STUPID AND PREDICTABLE

I listened to NPR today and read the news and it looks like the media is once again in full cover and deception mode for the administration and allowing the President and all of his non-media spokesmen to lie their heads off about Healthcare.gov and how all the problems are fixed and its all better now and everything is good to go. They're lying.

It's amazing to me how they rely so deeply on the ignorant voters who pull the lever for stupidity every single time. The vile and odious thing is how the media is slavishly lapping it up and passing it along to the stupid when anybody with 2 brain cells can see what is going to happen next month. Millions of people lost their insurance because Obamacare made their insurance policies unlawful. The policies were canceled effective 31 December in accordance with the Democratic Party's Law.

In January, the people with no insurance who enrolled on Healthcare.gov for replacement insurance are going to find that the "backend" of the program never worked and that they DON'T have any insurance after all. The code failed to communicate the policies to the insurers. The government and media aren't just lying about how 4 diplomats were murdered in Libya in the dark. They're lying about millions and millions of people losing health insurance. As it becomes clear that the people who enrolled at the government's web site don't actually have policies it will come out.

I know why Obama is doing it. He's going to blame the insurance companies. I'm sure he's already got the speech written where he condemns the evil bastards for letting Americans twist in the wind without insurance because they are greedy.

INVENTION'S GRANDMOTHER

If necessity is the mother of invention then war is the mother of necessity. It's hard to see what circumstances made this look like a good idea.

20 YEARS OF PROGRESS ON THE POCKET FRONT

You know if the government decided to launch a massive effort to miniaturize all the big toys of my college days so that all of them together would fit in my pocket today, I'm pretty sure the government would have sent along a 4 cubic foot pocket with their new device.

Progress. In spite of government.

MEMENTOS OF WAR AND FATHERS

I was reading today over at The Mellow Jihadi and one of the posts there struck a chord. It was an article about the family of a brave soldier of the Great War who had left behind his medals after his death. His son wrote and said that his children didn't want them and that was why he was putting them up for sale. There was outrage that the children didn't want them. I don't see why.

There are a lot of medals in my family. We've been doing the military thing since before this was a country. My grandfather's medals were nicely mounted in a velvet backed picture frame by his wife after he died. They look pretty good. These days they hang on the wall in one of my parents guest rooms. My younger brother has asked to have them when my parents are done with them.

My father has a number of medals but his are kept just like mine are: out of the way and stuffed in a box.

The few times I wore a uniform in the last 15 years that allowed the wearing of ribbons I only wore three of them. The rest accumulated in the box I bought as an Ensign in Karachi in 1984.

When I went back to San Diego to sort through all that remained I came very close to leaving mine behind. I don't wear them and don't ever expect to wear them again. I never got around to actually mounting most of the later ones because the only time I ever wore them was at weddings. I don't think that they're anything my daughter might want because, if we're honest, the mementos that anyone has from previous generations are the things one's mother saved and passed down.

In my family, I expect mementos of my father will be some some photos, guns, swords, medals and the memories of a truly amazing man who engaged in a lifetime of learning and love for his family. I wouldn't ask for more.

UNIONS: DETROITING FAST FOOD FOR YOU

I don't eat the stuff anymore but I still don't think that the option should be forever foreclosed by the same idiots and imbeciles that brought us Detroit and most of the cities in doomed California.  Seriously, a basic firefighter in LA makes $188,000 per year and can expect to spend 3.2 years sitting outside an Emergency Room with a buddy, tying up an ambulance that cannot respond to other 911 calls because Union.

Entry Level Jobs are for Kids! Not people raising kids.

FOOLS AMUSING THE KING

I am not a Townhall subscriber but their stuff does make it over the transom from time to time as a result of my incredibly wide ranging reading problem. This item today by Michael Barone struck me as wonderful.

How is it possible that Barack Obama did not know that his beloved healthcare.gov website was a botch? That's a question many thoughtful people (including thoughtful Democrats) are asking.

We heard him say that he wouldn't have boasted that it would be as easy to use as amazon.com or obitz.com had he known that it wouldn't. I'm not "stupid enough," he said at his Nov. 14 press conference. Most Americans agree that's true.

What I heard from his own people in the White House was that the president reads only the New York Times which makes him about as well informed on any topic as your average Progressive voter.

A SECRET WHIFF OF SCANDAL

There has been a commotion in the ocean of late over the Navy allowing itself to be overcharged for services provided by contractors in ports overseas. The Navy is working hard to convince us that the Navy first noticed that it was paying what the contractors demanded as the going rate for services such as trash removal, refueling, potable water, liberty launches, sewage disposal, etc in the Far East. It appears that this scandal was perpetuated by a lone Malaysian contractor who somehow held guns to the heads of every officer on the 7th Fleet Staff and corrupted them into sending ships into ports for liberty and to refuel and top off fresh fruit and vegetables so the sailors didn't collapse from scurvy and rickets and beri beri, thoughtless low-life bastard that he is. He got away with his evil machinations for many years before somebody smelled a rat 4 years ago. [Gads the Navy is on thieves like a bolt of lightning]

The perps appear to be lonely officers of the Line who had the awesome responsibility to pick ports all over the Far East to play host for a day or three for Navy ships and sailors to take their ease, just for a bit, during the never ending long war on terror. These men were senior commanders and captains and the Navy has been firing them left and right. They even roped in the Director of Naval Intelligence and his operational commander, both, admirals of the line.

