trio broke down the others would sometimes mock him for awhile and then drive away and head to the hotel bar. I can only imagine what it was like to watch as one of your wing men landed on the ocean and you continued on. Now I'm going to have to find the book one of these guys must have written and see what happened.

ON REASONABLE

 Every time you turn around the idiots in the legislature have passed yet another law designed to limit your inalienable right to possess and carry a firearm and every single damned one of them knows that the Supreme Court has addressed this issue countless times and found that legislatures doing this are in the wrong. They say so. They write it down so you don't forget. The legislatures still do it.

Here's a simple solution to this imbecilic trait that sends gun owners to the Courts to seek redress every time the legislaturds go all tyrannical; every legislator who voted for the law will,  in every court case that challenges and contests yet another arbitrary unconstitutional anti-gun law be personally liable for a $50,000 per plaintiff penalty to be paid promptly or the legislator goes to prison until it is paid. 

Enough of this pussyfooting around with these gun grabbers. Make them liable for their personal stupidity and make them pay for inflicting it on the rest of us. This is not one where they get to dip into the treasury to pay us, it is to come right out of their personal bank accounts. Sell their houses if they need to come up with the money.  And they will.

CUSTODIANS OF THE TRUTH

 The more I read about AI, the companies behind the construction and fielding of AI and the hallucinations and outright lies and the lengths to which one has to go to pin an AI down to the actual truth of things, the more inclined I am to thinking we need to make sure that the Encyclopedia Britannica is always published in hardback and updated annually by the old system of publishing a new collective volume every year. The old versions must all be retained and safely stored. 

The things people know now are largely completely unknown to Gen X and below. They don't know and they don't care and yet these are the essential truths underlying our reality and cannot be ignored for long because that was what DEI was all about and we know how that worked out. History demands controls and it should not be continually rewritten to satisfy the lowest common denominator or the other idiots with academic titles and degrees.

Vernor Vinge captured the future path of AI pretty closely when he wrote Rainbows End. I don't recommend the book to read but the subplot described the plan to equip AI with the knowledge of everything ever written down by feeding it every book ever written and to that end the evil corporation bought all the biggest/best libraries in the world and took the books and dumped them into book shredders so that the optical scanners could store them electronically in the AI database.

As those who have walked into modern public libraries know, there is no need for evil corporation because fewer and fewer books are found in more and more libraries. It's all available online now. Read it on kindle. How this jibes with the accurate recording of The Conquest of Mexico or The Conquest of Peru is best left in the flooded basement. In a hundred years there won't be any modern books left. There is literally nobody who wants them and they end up in the dumpsters.

 

INTO THE DARK

 It looks like there may be no end to the pussyfooted wars of the 21st century which leaves only room for the large steps involved in creating darkness and oceans of blood. I think we'll skip the bloodletting the maximum extent possible but I suspect pretty soon the lights are going to go off and stay off in Iran and once that happens it is a certainty that the same will happen in Ukraine. If we're sick and tired of Ukraine, think how Russia feels and if we are fed up with the 'resistance' of multiple cells of viciousness, well, we cornered the market on viciousness a very long time ago and there's no reason we can't haul it back out of the closet and go forth again with the intent to destroy everything in our path.

I get a kick out of how we are not fighting a fighting war while looking around for others to jump in and take part and do their 'fair share.' I think President Trump has made his point about the utter uselessness of NATO and it is now readily apparent to everyone that there simply is no NATO force at all if one excludes the United States. There is NOTHING AT ALL THERE.

If it is obvious to all of us now, imagine how blindingly obvious it has been to Russia since the long slide to powerlessness began in 1988. All of those armored divisions are long gone and so too are all of the artillery tubes, mechanized infantry, armed helicopters and thousands of fighter bombers poised on their frontier. There is a great void into which Poland has been tentatively sticking its generative member very very quietly and instantly putting it down again. 

