A WINTER STORM ON A 3 DAY WEEKEND

My it's been an interesting week. I can't think of anything to say that hasn't been said. I'll have to think about it some more and get back to this later. Perhaps I'll check out what's on the news or take a look at what our older and wiser European cousins are doing these day to take such good care of the planet and all the little people who keep electing presidents and prime ministers more dedicated and devoted to the welfare and benefit of Africans and muslim terrorists then they are to the subjects and citizens who elected them. It's hard watching western Europe turn into Detroit right in front of my eyes.

ON VIETNAM AND WAR

I was no more than a boy when I first read Bing West's book, The Village. My father was stationed at Fort Riley with the 1st Infantry Division and so was the family. I found the book at the main post library where I spent a lot of time reading everything there was to read. I was a voracious reader. The little girl next to me was an equally voracious reader and became a famous writer. So anyway, the post library had a copy or two of Bing West's book and I read it at a tender age. It stuck with me over all these years. I read his other books as they were published.

A Couple of Book Worms Caught in the Act at the Library in Fort Riley

He can put the reader into the moment which is a worthy quality in a good writer. He captures the essence of the real meaning of the Vietnam War in this essay from the Hoover Institute. It's not long and you should read it all because he describes his reaction to Ken Burns' newest propaganda piece broadcasting now on the Peoples Broadcast Network.

The purpose of a film, however, is to stir emotions, not to convey a reasoned analysis. In emotive power, Burns succeeds. An audience with no prior knowledge of Vietnam will come away convinced this war was a colossal geopolitical error, a waste of lives on all sides and absolutely without redemption. Every fact and picture is accurate, and the cumulative process of selecting some facts and omitting others is devastating. 

Burns forsook balance. For instance, my Combined Action Platoon (CAP) consisting of 15 Marines and 30 armed farmers lived for 488 days in a remote village of 5,000 Vietnamese. The two Marines who didn’t fit in were dismissed from the CAP. The rest of us slept in the houses of the villagers, ate their food, fought and died side by side with the farmers. Seven of fifteen Marines were killed in the village.

American combat troops withdrew from the country in 1972. At that time, North Vietnamese units were still positioned in the jungles of South Vietnam. They had suffered staggering losses months earlier in a major assault that had failed after America had unleashed its B-52s to pound the enemy on the battlefield and in Hanoi. As the documentary points out, 100,000 North Vietnamese soldiers were estimated to have been killed, nearly all the armor provided by the Soviet Union had been destroyed and the North Vietnamese chief of staff warned another offensive could not be mounted for at least three years.3 The North agreed to a ceasefire and a truce that included the return of American prisoners of war. President Nixon promised to respond with force if the North attacked again. 

Instead, U.S. Congressional legislation in mid-1973 cut off funds for combat “in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia.” The intent was to prevent President Nixon from deploying troops, naval gunfire or aerial bombing if the North Vietnamese persisted in attacking South Vietnam. Over the next two years, Chinese artillery and Soviet tanks poured into Hanoi. While we had promised to provide aid to the South Vietnamese, Congress instead cut our aid of $2.8 billion in 1973 down to $1 billion in 1974 and to $300 million in 1975. When the North Vietnamese attacked in 1975, the South Vietnamese forces ran out of bullets. America had quit, plain and simple. 

What, then, should be the peroration for the war? Should it be the Burns’ documentary, “The Vietnam War was a tragedy, immeasurable and irredeemable.” 

Or should it be what Secretary of Defense Schlesinger wrote to our two million troops, “Your cause was noble; your dedication was determined. You answered your country’s call.”

I don't think it will be long before Ken Burns turns his eye toward Afghanistan and Iraq and pulls up the poisoned history lens version of ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM. At this point I'm prepared to say that all of our ambitions in both places have failed and that none of our hopes have been realized, either in the conquest or the nation building aftermath in either country. Sixteen years of noble sacrifice and we have nothing at all to show for it but the explosion of the Taliban's jihad as it spread out and started attacking the 20th century and Western Civilization everywhere in the world.

MODERN GLADIATORS ARE A BIT AGED BUT,.....

are you not entertained?

HAPPY VE DAY

I read these words on the subject of evil the other day at this place. I think the man who wrote the words had probably seen all there is to see of stupid and evil. He and Admiral Canaris were both executed by evil and stupid on the same day just weeks before VE Day. It was interesting to read that Thorbeck got off with this because the German State later determined that the State has the right to execute traitors. It was, yes, compounding stupid and evil.

