COURTESY RIDERS

I see from the good folks at the New York Post that New York City is having a spot of trouble with maniacs on e-bikes running down pedestrians. It won't surprise you to learn that the government's idea of a solution to this little problem involves taxing the bikers more and forcing them to get a license and also shoving government snouts into retailer's business to force compliance with the laws of some little hamlet on the Eloi bank of the East River. 

I have some different proposals. My first is a real humdinger.

New York City should mandate that every pedestrian in New York City must carry an Iklwa. It is a multi-cultural politeness tool and it works in many situations especially in those up close and personal confrontations that so spice up life in Gotham. This one little bow to the petite gods of multiculturalism will go a long way towards making confrontations between e-bikers and pedestrians a much more two sided free-wheeling bloody brawl that entertains and amuses at gatherings where people discuss the highlights of their day in the big city. It will work way better than taxes and licenses.

I know some guys that can make a couple of thousand per day out of leaf springs and other scrap. I'm a problem solver, so let me know.

An Iklwa. And no, they don't grow on trees.

 It's way easier and more useful than a sword and easier to essay a kill enforce politeness than a battleaxe.

NO TIME FOR THE PAYBACK

 Now that USS Lincoln is heading home it is time to wonder, did all the caterwauling by the media and persons of no knowledge back home poison the reason why young sailors go to sea in the Navy or are they going to get to enjoy the good part? What you may ask, is the good part? I will tell you.

It's all about the getting there the return home again. In wartime you steam hell for leather to get on station. In both peacetime and wartime you would mosey home. The mosey in this case would/could include port calls of some duration in places like Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and who knows, maybe even a stop in Hawaii to pick up some family members for a tiger cruise back to home port. All of that gets left in the wake when the admirals and Congress screw up and leave more commitments on the table than there are ships to meet.

With obligations to get home as soon as possible in order to undertake necessary repairs and maintenance there is often nothing faster for a nuclear ship than to spin on a dime from Gonzo Station and head straight home at 24 knots without stopping. There is no delightful run ashore and liberty in a foreign port where you get to meet and interact with nice people on their own ground. Nope. 

You just go straight home, to the Yards and then to another deployment without any time outbound to hit the nice liberty ports because, there's a ship that's been on station too long and those guys need to go back to the Yards and get repaired quickly so they can turn around and surge out to see for another 8 month deployment.

This is the killer doom loop of long deployments with ZERO rewards and ZERO consideration for the men and women paying in the only coin that matters for their time in the Navy. Liberty ports softened the blow and made it more endurable. Guess what happens when you take away the one part that makes it all endurable? 

THE TRUTH IS NIGH

We've been reading about how President Trump has done nothing but destroy our alliances with the other countries that once stood against evil but now embrace it and I can honestly say I've gotten really tired of the people that don't understand that America has no real friends at all and the only people who play with us on our team are the ones who are out for something they think they can only get from US. They're right but also very shallow. That's the way it is and the world needs all kinds. But the Truth has just shaken out its colors and declared jihad against the forces of evil and darkness and called upon those who claim to be our allies to actually stand up and be counted. I don't doubt where we will find them come morning.

No one has given the Islamic Republic of Iran a greater opportunity to make a Deal than me. TRAGICALLY, for them, they have failed to take it. Therefore, today, I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale. Their navy is gone, their air force is destroyed, their military factories are now rubble, their currency is worthless, and their country is hanging by a thread. Today, I am also announcing that ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat. These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide. IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. President DONALD J. TRUMP

 Iran has allies because there are a score of countries that will use any tool and any weapon to leave a mark on America and they really have no compunction about crawling into bed with the mullahs, shariah and the jihadis. They can't abide any of them but they only really care about doing an injury to America and a few about doing a personal injury to Trump. Oh yeah, the media everywhere is all in on Iran's side. Any and all enemies of President Trump are their biggest allies and bosom buddies.