They have learned overnight what it is to be a 'frontline' State on the NATO Front and find that absolutely nobody at all has your back. Even if Britain and France were barking mad they would never go to war to support a central European power again. They lost EVERYTHING the last time they did that and they won't do it again. I think the Germans figured that out right about the time Ronald Reagan started talking about rearming and rebuilding a credible NATO force. They knew deep down that France and the Low Countries would simply abandon them and stymie US efforts to return forces to Europe. That's when the Greens won it all.

It was a very nice long weekend jaunt for me as I traveled into the heart of darkness to visit with family in the National Capital Region. We didn't cross back over the Potomac after making the crossing southbound in Hancock but we did stop for gas at Fort Myer.... 

ROAD TRIP

 Back Monday. 

ON POWER

 So I read today that Nevada is entering a new Dark Age. It's really kind of funny because anybody with the power to read the news could have and did forecast this moment way back in 2000. The writing wasn't just on the wall it was splattered everywhere. Power grids around the world look a little like the coliseum after Brian finished.

 I mean anybody could see that the ridiculous destruction of nuclear power around the world and the destruction of the fossil fueled peaker plants and base power plants was going to proceed to a foregone conclusion, we'd be in the dark.

A Nevada utility just told 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents that it’s redirecting 75% of their electricity supply to data centers — and they have less than a year to find a new power source. It’s one of the starkest examples yet of the AI boom’s impact on everyday Americans. 

The case is extreme, but the pattern is not. Across the country, data center electricity demand is reshaping the grid, driving up rates, and pushing a growing number of homeowners toward solar and battery systems — not as complementary power, but as essential infrastructure.

You remember, everyone was going to plug their trucks and cars into the grid 24 hours a day to get a full recharge of the battery and it was simply going to be absorbed by a power grid that was already stretched to capacity.

The inability to cope with reality is still kind of startling. People educated by our public schools are now making the policy that we and our children will be forced to live with and I'll be honest, the kids coming out of our schools are barely literate and a little frightening if you know what I'm talking about. This is how they think and it is beyond reason. In fact, reason is not permitted to take off its hat or sit down before being driven off by men with clubs and guns.

I sure hope that they put this electric power plant into layup but that costs money and it takes skill that few have anymore so I doubt they even tried as they complied with Obama's EPA directive to shut down all coal fired power plants. The local university has one like it but it was also shut down about the same time as the one below. I still drive by them all the time and the shells remain but it takes no time at all for steam machinery to degrade to uselessness if not maintained properly. Just a little rust and it's all over.

 We're on track to needing quite a few of these if the data center and AI manias continue.

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY

 The man running for Mayor in Los Angeles won't win but he is very cleverly exploiting some new technology that I believe will sweep the nation from now on and even if the various legislatures and other corrupt anti-democratic forces ban and outlaw it, it will just go underground and still enjoy wide circulation. It is unstoppable. It is what brought down the USSR. In the long run, it won't fail to do what it sets out to do.

Doesn't mean that Spencer Pratt is going to win in LA despite dozens of killer spots like this:

pic.twitter.com/YPrZIS0Mp1

— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) May 12, 2026

 The real innovative dawn is the one slowly breaking in the minds of former liberals and even some of the die-hard fanatical liberals. It is finally dawning on them that they/you cannot turn to the State/City/County for the things that Civilization itself demands and must provide it yourself. 

– Your children get no benefit from Public Schools and you better educate them yourself.

– Fire protection and insurance is no longer assured no matter where you live or taxes paid so you better invest in innovative engineered home defenses against fire because nobody else will.

– The State is under NO obligation to protect you or yours so you better be able to do it yourself without their 'aid'.

– Right now and just for this moment you enjoy unrivaled Freedom of Speech and Thought but the State can and will take this away from you. They have done it before and the instant they can do it again they most assuredly will. You better figure out how to stop it or make yourself anonymous and nobody really listens to anonymous.

– Consider innovations in medicine. Doctors are burning out and leaving the practice in droves because it is not medicine anymore and simply nothing but business. Find out if you can still see GPs in your neighborhood who are simply willing to hang up a shingle and advertise their services. I remember medicine from back when this was the case for almost everyone in America and I cannot say that the practice of medicine and medical outcomes got better because they forced this practice to end. 