At first glance the admission that the administration lied to the public seems a slam-dunk case for malevolence. But there's more to it than that. There is a perception that political imbecility is a lesser offense than malice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi activist, while in prison waiting to be executed, reflected that "stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice" because evil left behind in its conscious perpetrators "a sense of unease."

Against true imbecility even reasoning was useless since you couldn't even appeal to your enemy's self interest because they were too dumb to see it. "Against stupidity we are defenseless," he wrote, because imbeciles never feel a qualm. Against the stupid "neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything ... reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict ... simply do not need to be believed ... and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack."

Sadly, stupid is always there. It lurks in the strangest places and its effects can be measured far more accurately than the motion of planets orbiting distant stars.

MOLON LABE

One of the good guys in N7 came up with this design as Naval Coastal Warfare Forces were getting renamed and reorganized by Navy Expeditionary Combat Command. I laughed and told Eric it would never fly even though it pretty much captured the sentiments of all the people there at the time. I can only wonder at what changed when they were merged with Riverine Group ONE a couple of years after I left. The design seems so inappropriate now. It's broken.

I'm sure Eric is even more unhappy about the recent events involving Group ONE than I am.

THE WATCHWORD OF IMT

It's interesting to watch the media of Europe muzzle themselves and compare them to the dead press media in America. I had never thought, before the events of the New Year in Europe, that all of the world's 'respected' media were such slaves to their socialist ideology. They would all get along very nicely with the mad dogs of IMT. They discouraged talking too.

So successful was it that almost nobody remembers who IMT will be.

MONDAY QUARTERBACK QUAGMIRE

In the other news today we learn that Saudi Arabia is on course to run out of money in 5 years if the current price for oil holds and they continue to spend like a bunch of American politicians. I suppose there are a few people that rejoice at the news but we have to take the longer view and ask ourselves what insanely stupid idiotic thing the witless fools at State Department will demand the United States do if it looks like Saudi Arabia is going to lie prostrate at the feet of their good islamic buddies, shiite Iran? You know what the people who make Hillary look good will demand then, don't you?

If Saudi Arabia collapses or even moans dramatically and wipes its brow with a damp cloth, the State Department will demand that we subsidize, arm, train and equip Saudi Arabia and the Emirates at any cost to us so that they can be our 'bulwark' against the rising tide of the OTHER extremist nuclear armed islamic power on the other side of the Persian Gulf.

It will be a pathetic repeat of the Cold War imbecility that led us to fight pointless wars in worthless and meaningless hellholes to nominally keep them from going communist. Imagine the power a communist Cuba could wield in the Caribbean! Now we'll be prodded with sticks wielded by Harvard and Yale educated morons demanding that we keep atop the volatile mix of nuclear-armed islamic states in the middle east rather than allow them to simply incinerate each other.

Some people are still worrying about the impact of a nuclear-armed middle east and boatloads of islamic terrorists armed with atomic and thermo-nuclear weapons. I'm not. I can see pretty clearly what is going to happen and you can to. We saw it when they decided to launch a vicious and murderous attack on our airliners in order to crash them into our tallest buildings in a plan to kill as many innocent Americans as possible. The vicious islamic terrorists tend to strike at symbols first so one should keep that in mind when considering a move to the Big Apple or the District of Columbia.

Fat Man Bomb ~ 21 kilotons

or New York City;

Fat Man Bomb ~ 21 kilotons

You can go to the links and nuke any city with megatons of nuclear destruction. We'll see if the turds thugs in Iran exercise any judgement or if they allow themselves to put business before pleasure and nuke Riyadh before the Great or Little Satans. It's likely to be a tossup because if there is anybody more insufferable than a Saudi, it is an Iranian mullah.*

You just know that when it happens, our State Department is going to blame Israel and insist that if Israel had only traded land for peace, the great killing would never have happened. Fortunately, we'll be spared hearing it from the echelon that floats atop the sewer that is Foggy Bottom.**

*U.S. policy is not carried out with any evil will or intent, it is just so damned incompetent that it always looks that way. Even after WWII, the Marshall Plan, NATO, etc, western Europeans loath Americans. We on the other hand can simply allow typical European diplomacy to work unchecked and they will soon find themselves locked in a war of mutual extermination. Americans are divided on the best course of action in such an event. Decisions, decisions. And all we have to guide us now is the thoroughly corrupt and incompetent ruling class that aren't sure which end of the computer should be pointed at the enemy. Oh well, in five years Europe will be predominately muslim so we can't go wrong whatever we do.....or don't do.