But now is when the rest of the world gets to see what the West is made of. I won't be surprised because I don't actually expect any ruler in Europe to stand with Trump on this and I expect every ruler and figurehead there to denounce him and his sanctions. I am expecting a little better from South and Central America and even from a tiny handful of countries in Asia.

I don't think any of them are taking the Long View and seeing what endless Jihad means to the West in a time when there are literally no warrior kings to stand for the West and only an endless torrent of petty rulers, silly women and oceans of foul jurists who will strangle any and all efforts to enter the lists on America's side. That's Okay. Huntingdon called it when he wrote and published, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order and Mark Steyn nailed it when he wrote and published,  America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

Those familiar with history will probably agree that this has happened as recently as 1492. The Black Death just about ended feudalism in the most important ways you can imagine and it was followed by the doubling of the size of the whole world. Some might say that was the Industrial Revolution but I'm willing to talk about it over coffee. Last time it didn't pan out well for the Stone Age. This time around it may not work out for the children of the Industrial Revolution.

 The picture is from the Cabrillo Monument at the very end of Point Loma in San Diego. It captures the essence of a world gone now for just over a century. I'm afraid that God did not survive in Europe after 1919.

It says, "They died in the service of God and his Majesty and to give light to those who sat in darkness and also to acquire the wealth which most men covet." The words are inscribed over a map of the whole new world that Columbus and his men discovered and reported back to Spain.

THE VIGILANCE

I saw one of these for the first time the other day and it struck me as amusing. As I look back now I recall that I saw it just a long block away from a herd of 6 flock cameras that spy on literally everything that passes within their view and keeps a video and sensor record of every move you make.

 The time to be concerned about your rights fading away as government just takes them away for your safety, is long before that actually happens. You have to notice when the government starts treating every single citizen as a criminal and you have to do something about it or you are no longer living in a free and democratic republic. 

GOOD NEWS!

 The newest socialist Prime Minister of England has declared that he is ending the difficulties in the Strait of Hormuz and has ordered the Royal Navy to dispatch one patrol boat and 47 admirals to the region to, "get things under control!"

You can tell that there is a change in the air now. 

 

Ok, so it's Mount Etna erupting again and gutting all those precious CO2 targets and goals of European thralls. Change!

ON WAR

 Some observers may have noted that Russia launched the Special Military Operation against Ukraine way back in February of 2022 and it took a full 15 months of battle and war before Ukraine was able to land its first successful air attack on Moscow. I'll bet you anything you like that when Russia kicked off the SMO it never entered the mind of a single member of Duma or the Russian General Staff that Ukraine would be launching air attacks at will inside the Russian Federation. So you know what is surprising? General Valery Gerasimov has been Chief of the General Staff since 2012.

For over 14 years General of the Army Gerasimov has been running the Special Military Operation against Ukraine and there does not appear to be any move or effort to unseat him. Contrast that with the lunatic haters of our Secretary of War Hegseth who would be hung, drawn, and quartered by his political adversaries for starving sailors to death on Gonzo Station. You can read about it in the New York Times, Washington Post and other turgid purveyors of fabricated myth, foodoo and legend. 

So we come to my point once again. On War we thought we'd get ready and I note that we built a highly unsatisfactory ammo plant in Texas to produce 30,000 155 mm artillery shells per month and to date it has produced a grand total of zero after two years of trying. That's pretty sad but it was a risky gamble and it did not pay off. Still, we are not using 155mm ammo in this war or the war with China. Yes yes, I know that will simply blow the minds of all those warriors chomping at their cigars as they stand around endlessly talking about blowing the dirty rats apart with artillery but there is the one salient drawback to using land-based artillery against enemies. You have to put it somewhere nearby on the land of your enemy and we're never going to do that. 

These are, by the way, the same exact guys that scream that we are running out of ammunition and we won't have enough for our war with China. They are incredibly resistant to calls to answer, "what war?" They also don't seem to have picked up on the fact that sad sack Iran is successfully holding us off their coast and they are about one fortieth as scary as the People's Nuclear Armed Republic of China. They simply stand there and bleat about not having enough missiles for China and this mind you, after demanding that we ship off all of our missiles to Ukraine to shoot at Russia, yet another country that we are not at war with.