– Think innovatively. There's money in it if you work at it. 

ON THE WATERFRONT

 I don't often get the chance to use that expression anymore but it seems appropriate. The PCU Cleveland which will be commissioned USS Cleveland, arrived in port on May 9th while we were in Pittsburgh and it will remain here for commissioning on 16 May, 2026 so today we decided to see if we could invite ourselves aboard for a tour. They were very obliging. It was kind of impressive in the way that I found warships in the Royal Navy to be impressive. It was spotless. It is brand new but the ship was absolutely pristine. 

There is a guy over there now scratching his head and wondering where his drill is. I know. That was about the only thing out of place in a tour that lasted over 30 minutes and took in the flight deck, hangar, bow and pilothouse. It is true that they have different names for everything but we know what they really are.

I was really impressed by the crew who were all bright, cheerful and pleasant. At the Entry Control Point I asked one of the ship's Chief Petty Officers if he would hold onto my pocket knife and he was more than happy to. It turns out that they also were more than willing to store things like that at the actual scanner so nobody lost anything they might have had in their pockets. I cannot tell you how rare that is.

It was a very interesting and pleasant way to spend a couple of hours on a beautiful sunny afternoon and it has been a long time since I stood on the deck of a USN ship. I found it interesting in retrospect that while standing on the bow I unconsciously stepped into the wind shadow of the gun mount and noted too that the ship, despite the 40 knot winds we had yesterday, is singled up at the pier.

PCU CLEVELAND as it prepares for commissioning in Cleveland

LITTLE THINGS

 I got used to oceans of good food places living in Southern California for 30 years. In my last place I could walk to any of 70 nice restaurants and other nice places to eat or get food but not so much here in Metroparkcentralis. This is a photo from the one and only worthwhile Chinese restaurant and it closed its doors 3 years ago and there is still no place on this side of the Rocky River that is its equal. Oddly enough it was owned and operated by a lady lawyer for decades.

It is still hard for me to accept that nobody within 300 miles knows how to make and serve proper authentic Socal cuisine with the proper Mexican and Chinese fakery that makes take-away food from those places so damned good. This place doesn't even have proper food trucks!

Oh well, off to Pittsburgh in the morning for the art that's in it and maybe, a Rita's Italian for some custard and ice gelati. 

 

ODDLY ENOUGH, I FORGOT

 When applying pressure internationally it is vital to always keep in mind who you are dealing with. Sad to say, in spite of spending decades in the Middle East, I forgot who we were dealing with and so it should not have come as a surprise to learn that the Iranians, having no place else to store the oil, have started dumping it into the Persian Gulf. During the late Tanker War nobody over there so much as blinked has millions of tons of crude found its way out of damaged tankers and into the waters of the Gulf and decades later walking on the beaches could give you black tarred feet. The oil sludge sits just under the sand.

Remember, this is an industry that spent a hundred years flaring off natural gas because there was 'no market' for it. They do not see waste or inefficiency the way that normal people do. 

DIPS IN THE ROAD TO RUIN

 It really makes one laugh to read about how Europe is waking up to its actual military defense requirements and eagerly rushing to produce a million arrows a year in the face of rising demand for machine gun ammo. I see that after years of poking and prodding German industry is scaling up its 155mm artillery ammunition production to meet a requirement that was vaporized by drones over the last 2 years. Man, if you thought artillery counterbattery fires was a real thing (and I do) then you would have to laugh to see Rheinmetall crow about turning out even more 155mm shells than even all of the United States. 

Why would we be laughing? Well, how many actual 155mm artillery guns are left in all of NATO not counting the United States? The days when I could glance at the entire Order of Battle of any NATO or Warsaw Pact member are in the long ago past but I dare say that all of NATO less Poland have fewer then 150 working artillery pieces and the number left in Ukraine can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Nobody likes incoming and they make a real effort to kill the redlegs when they can and using drones to bring down a rain of fire on artillery positions is probably something that makes every infantryman smile as he falls asleep at night. 