**Foggy Bottom is well within the blast and thermal zone for even a small nuke in DC.

CULT OF MEDIA LIARS

If looks could kill, they probably will,

Hillary's crumbling frontier of lies and deceit. 

It's interesting watching another, once respected journalisto, so in the bag for Hillary and the democratic narrative in this war on Truth. It's like the journolists cannot learn anything from the past and are doomed to repeat it.

CURRENT INVASION MAP

There is an amazing map at Take Part. It shows the migrant problem that Europe let Germany and Sweden create. It is fascinating. Drop you cursor in the sea to sea all of the migrant flow and then on each country to see the intake and the outflow of migrants.

No No, Not This Map. Go to the Link above

RESUMMONING THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

I decided to look at how backlash against the ruling class presented itself in another age of the world. I foresee a time when Germany reunited, concludes that mistakes were made and institutes a typical German plan for resolution of the matter in question. In this case, the question would be, "how will we handle this enormous influx of people with alien ways who demonstrate unrelenting hostility to Germans and western principles? I took a look at how they handled it the last time and only changed one thing.

THE REVISED TEXT

II.At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of the SD, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich, reported that the Reich Marshal had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Islamic question in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions. The wish of the Reich Marshal to have a draft sent to him concerning organizational, factual and material interests in relation to the final solution of the Islamic question in Europe makes necessary an initial common action of all central offices immediately concerned with these questions in order to bring their general activities into line. 

The Reichsfuhrer-SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD) was entrusted with the official central handling of the final solution of the Islamic question without regard to geographic borders. 

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following:a) the expulsion of the Muslims from every sphere of life of the German people,b) the expulsion of the Muslims from the living space of the German people.In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Muslims from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution. 

By order of the Reich Marshal, a Reich Central Office for Islamic Emigration was set up in January 1939 and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with the management. Its most important tasks werea) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Muslims,b) to direct the flow of emigration,c) to speed the procedure of emigration in each individual case.The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Muslims in a legal manner. 

All the offices realized the drawbacks of such enforced accelerated emigration. For the time being they had, however, tolerated it on account of the lack of other possible solutions of the problem. 

The work concerned with emigration was, later on, not only a German problem, but also a problem with which the authorities of the countries to which the flow of emigrants was being directed would have to deal. Financial difficulties, such as the demand by various foreign governments for increasing sums of money to be presented at the time of the landing, the lack of shipping space, increasing restriction of entry permits, or the cancelling of such, increased extraordinarily the difficulties of emigration. 

In spite of these difficulties, 537,000 Muslims were sent out of the country between the takeover of power and the deadline of 31 October 1941. Of these  

approximately 360,000 were in Germany proper on 30 January 1933  

approximately 147,000 were in Austria (Ostmark) on 15 March 1939  

approximately 30,000 were in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939. 

The Muslims themselves, or their Islamic political organizations, financed the emigration. In order to avoid impoverished Muslims' remaining behind, the principle was followed that wealthy Muslims have to finance the emigration of poor Muslims; this was arranged by imposing a suitable tax, i.e., an emigration tax, which was used for financial arrangements in connection with the emigration of poor Muslims and was imposed according to income. 

Apart from the necessary Reichsmark exchange, foreign currency had to presented at the time of landing. In order to save foreign exchange held by Germany, the foreign Islamic financial organizations were - with the help of Islamic organizations in Germany - made responsible for arranging an adequate amount of foreign currency. Up to 30 October 1941, these foreign Muslims donated a total of around 9,500,000 dollars. 

In the meantime the Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Muslims due to the dangers of an emigration in wartime and due to the possibilities of the East. 

III.  

Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Muslims to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance.
These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Islamic question. 

Approximately 11 million Muslims will be involved in the final solution of the European Islamic question, distributed as follows among the individual countries:

The number of Muslims given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Muslims who still adhere to the Islamic faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term "Muslim" according to racial principles. 

The handling of the problem in the individual countries will meet with difficulties due to the attitude and outlook of the people there, especially in Hungary and Rumania. Thus, for example, even today the Muslim can buy documents in Rumania that will officially prove his foreign citizenship. 