But what about the drones I wondered and that is a wonder because I would have thought the 5th columns would have employed some of them to no effect here over the last 4 months but I haven't seen any. Have you? I also haven't heard of flocks of hundreds of those LUCAS drones of ours launching from Shangri-La to attack all those defenseless targets in Iran. What happened to them? I thought those waves of C-5 and C-117s flying into the middle east for months leading up to the war with Iran were flying in air defense systems and those drones. They all dropped out of sight.

I also wonder who was it that actually slipped the choke collar around Prime Minister Netanyahu's neck. He may be the last PM Israel ever had that understands that you gain nothing from ending a war with those enemies prematurely before achieving decisive overwhelming victory. He knows that and yet Israel has stopped.

It is a conundrum. It looks like there is supposed to be a negotiated end to the war but only a complete fool would believe that Iran would keep any part of any agreement it signs. They are simply unable to what they want from what their god commands and absent the command of god, they are going to keep making war on the infidels until the end of time. They're also going to exterminate anybody they really dislike.

So right now people are still scrambling around in the dark looking for the button that if pushed will end the war. In my imagination it looks a lot like that stupid reset button Hillary Clinton tried to pawn off on Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in 2009. You know somebody else who has been around for awhile? Yes, that's right, Foreign Minister Lavrov has been Foreign Minister since 2004.

When people tell you that Putin is in trouble and there is much turbulence over there in his government and you should be wary of people knocking him off because he is an untried incompetent scam artist it would be nice if you kept in mind that President Putin has been running Russia since 1999. Try to imagine the kind of Deep State over there and all of it done as charmingly and artlessly as the commies and socialists want to do it here so they can run America.

I don't really think that anybody in this country ever really sits down and thinks about war and its consequences. There are a lot of people like that. They're called losers.

 

THE DISTAFF

 There is a school of thought that says that one day a woman will be President of the United States and you can read more about it at The New Republic. I think the author is one of those really amusing serious AWFLs who doesn't yet understand that the day is coming but the rejoicing will be limited because once again the overwhelming favorite woman and who is greatly favored by women, is some trans guy who was born male. So yeah, soon the first woman President will be brought to you by all the women who voted for him.

DEAR JOHN

 I am reading stories about the trying life of the sailors on some aircraft carrier somewhere in the Indian Ocean and some of stories seem to take umbrage with the fact that sailors have been forced to go to sea. I know, I know, it isn't the kind of thing you expect when you join the navy and sign up for all those aviation bonuses and go to all the schools to learn aircraft maintenance and all that icky nuclear propulsion stuff but it turns out that going to sea is actually what professional mariners do.

I keep wanting to contrast these storeis with my own experiences going to sea in my 26 years in the Navy but I somehow managed to do the whole thing without ever once so much as stepping aboard a commissioned USN aircraft carrier. Heck, the only time I even saw them underway was the USS Carl Vinson one time appearing out of the gloom in the VACAPES while we were inbound to Norfolk on the USS Connole and next and final time was seeing USS America astern of the USS LaSalle while leading the Indian Ocean Battle Group through the Red Sea after we'd finished MCM operations in 1984. I actually turn out to have no experience with aircraft carriers.

That said, 40 years ago we had dozens of carriers and scores of supply ships that could replenish them daily with fuel, bombs, ammo and food of every kind including fresh fruit and vegetables (FFV).  Here's the thing though, back when I was playing, the FFV was coming out of ports near to the Indian Ocean and likely came from the Mediterranean, Subic Bay, Singapore and perhaps transhipped out of Khor Fakkan and Fujairah. I'm not sure how viable any of those routes are these days. I cannot dismiss the food shortage notion entirely but I would suggest it is mostly a diminished supply of FFV as opposed to an actual shortage of food.