Once again we see people gearing up with the wrong stuff to fight a war that no longer exists in the modern world and which was crippled to death by lawyers in the 3rd world fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The days of cannon as the Ultima Ratio Regum have gone, never to return. It would have been far better if Rheinmetall had built a magnificent 25 man portable factory for making a thousand fiber optic drones a day and then set up 25 of them around the country to produce a damned near infinite number of drones. They'd have also done better to set up factories like that to produce autonomous drone killers.

Of course, they build what they are paid to build and nobody in European NATO is thinking clearly now and by the evidence, haven't been since Ronald Reagan was King.   

NOBODY HEARD THE BUGLE CALL

 It is kind of sad that almost nobody heard the call last week that announced to all that could and would hear that the Southern Poverty Law Center was really just an enormous scam preying on the feeble minded liberals that make up the power elite of this crazy place. All they had to do to make a good living out of their own racism was fund the dimwitted remnants of the Klan and a few other losers and in that regard they are no different from the other scams that people pretend are honest and forthright. That's right, the SPLC is no different from the FBI, CIA and NSA who all exist and provide a damned good living for elites and gives them enormous power over others by convincing them that a country that spends 1/10 of what we spend on military stuff is some kind of existential threat to US.

If you think back to the Governor Whitmer kidnapping scam back in 2020, it looks like ten or twelve of the conspirators involved in the so-called plot were FBI or FBI informants and all the money and equipment was purchased by the FBI. The sheer totality of ineffective bungling by the FBI is probably best summed up by all the progressive who must despair of them because after 12 years of endless digging, the FBI has completely totally failed to find even one single crime to pin on President Trump. It's driving them all quite mad. 

I think we all have a pretty clear idea of just how fiendishly competent the SS is by now but this isn't about competence it is about altering reality enough to make a good living scaring people to death with fabrications and lies and thus maintaining control. All of the intelligence agencies are in it up to their eyeballs and so is the State Department and by now many people have some idea of just how corrupt all of those NGOs were. Mark this, not one single NGO has any record of actually doing good work. Not one.

The news carefully trumpets the facts they want their followers to hear and to believe and thus we still have endless loud denunciations of President Trump claiming he committed crimes for which there is not a shred of evidence OR THE MAN WOULD BE IN JAIL OR DEAD.

Can you believe I was once a fairly steady consumer of the news? I put a picture here a few months ago of a nice coffee/restaurant in Del Mar where every Sunday I would arrive with the Sunday New York Times and read it cover to cover and consider myself somewhat well informed minus what I picked up every working day from taking a Peek-in-the-Well on the SIPRNET in my office.*

I also subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and read most of it every day for years. One might say that I have a thirst for news of the world. Of course as I saw more and more of what went unreported and took part in a good deal of it, I lost the somewhat naive belief that there was value in reading the news and stuck to sources in the office.

I find it interesting that our whole entire vaunted news has not honestly or faithfully reported a single word of truth out of the entire Middle East in over 30 years. I would say that is some kind of record but then again, the Cold War lasted even longer and you'd never know we won it based on what the news reports. You'd think we are still in an almost hot war with Russia and on the brink of one with China.

There was an interesting little video put on X by a school student at some Charter School where he asked his high school classmates to read aloud about an 'extraordinary silhouette and something looking a little guache' and none of those high school students could read it aloud. They're all graduating in a month or two and they cannot read. That would just about meet the needs of a feudal state and their role is pretty clear in that place.

I used to wonder about how those ancient texts were preserved through the long night and who chose to keep Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato, Polybius and the others alive to us for all those generations only to see them end sometime in the near future, unread, unmissed and unnoticed. 

I asked Grok for a comparison of the New Deal with National Socialism and oddly enough it returned something completely unlike what I remember learning as a boy. I may now have to read those damned speeches that were Hell to track down and see just what the differences were between FDR's totalitarian impulses and those of the German Chancellor. On the other hand, there must be scores of scholarly works that already did that and all I have to do is track them down.