The influence of the Mulsims in all walks of life in the USSR is well known. Approximately five million Muslims live in the European part of the USSR, in the Asian part scarcely 1/4 million.

I tend to see Europeans as predictable and unchanging. I don't underestimate their ability to do what they did the last two times or even the last 10 times even if it didn't work out all that well. Europeans believe in driving out or stamping out problem types. The Germans did it with Jews and the rest of Europe followed up by doing it to Germans. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Age of Enlightenment coincided with a vast increase in the popularity of the New World as an exciting travel destination for many diverse disaffected types. The sundering worked for both Europe and America.

Some observers note the enormous increase in anti-semitism in Europe and Germany today. A lot of observers believe it is fanned by muslim immigrants and, to a point, I agree with them. However, the real story underlying anti-semitism in Europe is a tradition popular in every European country that disdains and despises other nationalities. If you think this is some stale leftover, simply consider the ongoing displays of nationalism rearing its head everywhere.

As you can see from the (revised) Wannsee Protocols, the Germans started out by demanding that other countries relieve them of their troublesome Muslim problem and demanded the right to resettle Muslims in the countries surrounding Germany. Does that sound at all familiar?

The National Socialist German Worker's Party didn't spring overnight, full blown, on Germany. The vast majority of Germans initially despised them as a bunch of lunatics and even locked up their leaders. I don't see it as helpful that every country in Europe and every media agency in the world condemns every single nascent nationalist movement anywhere in Europe or even the United States, as some kind of NAZI party reborn. As they act to crush dissent, they force what might have been a political issue into a revolutionary movement with all the attendant violence and repression. We know how that works out, those of us who have studied the history of Europe.

NAZIs represented the common working man and grew out of their festering hatred of what had been imposed on Germany by France, England and the United States with the Treaty of Versailles. The common working man had no say at all in that entire process and yet was bound and limited in every way by a Treaty none of them signed or agreed to. It is difficult to not see a parallel with the implementation of the EU on all European countries and traditions? A lot of Europeans voted against the treaty and some nations blatantly voted it down only to see their votes overturned by the ruling class.

Watching Putin and the Russians play the stalking Soviet Empire in the East again is a nice additional touch of the zietgeist. "LOOK!", the nationalists will exclaim. "We are only mobilizing to defend against the dreaded Putin and his evil crony capitalist empire! We are just harmless, efficient, organized and opinionated patriots." A great many of them actually are.

Anne Applebaum wrote an interesting article in Foreign Affairs on the problem with Europe.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration can certainly be faulted for complacency. Behind the scenes, some central European states did try to warn the Americans that beneath the surface, Russia’s strategic posture was changing. But no one felt any sense of urgency or need to prepare, not even when the Russians conducted Zapad 2013, a military exercise similar to Zapad 2009, only larger. Some 70,000 troops were involved in that exercise; reservists from St. Petersburg were mobilized. The scale of the operation was a reflection of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Russia had invested in its armed forces over the previous four years. 

The two concessions to central European jitters made at this time were contingency plans for an invasion of NATO’s new eastern flank—during no previous U.S. administration had NATO ever tried to make any—and a NATO military exercise in the fall of 2013 in the new eastern part of the alliance, the first major exercise to take place there. But Steadfast Jazz, as the exercise was known, was a disappointment. The United States sent only 160 troops. Germany sent 55. The biggest contributions came from France and Poland, with over 1,000 soldiers each. This was a larger effort than anything NATO had put together since 2006, but in light of the shift in Russian military doctrine, it still seemed very thin.

We send far more people to a planning conference for an exercise in Korea than even went to this NATO exercise in the East. If I was the Baltic Countries or even Poland, I'd be more than a little concerned that NATO doesn't have my back or my flanks. If one looks at Russian actions in Syria through the lens of Russian history, one can clearly see that Russia is setting the stage for a major Mediterranean Naval Base on NATO's flank that is not subject to the Montreux Convention of 1936. They are aided in this villainy by Turkey and Syria. Turkey has nothing to lose and Syria everything to gain.

It's a shame that the current socialists who run things don't appreciate just what real disenfranchisement and an insane foreign policy and idiotic military policy inevitably lead to.

UNSAVORY TURKEY TRUTH

USA Today, a rather pointless and useless paper had an interesting view about the recent islamic caliphate bomb attack on the old caliphate. It wondered, rather obtusely, how this would affect our single most useless NATO ally.

