PRAVDA

Watching any of the written media do gopsplaining is of little interest to me. They would all be deeply ired to know that nobody who thinks would dream of reading or taking their political shadings as truth.

We know that they're all in the bag for Hillary who is nothing but a media myth which is surprising given that she treats them all like the scum they are. Yes indeed we like the Trump scourge but we also know that is another myth. We just want an honest man to say the same things about the Truth.

Some of us have resigned ourselves to never seeing that again in our lifetime. Reagan was a one-off.

AMERICAN GESTAPO

If you follow what happened in Wisconsin at all during the last 2 years, you are forced to realize that, just as in Texas, not one single law officer refused the orders of the attorney general and refused to brutally enforce the "law."

Here's a video that shows what it is like when the lawmen come calling.

They got the wrong house but they have immunity.

Given a trial by jury by one's peers?

It works the other way too. The comments are priceless.

ON ATOMIC BOMBING

We have moved into an anniversary of sorts. The low information sorts will probably re-exploit their mantra but some of us have moved on and consider what the United States just did in sanctioning the Ayatollah's atomic bomb project the final step on the path to atomic war. A lot of people are curious about the effect of the ayatollah launching a nuke at what he calls a "one bomb state."

Me?

I wonder how much of Persia is going to disappear in thermo-nuclear dust. Oh sure, Qom, Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Shiraz. I'm not really sure what will be left but it will be highly radioactive. What exactly makes the idiots who run Iran think that Bibi Netanyahu is going to soak up the first hit with an atomic weapon? Who could fail to remember the wars against Israel? Bibi is Maggie Thatcher and Golda Meir on testosterone.

My standing orders from COMIDEASTFOR and the NCA in the Persian Gulf over 30 years ago let me shoot first if I thought an attack was imminent because the enemy displayed hostile intent. The orders went so far as to order me to not suck up the first strike. In 1984 we weren't concerned about retaliating against Iran, we were going to see to it that the attacker died trying. That's what all the press agony was about when Vincennes terminated an apparent attack after we fought a major sea battle against Iran in 1988. Admittedly, you didn't notice but we destroyed a significant fraction of their navy in an afternoon after they stupidly attacked USS Wainwright about 11 miles from me.

I was there.  NOBODY  ignored warnings to change course and shear off. That would inevitably lead to death. When Saudi or UAE air defense issued a warning on IAD and MAD, pilots all over the Gulf responded with emphatic cries that they were changing course.

Obama doesn't have the gonads to attack Iran but most of the rest of the world is forced to conclude that Iran is not giving them any choice in the matter and they are ready. . . now. We were ready then.

We Are Ready Now

AMUSING

I'm sure the good general does not find it at all amusing.

From the duffleblog, where else.

YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO COMMENT

I get a kick out of the places that order me to log in to comment. It goes without saying that I don't. I'm just not compliant.

DEEP DEEP IN THE DARKNESS

Do you know where your children are?

I must stand and ask the question.

...they little knew nor cared... but I care.

Planned parenthood doesn't hover at the evil abyss, it actively dwells on the far side of evil.

LAYERED POLYMERS AND THE NEED FOR SPEED

 I got to looking at the arm tonight. It's fibre-glass. It's a layered polymer. As I contemplated it, it struck me that it could use a rudder, tiller, centerboard and a mast with a small sail. It has been a long time since my last competitive sail When I was truly young I qualified for the Laser Nationals in San Francisco. I was 15 at the time and tied for 3rd in the Southeastern regionals. Open invite to compete at the national level. I parted with 14747 most reluctantly. I sailed her to Angel Island a few times but it was nowhere near as lethal as the world championships that year and it was decades later when I was older and wiser.

LEFT HANDEDNESS

Serious readers will remember a picture similar to this not more than 4 weeks ago. That picture showed the effects of 1000 degree bacon fat splashed on the epidermis. I've protected the dermis by breaking  the underlying wrist..... a month ago. Today, I returned to the hospital after my X-rays yesterday showed that yes, it was indeed quite broken and they did this to me. I think there is something very wrong with my pain meter. On the gripping hand, gout exposes one to the real meaning of unbearable pain.

I also like the book. It was the text for docents at the Smithsonian when they opened the Human Origins Exhibit.