I will bet you it is not a simple trivial matter of going to the library and poking around or looking online with the expectation of getting anything like real scholarly work. On the gripping hand, I did run across a book at the Library the other week written by the man who led our delegation to Germany to try to straighten out the agonizing bits of the Treaty of Versailles. I'll see if it's still there but what are the chances anybody would buy a book written by an unknown back in 1938? 

ON THE SENSE OF THINGS

 I am getting the sense that all of us are tired of the game and are ready for our own withdrawal east Gibraltar. It looks like Europe is not gearing up to stick its crank in the fan but is nevertheless thrusting most vigorously at the fan. How every single wimp in Europe can eagerly demand action and attacks on Russia and not see that they don't begin to have the means to fight is beyond comprehension. It is, nonetheless, how they start every single war over there and thus an excellent time to step outside for a smoke.

I don't spend much time thinking about how the next war turns out because that's really not one of those easy simple questions that can be answered anymore using the logic and rational thought that once produced the likes of NATO. Back then it was a simple matter of counterbalancing forces and both sides leaning into a standoff at any price. That's not the way it looks anymore. Now it looks more like rational thought and logic have both stepped out for a smoke. 

The only reason that Ukraine's agony has gone on this long is because Europe willed it. They want it to go on and on and on and on without end because they all believe that they are doing an injury to Russia. I cannot for the life of me see why they think that. It's hard to imagine anything further from the truth. It's like they never grasped the essential fact that for a dictatorship to survive in the Age of Reason there MUST BE an outside Enemy that the people can be rallied against. All of western Europe has made itself that enemy for President Putin.

I really don't understand the idiocy of the frontline States except that they put liberal women in charge and that can have no other ending then an ocean of tears. What they understand about war and geopolitics can be written on a neutron. They act like they each have 10 armored divisions backing them up and not a handful of bad prom dates. 

They all think that someone is going to fight the Russians but I cannot figure out who they think is going to save them from the devastation. Poland it locked on its front and I think the rest of Central Europe will just sit it out. They all know something Western Europe never knew or suspected. Russia really does not want to invade them or fight them and would like to be left to their own devices for awhile.

At some point you would have thought the idiots would have picked up on the similarity between us and Russia wouldn't you?

We have, I think, reached the point where we would like to be left unbothered by their idiocy and if they have to make idiots out of themselves perhaps they could do it among themselves for awhile without resort to the Great Powers. Oh, and could we divest our elite from their own idiocy in persisting in thinking that Russia is nothing but a gas station with nukes? They have been more than holding their own in Ukraine while engaged in war with Ukraine, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Lichtenstein all the other idiots in NATO and finally  Switzerland. You know who has not been detectably winning in Ukraine? That's right, all of those tossers fighting Russia.

Europe cannot unring the bell. Too many in Europe denounce America for us to go forward and believe them partners. As they have denied us transit rights and basing rights during our war operations it is now all too clear that they will hold our use of Ramstein hostage in future military operations. There is simply no wriggle room anymore in making plans based on long held assumptions about the use of bases in NATO countries. If we cannot count on them then they are worse than useless to us since we expend resources on them with no guarantees. We’d be far better off developing bases where our use and access is assured and unquestioned. We are not the monsters here.

Imagine that, shifting our actual base infrastructure into the Middle East after all these years. 

THE REALITY POKE

 It would be better if nobody asked why I woke up when listening to this but still I think it bears a listen. Start at minute 55 when Jared Dillian speaks the truth about something obvious and yet something that most people simply forget.

 

https://t.co/YVe5id12RL

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 1, 2026

Here's the rough transcript for what I wanted you to hear. 

"Corn, rice, beans are basically in the same place or lower than they were 15 years ago and we've had 50% inflation since then so they're really cheaper in real terms. So, that's the point I wanted to make......

In 2011 gas prices were $4.00 per gallon and now they're $4.00 per gallon so we've had 50% inflation so it's still cheaper in real terms." 

Some conniving traders are out there trying to panic people with the end of the world because fertilizer or some bullshit, need to be ignored for what they are, the AlGore of mistruth, lies and deceit. Yes, it is not going to be pretty in the 3rd world but it never is and most important, there is nothing you can do about it so you are well advised not to panic or obsess over it.