The killers were actually the Dear John issues when sailors received notice that things had completely fallen apart back at home. I only lost a handful of sailors over the years to the complete collapse on the domestic front and didn't regret for an instant putting them on the very next flight home. These weren't petty issues or politics, this was the next door neighbor using the Red Cross to send a telegram telling a guy that his wife had apparently just tossed all his stuff out of the house and that his little kids were being looked after by the neighbors since his wife hadn't been seen for days.

A couple of months at Cairo West working in the Joint Operations Center for what amounted to 3rd Army and a brigade of the 24th ID was illuminating. I had no idea how many domestic partners of deployed soldiers and airmen did that sort of thing on a seemingly routine basis or were raped and murdered in and around Tampa and Fort Stewart in the space of 2 months. I'll tell you, it was a shocking number. With 5000 sailors on the aircraft carrier the numbers probably look even worse.

I had one CO who asked if we could spare our only gunner's mate just before Praying Mantis when his life back home fell completely apart. The CO was the same one who tracked me down to tell me that he had just run into the Petty Officer he had reduced in rank from E-6 to E-5 at MAST and who he found carrying a shotgun just a few minutes later. He was still shaking and told me he didn't want either of those two sailors given duties aboard ship where they would be carrying a weapon for the rest of his time onboard. I hardly miss being the senior watch officer at all. 

DEEPEST NIGHT TWO

 You have a reputation as a man of great personal integrity. Let us say that somebody decides to throw it on the bench and give it a full and rigorous set of tests to find out just how correct that judgement is and after a set of damned near unendurable tests determines that there is considerable truth to the judgement and let us say that the people who want to know this about you are the same exact people that created a spy service second to none in all of history. 

A measure of their competence is revealed when they somehow manage to almost literally disarm their major northern front enemies by not only convincing them that pagers are more secure for their secret communications but also has created a company that makes explosive pagers and manages to sell them to the Hezbellah terrorists with such good effect that they almost destroy themselves in a single afternoon of frenzied paging. (What happened on 7 October bears looking hard at in this light. There is no way they missed all that so the question remains, how was that allowed to happen?) That was evil.

These guys, having found you may keep a secret, are willing to furnish you with detailed information on a nuclear weapons program being carried out in a country so hostile to yours that they greet every single day by leaping to their feet and screaming "Death to America!" They are willing to show you the actual nuts and bolts which also reveals Sources and Methods and they ask if you 'd like to join them in laying waste to this threat. Their information shows that the enemy is only weeks away from having a working bomb.

I'm sorry, at what point in this recitation do you suddenly decide you have better things to do? I know, I know,  it is time now to second guess those guys and go to the very same intelligence services that framed you and spent the last 10 years fabricating evidence against you to get a second opinion on a program that to your own knowledge they have been denying even exists.

It is always easy in hindsight to say that the response was unwarranted or too severe but we all know that it is not Iran that is the enemy here, it is Islam. Islam has already shown that they will stop at nothing to kill Americans and Jews and take great delight in killing anybody at all in Israel.

Let's examine the wider picture. There is one Islamic Country that has the bomb. This is the very same country that played host and furnished all the hospitality in the world to Osama bin Laden. I'm sure we all remember where he was when the SEALs dropped in on him and blew him away. Those guys in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, to give it its full proper name, have demonstrated a zeal for killing unbelievers unrivaled in history.

But, as the saying goes, wait, there's more! I think there is an excellent chance that the Gulf nations are now and actually have been for some time, interested in getting atomic weapons of their own. I don't know that any of them would use them. For all that they were the initiators of the Caliphate, they don't really have any record of butchery on the scale that indicates they would use nuclear weapons. There is however the small print. As far as I can tell, no arabs anywhere make anything. They do though have scads of money and with enough money one can buy anything. They also have deep vaults and way more than enough money to convince some people to look the other way.

Consider the number of times now that competent people have found unattended thermo-nuclear weapons hanging on the wings of unattended aircraft because some Air Force clowns were actually able to walk into a nuclear weapons magazine and walk out with half a dozen nuclear tipped air to surface missiles. It frankly, boggles the mind.