In my case, burned, broken and neglected

MISS EMILLY LETITIA SPEAKS

I don't know what happened to the Weekly Standard but it looks like they fired all of their copy editors.

You know it's that or one of our Jimmy Carter/Clinton appointed ambassadors is an idiot and the Weekly Standard derived sadistic pleasure from quoting him:

I never considered the chastity of my cars. I always considered them sans peur et sans reproche. Kerry on the other hand is a sad pathetic liar who only has 5 times the integrity of Hillary Clinton. It's important to keep in mind that we are multiplying a zero.

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

EUROPEAN CHILDREN'S HOUR

I logged into my blog today and got this announcement that I really must share with you.

Those of us born in Germany must stick with the narrative and enforce our policies on all.  Zum befehl!!

I write in English with a little bit of french and latin thrown in. I'll be damned if I can recall writing in German.

Screw the EU.

COMPROMISE

I remember a book I read long ago. It was filled with advice and guidance for getting on in life. It never discussed pragmatism and compromising one's moral beliefs simply to avoid a legal tussle. Perhaps the next imprint will describe the circumstances where it is OK to simply turn into an invertebrate and compromise your most basic principles. Good job, men.

WAR AGAINST THE BASE

I'm going to laugh out loud when Donald Trump wins the GOP Primary. So far he is the only one of the candidates who resonates with 24% or more of the primary voters. There are others I like more but the entrance of royalty has dimmed their chances since it is true, many republican voters are stupid and easily fall for the infallible Bush name.

It makes me wonder if many republican leaders fear assassination and so openly openly despise their voters in order to go along and get along and live to celebrate a rich retirement from government service. What other explanation can there be for men to work so hard and labor so unremittingly to destroy this country's foundation with unrestricted immigration, corruption and mismanagement?

GHASTLY FASCIST INVERTEBRATE

Gentle reader, my ears were assailed today by a unique description of King Edward VIII. A plummy British voice on NPR described King and Emperor Edward VIII as a ghastly fascist invertebrate. I thought it was amusing because if there's one thing pushy, edgy demanding fascists are, it is pushy. They very strongly believe in standing up to crush your rights even if they have to kill every single one of you. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently interesting and entertaining that I left the car running with the A/C on and 12 year old birthday girl fast asleep in the passenger seat while I listened to the end.

ANOTHER MODEST PROPOSAL

This article describes a problem and offers a solution. It involves how Americans vote. Modern Americans were fluffed into buying complex voting machines that inexplicably cast votes for the democrats even if the voter had the damned nerve to vote rethuglican. It's an endless mystery why these machines never 'accidently' cast votes for republicans. Nobody knows why.

I have a modest proposal of my own. I agree that we should use only paper ballots. I think that each ballot should be a 3 x 5 index card and the voter can use both sides to 'write' the name and office for each office he is voting for and simply list any ballot propositions by their letter or number, leaving out those that he or she is not voting for.

It goes without saying that votes only count if the voter manages to spell the name of their candidate and the office properly. If they can't do something that simple, they don't deserve to be counted. To preclude outright massive fraud, the index cards would have embossed seals and be issued, one to each voter as they arrive at the polls.

Some might wonder at the war tag for this post. It's simple; if war is politics by other means, it follows that politics is war by other means.

IF ONLY TEDDY HAD CHOSEN WISELY

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.

MCCAIN DEMOCRATS STRIKE AGAIN

I've had enough of the Senate and House leadership. Will nobody rid us of these doormat democrats masquerading as republicans?

SPOT THE RACISSSSSSS

10 points for the first person to spot 5 racists in the photo below.

Demonizing the Dead Serves Little Purpose

I think we have to draw a line or someday the Park Service really will dynamite Mount Rushmore and we'll be no better than the Taliban at Bamiyan. We have problems we cannot talk about that require fixing and digging up the past and tarring it and feathering it serves no purpose.

DRUDGE FUN

I really enjoy the Drudge juxtaposition. Nobody does it like him.