YESTERDAY 38 YEARS AGO 2830 NORTH

We are at anchor after a day allegedly spent at Holiday Routine. I had the midwatch and went to bed at 0430. Up at 0745 I took the 0800-1100 Officer of the Deck watch and listened as the world went crazy. I watched as USS Enhance led MV Gas Princess, Ocean City, USS Merrill, USS Joseph Strauss and two other tankers through the Q-Route to Kuwait. 

Their helicopters reported that they were hovering over mines so we got underway, dropped a Mk-6 mine shape and continued on to USS Trenton where we waited for two hours for USS Inflict to finish refueling. The mines were later found to be fishing buoys.

We pulled alongside Trenton at @ 1500 and took on fuel and stores and got rid of 6 drums of 2190 TEP oil that aren't going to haunt me now. At CO's wish we were underway as soon as possible and went back to our anchorage area with Marine Recon divers to fish out our mine shape. The bozos in the Combat Information Center were unable to vector the ship back to the shape so we spent a fruitless 3 hours trekking around and finally delivered the Marines home dry.

Went to anchorage where it was Bob's turn in the barrel.

The good news was: yesterday I fixed the governor problem on #3 Main Engine that had baffled 5 of my senior engineers for hours. Today they fixed the #1 Main Engine after finding 4% fuel oil dilution caused by a broken rocker arm(?) It was a really good day for us engineers.

I think I'll throw in the previous couple of weeks starting tomorrow and cover my view of Operation Praying Mantis which was the last time I swept actual mines in the Gulf and we made war on Iran. 

TICKET TO RIDE

 Share my earwig.

 

FADED REMNANT

Once again I turned to the online for inspiration and two things struck me as noteworthy at Busted Knuckles. The first had to do with an old veteran discussing his naval background with a modern sailor and sounding like a man from the dark ages because he was a Water Tender or Boiler Tech or some such and this:

What I wondered as I saw this picture was, are any of our aircrew taking pictures like this today as they fly missions over Iran and are they carefully printing them and preserving them for a time not to distant when men no longer fly front line combat aircraft in war? It seems pretty clear that we are seeing the last gasp of manned aerial combat because drones are going to make these things as obsolete as horse tenders or archers.*

*The discerning reader will know that I favor entering a war prepared and the best preparation for dealing with enemy aircraft is to destroy them when they're home, alone, at night.

IF

 If the rethuglicans were even half as evil and malignant as democrats there would be a special congressional committee looking into every aspect of every media person present at the attempted regicide of the President and the people who were there must be compelled to justify and explain why they attempted to overthrow the government by violence! 

You can see all the parallels with the January 6th Miasma.

Every media person and their significant other who were present in the Ballroom at the White House Correspondent's Dinner was a party to a violent attempt to overthrow the government in much the same way that every person who was present in the Capital on that dismal day were guilty of attempting to overthrow the government.

– First things first, the FBI needs to round up every single one of those despicable people and throw them into jail and not just any jail but into the worst nastiest jail in Washington, DC and not just in any cell but into solitary confinement and there can be no bail for monsters like them. Let them rot!

– Every single thing in their past needs to be investigated and their bank accounts frozen and every purchase going back the last 30 years needs to be eyeballed by stony eyed harridans keen to find out what it was actually for....

– None of them or their families should get even one second of time in the media to explain or justify or try to wriggle out of their loathsome crime.

– Every person they know or have some sort of relationship with needs to be investigated and needs to answer, under oath any and all questions put to them by counsel and thus the People! Failure to obey should be instantly followed up by throwing them in jail.

You see how none of that is happening? That's the country I grew up in. That's the place I want to live in and give to my children, not the monstrous State that the Democrats created in their minds and then tried to make real in the fantastic show trials of people who simply made their voices heard in a time honored American way. 

If only there was some way to communicate this sort of thing to idiot lefties and their stupid followers and get them to stop being crazy, stupid, ignorant, vicious murdering scum.

If. 