Six American nuclear weapons are still missing. Nobody actually knows where they are. Take a guess how many Russian nuclear weapons vanished from their magazines and arsenals even before the communist system there collapsed.

I have been told that we have detectors sensitive enough to detect emanations from nuclear weapons miles away and not to worry about it. On the other hand, I used to think we had actual meaningful safeguards in place to prevent the simple taking and walking away with nuclear weapons and I was dead wrong there. I thought the PRP was real. I thought we had an ethical (ish) Civil Service. I was wrong. You could probably walk a nuke into the capital if you felt like it and had a hall pass signed by the right clown.

As with the man in the arena, I cannot fault a man for trying against impossible odds and failing. I'm better than that. When people wonder why we have not got a man in what remains of our White House who can stop the War in Ukraine I always wonder, how fucking stupid can you be to think one man in a white house can stop a thousand year old war using nothing but his tongue? If you look at peace treaties and war conclusions throughout all of history you will find that the war ends when one or both sides decide to quit, when one vanquishes the other or when people just get tired of it and stop. The war in Ukraine has not come anywhere near any of those limits.

Russia will not stop because it cannot. Zelensky cannot stop or he will die, and with Europe propping up Zelensky in the lunatic belief that they are injuring Russia (at the same time they continue to fund his war operations buying his energy), the war will go on until there are no more Ukrainian men or somebody sticks a knife in Zelenksy.

If you look at this in the coldest light you will ever see, both Putin and Zelensky benefit as long as the war goes on because they can point to a threat to national security that demands sacrifice and lets both continue in office and reap the benefits. That said, if you think Putin is a bad man, you aint seen nothing like the man who will take his place if he dies of suddenly. That guy has no limits on power and was never ever loyal to anything.

The good news, I suppose, is that Ukraine is running out of manpower and no lunatics like the Wagner Group appears to be coming to their defense and nuclear weapons fabrication in Iran has been slowed down once again. You know who has nuclear weapon scientists lying around by the score? You know who has score to settle with the people that have kept the war in Ukraine going long past the time it should have faded away in an exasperated but exhausted little puff of smoke? I do. We better hope he's a good enough man for our times or we will see the sun touch the earth again.

IT NEVER CAME UP

 I see that there are reports that Israel is making it clear to its only partner that it is prepared to continue the attack and is less interested in a negotiated solution with an enemy that close and that dangerous who has a couple thousand years of lying about things on its mantle piece. I cannot say I blame them because there is in fact no sign that Iran is giving up or that it is losing influence in the West. If you look at it without the media filters, the West is turning into the most virulent anti-Jew place on the planet right now. Yes yes, I know, the haters all always say its the zionism they hate but we all know what they mean.

So the British earned a little title of their own because they had a very simple foreign policy for ages and ages and they were spectacularly ruthless and lucky implementing it. The English (Perfidious Albion) policy always was that they did not want to see all of Europe under one master. They didn't care whit who that master was, it was better for England and better for all that Europe be a fractured and divided marketplace that would systematically gut the Spanish new world empires, the Dutch empire, the French empire the Italian whossname, and always the Holy Roman Empire. They missed a bet when they let Frederick the Great put things together and create Prussia but it would take a hundred years to see how bad a decision the 7 Years War had been. The British made side deals everywhere to keep Europe fractured.

So there is plucky little Israel engaged in a great war with Iran over  the heads of a half dozen formerly impotent emirates and kingdoms and the Iranians in their rashness decided to treat them all as the enemy. The buffer states of yore are now equally and all of them, the open enemies of Iran. That was something the POLMIL guys saw coming as long ago as 1945 so it comes as no surprise. Only one Gulf country had ambitions beyond its borders and everyone knew it.

Now we have to look at history and did you ever wonder why the Allied position on surrender negotiations with the Germans and Japanese was always that there would be no negotiations? Yes, it is simply because nobody at all trusted the British to negotiate in good faith. With them there was always going to be a poison pill that would blow up relations 20 years downstream. You could set your watch by it.