Is Turkey next? The world should be very worried about how that question is answered. The twin bomb blasts in Ankara this past weekend — the deadliest incidents in the modern history of that NATO member and American ally — have all the hallmarks of Islamic State. And by expanding into Turkey, ISIL’s efforts to re-create the ancient Islamic Caliphate would be a dramatic uptick in the stakes and scope of an already expanding conflict.

The attacks come as Turkey is at risk of losing control of stretches of its border areas that have become highways into Syria for ISIL recruits from North Africa and Europe. The flow of jihadists and supplies allows ISIL to pursue its murderous effort to build and protect a new state on the territory of Turkey's neighbors.

The author of the piece misses the fact that Erdogan is no friend of ours or of the West and will be delighted to assume the mantle of the caliph reborn once he exterminates those troublesome Syrians and Iraqis who are letting the cat out of the bag. He's probably already worked something nice out with Putin in that regard.

In so far as Turkey's rights and obligations under the NATO Treaty, when has Obama ever upheld the law of the land? Name one single time when he stood by an ally of the United States. If Erdogan gives us any trouble we'll let him have the 4th Infantry Division to stiffen the Kurdish resistance to the Islamic State and, given the shabby way Turkey dealt with them last time, we'll send them overland from New Jersey so they don't have to worry about getting Turkish permission to get off the ships. It might take some time for them to cross the Atlantic. The Army is not likely to forget that Turkey refused permission for the 4th to land and assault Iraq from the north at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We have probably had enough of 'moderate' islamic fanatics for awhile. Maybe about a century.

ON FARAGE

As I was reading way into the night I was struck by this passage,

...But the fact remains that the Labour party has just endorsed an apologist for Putin’s imperial aggression; a man who did not just appear on the propaganda channel of Russia, which invades its neighbours and persecutes gays, but also of Iran, whose hangmen actually execute gays. Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care.

I had to double check and see if the author was talking about Farage about whom the labor party said the most amazingly vile things. I find it fundamentally funny that people who vote for a thing like Corbyn could evidence such visceral hate for a genuine man who hasn't harmed anybody or palled around with jihadis, terrorists, or the rest of the despicable brew that make up and support the labor party of Britain and our democrats. I have to be careful because in my country the majority voted for labor's evil counterpart here and brought us a leader so deeply un-American its like has never been seen here before. We elected a man who hates and despises his own country. I suppose the British left are merely following in our footsteps.

The only way to defeat evil is to fight it.

Oh well, we have a long history of dragging each other into the good fight against evil.

UNCHECKED MASS MIGRATION

What's the worst that could happen?

I know. It's hard to imagine the new caliphate with a space program capable of building telecommunications satellites much less putting them into orbit. It's even harder imagining them advancing the frontiers in any field of scientific endeavor. On the other hand, the key to that kind of knowledge was found only in western Europe and they didn't get to be the kind of people that went from biplanes to jet fighters and ballistic missiles in 5 years because they were pastoralists in search of a better life.

THE HOLLOW MEN

Both the Republican and Democrat National Committees seem to be run by nothing but chuckleheads and feeble minded jackasses. The democrats bruit about hiring a known illegal alien for the national campaign staff even though that is a direct violation of the Federal Election/Campaign laws and the rethuglicans insist that Trump formally forfeit his right to run as an independent if he fails to get the rethuglican primary nod.

Why either committee thinks that they are acting in some clever manner is beyond me. The democrats really can run a candidate like Obama or Clinton even if they did eat an undead baby on live TV during the debates. They won't suffer from any penalty except the loss of the almost undecided. Yeah, that's an interesting inane category of democratic voter that is usually so dim that they don't know the candidates, don't know the issues but they always voted democrat before so it doesn't really matter if the whole party has adopted a universal slavery policy for all Americans making less than $150,000 per year, they're still leaning toward a solid vote for the democrat.

Usually at this point in a campaign, we hear about money and who has it and who doesn't. I admit I don't pay any attention to the broadcast news or print media but I haven't heard anybody questioning Trump's campaign warchest status so I figure he has money backing him from somewhere. As far as I can tell, he's about the only rethuglican candidate who meets the Koch Brothers minimum standard for politicians but I'm not sure if that's true. I don't think Trump has exhaled an honest breath in the last 40 years. I can almost see him at his first public address, maybe at the inauguration laughing out loud and saying, "I fooled you suckers A G A I N! You are so stupid! Didn't you bother to check my voting record, never mind who I gave campaign money to for all these decades?"