THE PERSISTENCE OF MALEVOLENCE

European history up until the 21st century was one replete with examples of men fighting against the darkness and trying to stave off the darkness and build civilization at the same time. It had its ups and downs and it worked better in some places than in others but over time Europe conquered the dark and made itself the living embodiment of peace and prosperity for the whole world to emulate and the world kept trying despite everything.

That Europe seems to be hellbent now on extinguishing the lights and turning its back on civilization and it does so in gleeful delight as it chortles itself to sleep every night telling itself that it is simply making the world a better place by turning off the lights and letting strangers take over their cities and then their politics and then their governments until it seems what was once Europe is now nothing but west India or west Pakistan with an unhealthy dose of really hateful Africans thrown in to make it more problematical to do anything, even simple things like walk down the street in broad daylight.

I wonder if they realize that this is actually them losing the Cold War to Russia all those years ago. Russia probably kicked the bucket militarily right about the time JFK and the Lunch Bunch didn't completely cave on Soviet missiles in Cuba but that didn't keep them from waging an ideological war against America and Europe that exported the very worst ideas and philosophies to ignorant youth in the West and saw them ultimately appoint the most articulate haters of the West, Capitalism and all people who did not live up to the ideals of the new soviet man, as their leading lights in film, television, education, academics, politics, philosophy and, God help us, Religion. 

Look at these monsters running Europe. The English church is run by people who would defile any church simply by stepping inside one and opening their mouth and the political class and leadership are to a man the most loathsome haters of their own people on the planet. Nobody hates the English more than the English leaders and that mindset has spread to encompass all the polities and peoples of Europe. The Irish leaders hate the Irish, the French leaders hate the French, the Norwegian leaders hate Norwegians. It's unbelievable but there is no other explanation for how all of them are dead set on destroying the civilization they created by destroying and sidelining all the people who created it.

The Russians did that. The KGB sent their agents and money to the West to infect them with this very mindrot that is tearing them apart and destroying them. It was the no-nukes people followed by the anti-imperial, anti-colonial and anti-Western, anti-intellectualism and self-loathing narcissists who led to leaders and the people who elected them who decided to simply destroy it all.

The whole Green Movement was nothing but Russian propaganda and slowly Europeans fell for it hook line and sinker. 

This is simply suicide. 

[W]ithin Europe itself... institutions pursue the systematic dismantling of their own domestic fossil fuel capacities. 

The result is not environmental salvation. It is an engineered dependency that can only delight oil producers such as Russia. 

Households face increasingly high energy bills that contribute to widespread energy poverty. Official EU figures show that roughly 9-10% of the population, more than 40 million people, struggle to heat their homes. 

"[T]he only cases in which the masses have escaped from... grinding poverty... in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that." — Milton Friedman, economist, 1979. 

Fossil fuels are not opposed merely for their emissions; they are opposed because they underwrite prosperity, independence, and power — attributes the cultural Marxist worldview seeks to delegitimize. An affluent, independent public is harder to control. Politically, if you are poor and dependent, there is the possibility that you will keep reelecting your incompetent leaders in the hope that they will rescue you. It is in their interest just to keep dangling the promise of rescue in front of you.

How does a State go about producing enormous volumes and quantities of weapons without expanding the energy to do so? How does a State wipe out its own domestic energy capabilities while at the same time expanding its imports of foreign and enemy energy supplies? 

This is a lot like idiots not understanding that a housing shortage is quickly sorted out by deporting the millions of people living in houses that they are not entitled to because they are illegally in the country. Instead, all of Europe trips over itself to give illegal immigrants all the free housing they want and if this curtails or eliminates housing and the welfare of natives than so be it. 

I bet that none of those idiots worked out that what broke the back of feudalism was the Black Death. It was only when workers grew scarce that they began to be treated better. Continually bringing in slaves is a recipe for getting everyone who is not the elite, treated just like a slave. This is H-1B visas in America writ large.

Europeans being somewhat dimwitted haven't yet got to the chapter in that book* that discusses slave revolts and popular revolutions, but they'll get there. 