America's foreign policy people are mostly paler Brits. They also believe in the poison pill negotiation strategy although it never works out that their clever negotiating benefits the United States in 20 years time. Nope. It always seems to leave a mark that just won't buff out. You can see this sort of thing just by looking at both Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars were won in days and we lost the next 20 years in both. Where in the actual Hell did that idiot Bremer come from?

The only remaining hope in the negotiations going forward is that the President knows what he is dealing with and has appointed some savvy negotiators who also know what they're dealing with. In any event it doesn't really matter because the negotiation is always only only a trick to end the shooting so both sides can rearm and regroup. This is not some sneaky koran thing, this is simply the way that all wars end and all negotiations towards that end proceed. It's nothing new.

For a country with no friends at all there is only war and thus a mandate to end such wars with an unassailable position of strength because to do other is to lose. At this remove from the contest I could not even begin to think what would act as the final redoubt in Iran in this war that has to be reduced at all costs in order to gain time to prepare for the next one. It is not the people, it is not the capital, it is not the Head of State or Head of Government, it is not land sacrificed from the mainland and it is not massive disarmament of the surrendering side. I don't see what it could be.

I fought Iran once a long time ago. It was the easiest little war nobody ever heard of. We had a Navy in the Gulf that formed into Surface Action Groups and did everything they could to hunt down and sink every single Iranian warship at sea and also shot up some oil processing platforms. We also had a carrier battle group in the North Arabian Sea that wanted to play and did and when we did all the damage we could in the time allotted for retaliating for the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, we unilaterally declared a cease fire and stopped shooting. Things immediately returned to the status quo ante bellum. 

That's obviously going to be a little more difficult now. Not impossible, simply more difficult. One way to sand off the sharp bits though is to have an "ally" unaccountable to anyone who is prepared and willing to go to just about any lengths at all to secure a meaningful peace while you negotiate.  That might be the only way to do it. 

You can see this trick used all through history too.  

I'M SURE IT HURT

 

How awkward though to be filmed laughing and smiling and enjoying something this awful.

IYKYK

IMPROBABLE WINDOWS, KRAFT AND ME

 So I was hugely successful getting new windows for the Study and they came in looking good and fit perfectly, if I do say so myself. It probably helps in this regard that I took out the old relics and hauled them well south of here and gave them to a solid young window carpenter who did a bang up job replacing them. It took about 5 months longer than projected but despite another winter on the North Coast it was about as warm a winter as I've passed in the Study because I also know a good deal about sealing holes in the vital infrastructure thanks to my extensive Damage Control training and experience. 

With that side of the house done I turned to the front and took out those windows and hauled them down to the same carpenter with an expected delivery of November. I'm cannier than that and I have ordered a roll of Kraft paper to make a good template of the hole in my wall and then I will have a nice plastic window made with a laser cutter and stuff it in the hole. The 3 pieces of high end plastic I used last winter won't serve for this set of windows due to the need to shape them to fit and it turns out that it is true, one cannot cut quarter inch and better high end plastic with a jig saw. That's just right out. 

The old windows only stayed in place because gravity did not work against them. They were so rotten they weighed damned near nothing at all and yet so securely fastened in place (ahem, DC is my game), that not even the winter gales could dislodge them and carry them off. 

I figure if the carpenter and I do our usual jobs (his one of skill and craft and mine more one of Kraft paper and desperation), I can even have a very nice faux winter storm window for that part of the house in years to come. 

The carpenter lives well south of here and there are any number of really superb restaurants and other eateries between here and there that it is really no hardship at all to check on his progress over the coming months. It also happens to be a very relaxing and beautiful bit of Americana to drive through.  