It looks like we're in for interesting times. It seems that the new 'Klan with a tan' is making inroads on whittling down the number of police. They are getting some support from people concerned that any police officer can shoot and kill any American and it isn't even viewed as a crime or even negligence severe enough to warrant instant and permanent dismissal as a sworn officer on ANY police force.

At the same time, the police and District Attorneys in Texas have locked up a couple of hundred bikers because nine of their number were killed by gunfire. They've been locked up and no pleas for habeas corpus are being entertained while suspicion grows that the cops are the ones that did all the shooting and the killing and most of the bikers were simply caught in the crossfire of cops shooting at anything that moved.

It looks grim. Nobody will pay others to shoot police but there doesn't appear to be any shortage of people willing to do it. The cops have made no friends by stealing innocent traveller's cash without even deigning to charge the innocent traveller with a crime. The police simply steal their cash and pocket it. They literally put it in their own pockets and walk away from the scene of the notcrime.

I think it would be profoundly funny for a Republican to run for President as a Democrat and simply espouse the same exact things that JFK espoused. That would still put him to the right of everybody except Reagan and would turn the table splendidly on all the dim ones and the sharper ones who would find themselves flailing against the catechism of JFK and what MLK said. It would also add a little gravitas to the mind boggling stupidity of Hillary, Sanders and whossname.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

NEW DOWNFALL ART

This just in via the Instapundit. It's astonishing to me how much of Amerika's government antics can be displayed by putting words in the mouths of the most evil Nazis that ever lived as portrayed in the movie Downfall. It's like the moviemakers set out to demonstrate the close parallels between our socialist democratic party and the national socialists in the 3rd Reich.

EUROPE AND ME

Almost twenty years ago I quit the Middle East and shifted to service in the Far East. Between tours in the Persian Gulf I would vacation for months at a time in the pre-Soviet collapse Europe. I was last engaged in such tourism before the integration of Germany and before the clouds of islamic immigrants made mockery of England, France, Belgium and Wales. I had a grand time riding the rails and touring the old cities of Europe from Mont St. Michelle to Blois and London and Amsterdam. I wouldn't go there again now but might be lured there in some future time.

The junior siblings have worked very hard all their lives and now both of them are abroad. My brother and his family are touring Rome and Italy again and my sister and her family are touring Greece again. I admit for not having much liking for either country but I think we can safely put that down to how I was treated in each country after my US Air Force transport crash landed in each back in 1989. It was a rough ride home from the Gulf and the worst parts were being on the ground in both Athens and Naples. I mean seriously, after the engine fire was extinguished and we crash landed at Bahrain we were at least put up in a 5 star hotel with a pool and not treated like the scum of the earth.

Oh well, some people are catastrophe tourists and like to look at the guts of declining civilizations. I prefer to see alt reality in the air conditioned prime world comfort of a REGAL theater. YMMV.

Far and Away the Best Way to View Alt.Reality

HERD IN PASSING

As I watched us renew our diplomatic ties with Cuba I was struck by the ignorance of the supporters. I wondered aloud, "Only one country embargoed that benighted socialist paradise. Just one country." Cuba had an open door to the other 193 countries on planet earth. We didn't blockade the island off our shores.

Why is Cuban poverty and misery our fault? Quite literally, we did nothing to them.

PITY THE POOR SPARTANS

As I drove home from our Maine vacation I had the chance to listen to the radio as various voices discussed the Greek issue. Listening to the lengths to which Athens has gone to debate what is essentially an easy binary decision has given me renewed pity for Leonides and the men who waited in vain at Thermopolye for Athens to end debate and come to their aid in defending Greece.

What I don't understand is, who would loan Greece any money at all? Why?

ALL YOUR MEDICAL RECORDS R BELONG TO US

You know, as dire and destructive as the total complete compromise of the background investigations of every federal employee with a security clearance (roughly 14 million living Americans) is, there is also the little tiny problem that Obamacare mandated that all health records be maintained electronically and be available on-line.

And so they are. Available to any disgruntled health care employee or any Chinese or Russian hacker or your wife or husband's divorce attorney.

Thank you Pelosi. Don't you think you've done enough to us already?