*A Distant Mirror 

CUTTING STEEL

 There is some talk that the Secretary of the Navy was fired because he did not produce a battleship in something less than one year on the job. While I find this unbelievable there is some truth to the failure of our shipbuilding business model in the United States Navy. The shipbuilding people simply cannot get out of their own way and set about building a ship because they have institutionalized the entire process and codified it and wrapped it in concrete and made it just about impossible. God could not build a warship in this country in less than 20 years.

I worked with the sweep riders of destruction in the organization called Naval Sea Systems Command and they were petrifying and ossifying to a degree you literally cannot imagine. The Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Construction and Repair took the last 60 years off to get a manicure and the only time they are ever seen is, suspiciously, after dark when they finish sucking the last blood and marrow from the bones of a good idea.

Their little brothers in the Combatant Craft Department live to make and preserve the perfect boat. Anything less than perfect or marred in any way or modified at all without permission that takes years and tens of thousands of $ to get approved, is simply not allowed. I was amazed to see that what they did was done so thoroughly that it was far easier to actually procure patrol boats offshore rather than try to build one in the United States that was not able to bypass NAVSEA CCD and lay claim to the protection of Special Operations which had its own very different and separate acquisition chain. In my own case I started out with even better protective cover but that faded away as the boats neared completion and CCD got involved.

The people working at Combatant Craft, SupShip and even NAVSEA as a whole, are not evil nor do they think of themselves as other than imperfect Gods laying a firm but guiding hand on the cowboys that just want to get the ship built, the boat to float and get on with it. They act in strict accordance with the guidelines created and maintained forever by NAVSEA. My favorite apocryphal story had to do with an article I read in the Surface Force Quarterly Engineering Bulletin about a team of experts from NAVSEA called in to determine why one of our missile hydrofoil patrol craft could not get up on its foils and hit top speed. The crew and experts had tweaked everything and it all showed in the green and yet the foil craft persisted in wallowing along at 12 knots instead of stepping up onto its foils and speeding down river at 50 knots. It turns out they had 12 tons of extraneous paperwork (NAVSEA complete Technical Manuals) onboard and the boat was simply too heavy.

 

If we really do want to build ships in this country and in particular, warships, we need to take a flame thrower to NAVSEA in all its iterations and branches and clean out about 90% of the people and processes that ossified and solidified about the time we switched from steam to gas turbines. It probably never helped that the place turned into a flower garden for nuclear power officers and chiefs who all set about forbidding all change and all deviance from specifications as both Heresy and unGodly. In short we need to do what Elon Musk did to rocket building and launching and to Twitter. A lot of people with rock solid political connections to every sitting senator and congresscritter need to be turfed out and put out to pasture.

This can happen and it has happened before. I myself was blown away a couple of months ago talking to an engineer about some crypto work and finding out that some of the die-before-changing aspects of red/black physical separation had changed 180 degrees since the last time I was involved. Things I never thought could happen back when KVM switches first appeared are now accepted best practice by DIRNSA. Who knew? 

What will it take to change NAVSEA? Well I cannot tell the whole of it but it will only work if the new SECNAV simply, for the good of the service, fires every single Flag Officer and SES civilian working at NAVSEA. Every single one and they have to be replaced with outsiders who have demonstrated the knack for telling underlings to stop fucking around with their precious processes and make things happen. Yes, this did not work out well for SeaFighter and some other concept ships but that is because those Flag Officers and SES who were bypassed were still in place 2 years later to crap all over the changes and revert to the deep channel. All of them have to go.

And if you simply look at our shipbuilding industry and capabilities with this one Query in mind...What could anyone possibly do to fuck it up even more than it is right now, your answer will be obvious, nothing. Go ahead and slash and burn to your heart's content because no injury you could possibly do to it matches the pure uselessness of the industry as it is now. And one final thing, for the love of God don't crawl into bed with anyone from the American Shipbuilding industry or the Trade in the United States. They are all demons in human form. Go and find your top level and many of your midlevel managers for the shipbuilding process WHERE THEY STILL BUILD SHIPS. Give them visas, a flame thrower and the authority to hire and fire and you will build ships again.