NEWS AT 11

 I think this is actually kind of amusing. A 

and yet the media and everyone else seems gung ho to keep anyone from knowing who this well known extremist group might be. I know, the mind just automatically jumps to the Southern Poverty Law group of extremists or their armed wings in the BLM and NAZI party but it is still beyond laughable that they are hiding the name of the extremists because the only reason to do that is to conceal the identity of the extremists and why on earth would anyone do that?
 

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE ON THE EASTERN FRONT

 I never studied anything about this gigantic war beyond the devastating losses in the Tannenberg Forest and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This is eye opening and should put the Ukraine War in perspective. The four empires in the east were completely destroyed and gone by 1918 and almost nobody alive today knows anything about it.

A BIT OF HISTORY

 Those interested should type William Lederer into the search query box above and read about Commodore Joe Fyffe and a little bit more by the more serious Lederer about our Foreign Policy a long time ago. One was, All the Ships At Sea and the other was The Ugly American. I like to reread both every ten years or so.

ON ELECTIONS

Do both parties have observers in the rooms where primary ballots are counted or is that just another one of those shameful election things we’re not supposed to know about, supervise or hold accountable? 

U P D A T E

Well, what do you know, it seems like they were looking most carefully at the crooks, liars and thieves,  How gratifying.

#BREAKING: Lawrence: “…a mystery remains tonight, after the votes were counted in Michigan’s primary election. We know who won, we know who lost, we know who came close to winning, and we know who won the most votes ever cast in a primary election in the state of Michigan, but… pic.twitter.com/kn6D2w3Hq8

— Emoluments Clause (@Emolclause) August 6, 2026

 

A DRIVE INTO THE PAST

 In need of some woodwork that used to be a routine staple of life in the old window environment, we drove about 140 years into the past this afternoon to drop off some ancient wooden windows from the house with a semi-local carpenter we know who replaced other equally ancient windows in the house last year. We are working our way slowly from most damaged by time to the least damaged and I figure we'll definitely finish the job sometime around 40 years from now. I kind of get a kick out of still working ship-to-shop in my retirement and long after the Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activities bit the dust.

Still, it was nice to drive an hour south and over a hundred years into the past and I find that the past really was a nice place. Nobody really needs the internet, tv, electricity or the rest of the labor saving things we've invented if you just have enough children. People have really forgotten that aspect of family life in rural America. 

On the other hand, cheerfully carving out little exceptions to the rule so you can use a donkey engine to run belt powered machine tools is an obvious case of allowing some modern things to creep into the perfect 18th century lifestyle on stealthy little feet. Hell, I did it myself sailing down to old Mexico on a 41 footer and finding a single solar panel was enough to generate the charge for the two or three tiny white lights below deck in a boat that otherwise could have sailed in the 17th century. I'm pretty sure the Atomic 4 dates from the Revolution.

I really enjoy driving through the endless vistas of rural Ohio just south of the Lake. Good roads, nice drivers, excellent ice cream parlors, cool libraries and of course, skilled craftsman who can make you a brand new window, seal it, paint it, put on new hinges and hardware and glaze it for less than $50.00 a window. You have to understand, the price is not the object or the delight, it is finally after years of looking, finding a man who will still make anything you want out of wood and simply ask for pay. 

I don't know about you, but my window shopping has been a pure hell of so-called window contractors that come to the house, estimate what it would take to put their window systems™ in place of my existing windows and all of whom declare that it will run about $7500/window and of course that doesn't count the modifications to my existing window frames to fit their damned window systems™which are otherwise incompatible with a house built over a hundred years ago.

On the gripping hand, you should hear my brother talk about the idiot contractors he has to hire to work on his other family house in Vermont. That house was built in 1839 and uses methods and materials so far removed from current practices they might as well come from the Apollo era.

Still, it was another fine day. 

THE GET UP AND GO

 They all think that if and when their policies turn a place into shit that they can simply and effortlessly get up and go. The amazing thing is that they do and they find a welcome in a new place where they are going to be adamant about imposing the same policies and behaviors that ruined their last place and they get away with it over and over again because they can always get up and go.

You should be mindful of them. Remember, vigilantism starts at home and usually for a damned good reason.