CHOICES

The ineptocrats are playing a game with us. They think that they hold the dominant position because, after all, they are the government. On the other hand, they're inept. Why is it that when the Chinese want data and information of ours they can simply hack the U.S. government and steal it? Why can't Americans hack all government computers and put all the files online for American citizens to access? It isn't theft because the information belongs to us. Even all that stuff about privacy and penalties is so much BS since you never ever see any government worker or contractor prosecuted for misplacing every scrap of personal information on 21 million Americans.

You see how one gradually comes around to Snowden's point of view. The inept bureaucrats with much to hide have taken hiding information to new depths. This morning I read an article in the Washington Post written by hack there who found no credible basis to question Trump's medical deferments during the Vietnam War but who thought it was very important to point out that questions were raised about his actual medical condition at the time. Questions nobody at the Post or NYT ever raised about any democrats running for office.

The Post hack was somewhat distressed that all of the information collected and collated by the Draft Boards was promptly destroyed when this country ended the practice of drafting its young men and sending them off to fight in Vietnam. The people responsible for gathering it all promptly destroyed it all. Kind of like every single document in Obama's lifetime paper trail. Transcripts? College Records? Law Review articles? You know, little things like his SSN from a state in which he never lived or worked.

Shall we play a game?
CPE1704TKS

There are few choices:
-Hack our own computers
-global thermonuclear war
-nuke it from orbit
-expect the "most transparent administration in history" to comply with the law.

What is it about democrats that they have to make almost no effort to completely mask their past because their operatives with bylines won't even bother to look beyond the veil and would never dream of tearing down the curtain and exposing the wizard? They leap to make up dirt on rethuglicans and publish it even before vetting it but can't be bothered to research their pals.

At dinner tonight there were nine of us. One is too young to count but six of our company were shocked when I told them that the man they were belittling as stupid and a man with no chance at all of winning the party nomination was actually outpolling all 15 of his rivals in the GOP race and with 24% of the republican electorate, the clear leader with almost double the percentage of eligible voters backing the number 2 candidate.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about it. The real republicans are sick and tired of the fakers and I would have thought the fakers learned that when Cantors own voters repudiated the RINO House Majority Leader in the last election. Cantor and Boehner were content to slither on and let the democrats and progressives set the agenda. The rest of us are tired of them.

THE TRUE OPTIMISTS

Today we went to the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center. It was my fourth trip. I learn something new with each visit. Optimists are sometimes nice to have around. They provide comic relief.

Space Shuttle DISCOVERY at the Udvar-Hazy Center

ARMED RECRUITERS

There is a bit of a hue and cry for the Pentagon to arm the recruiters scattered like buckshot throughout the nation in cities large and small. What some people appear to have forgotten is that any recruiter who carried a gun onto any school campus would wish that he had instead staggered drunk into a Tijuana bar waving a pistol while shouting, 'Viva Estados Unidos de América!' Guns aren't allowed on school property.

I've gone through the drill with the USMC on weapons any number of times. It is no simple matter to construct an armory that meets the specification so it is hard to imagine that recruiters will have a lock box they can put their weapons in before heading out everyday to the local high schools and colleges. That won't fly, float, swim or skydive.

It's not like recruiters sit around their plush offices waiting for young men and women to beat a path to their door. No. They have to go out there and beat the bushes every single day. Knowing some recruiters, they probably look at getting shot at as a mild improvement to getting reamed by headquarters for failing to meet quota.

I wouldn't be a recruiter if my life depended on it. It's a very tough job. YMMV.

UNCOMMON VALOR WAS A COMMON VIRTUE

Today we drove by the memorial on the way to Fort Myer. On the way home we stopped and walked around it. The last time I remember doing that I was the same age as my daughter. There were few visitors. Half of them were like me; instructing their children on what the memorial is and what it stands for and the rest of them looked like men who had climbed Mount Suribachi.

IWO JIMA MEMORIAL 20 JULY 2015

JOURNEY TO SPACE

If you live near an Imax theater. Keep your eyes peeled for Journey To Space 3D. We saw it at the IMAX in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. It was amazing. It was hard to believe how many of the video clips I've inserted here over the years were filmed in 3D. When I get home I'll have to look at them again with my 3D glasses on.

It's hard to believe  how huge the solar system is and yet how small it would be if we had continuous boost engines to take us to planets far away.

Still on walkabout.