Oddly enough, it is the Navy's contracting and auditing arm that selects the Contractors who get used by the Navy when it pays port calls in various regions of the world. So far, nobody in this part of the Navy is accountable for the fact that they selected the companies the USN does business with. In the Far East this was a man called Fat Leonard. This loathsome spotty soul was lured to San Diego with false pretenses by the forces of Order who immediately jailed him and refused him bail on the likely assumption that he wouldn't hesitate to shake the dust of such a lost to law land and skip to Mexico for further movement onwards to Malaysia and home.

Yesterday, the forces of Order determined that the Contractor given these contracts in the Middle East is also overcharging the Navy after decades of close observation and paying the bills submitted by this other loathsome low-life company.

One of the officers that Order has roped in is a captain at my old duty station who used to be the XO on USS BLUE RIDGE. I remember being ordered to attend the Level III Anti-Terrorism training for COs. It was held over 2 days at the Navy Amphibious Base, Coronado, CA where one of the featured moderators was the XO of USS BLUE RIDGE. He told us that we had to adopt more aggressive ATFP postures and plan our port calls more carefully and with an eye on preserving the ship from attack. This training was provided in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the USS COLE in Yemen where some absolute idiot ordered it to stop for fuel rather than across the Red Sea in Djibouti, a port internationally famous as a place where NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.

The XO got up alongside one of the senior interrogators of the terrorist bomber captured in Yemen and spoke about putting up a waterborne barrier of floats around the 7th Fleet Flagship when it pulled into some little port nobody ever heard of. That cheesy barrier cost $450,000 for 3 days of use. The XO's immediate superior in command signed off on that necessary force protection expense without demur because it was 'necessary' and because that guy was also a 3 star admiral and Commander, 7th Fleet. The XO continued to list the necessary security expenses that his ISIC routinely approved and they were enormous to my mind. The Commanding Officer of one of the larger amphibious ships asked the XO what the rest of us were supposed to do when we had to take these security measures/expenses out of our operating budgets and didn't have the nearly infinitely deep pockets of all 7th Fleet to pay for our security expenses on deployment. The moderators said that that sounded like a personal problem.

So anyhow, the Chief of Naval Operations isn't questioning the expenses or the necessity of the expenses many long years after the services were requested and paid for. He isn't concerned with whether or not they were necessary. He isn't concerned that the officers summarily relieved of their duties and tarnished forever are innocent of any crime other than using the duly selected Husbanding Agent of the USN overseas. Nope. He does not appear to be any more concerned with that than he is in finding out who approved those contractors as the sole source providers of logistical support to the United States Navy.

The funny thing to my mind though is going to be when they turn their gimlet eye on the hideous out of control outrageous costs and fees demanded by those who provide the same logistical services to the USN's ships in their own home ports. They might look at how much Public Works charges for a crane or to rent a passenger van. They might even look at how much shipyards charge for the same sorts of support.

Then there will be Hell to pay.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Read it all and weep for a future that will envy the dead.

At this point we are already guaranteed to be the laughing stock of the future, for having entertained this nonsense for even a single year. A cautionary tale of mass hysteria, comparable to the witch-burners or the millenarian doom-cults, all the more so because we were more technologically advanced and fancied ourselves so superior to them.

 When one does read the emails of climate gate at the link and think about it, the global warming scam is just exactly like the Salem Witch Trials and the later vicious and divorced from reality day-care prosecutions of poor innocents.

The idiots that brought us Obamacare and "Peace" with Iran are working tirelessly to implement meaningful changes to the civilized world that will end the Industrial Era. They are not creating a hell on earth. They are trying to make the rest of the world look like Zimbabwe....for our own good.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Not tired

MAY BE LAST CHANCE TO SEE

Comet ISON rounding the nearest star on Thanksgiving afternoon at a distance of 750,000 miles from the sun. If it makes it around OK it will be huge as it heads outbound to the Oort Cloud.

Those of us basking in the dull red glow of the underlit storm clouds around Pittsburgh will probably strike out again.

(Credit: NASA/MSFC/Aaron Kingery)

ARE YOU A WITCH?

Democratic congressman unsure so he asks the Administrator of Obamacare at the IRS if she is a witch. Unwilling to take no for an answer he persevered and demanded to know if she has been consorting with the devil.

Rep. Gerry Connolly(D-VA) demands to know if she is a witch

I don't have to make this stuff up. These Democratic guys are a hoot.

MEET THE PURITANS OF PLYMOUTH

We sometimes think of Plymouth's Puritan Colony as some lonely and bleak outpost of England when in fact it was nothing of the sort. It was merely bleak. Once there was another little bit of England being nurtured nearby by others of a different philosophical bent.

Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than these Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the corn-field till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of psalms. Wo to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole.*

*Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Maypole of Merry Mount

After the good people of Plymouth devastated and looted the colony, the founder of Mount Wollastan (Merry Mount was the Puritan name given the place) was dragged to Plymouth, placed in the stocks and given a mock trial after which he was marooned on the Isle of Shoals. Oddly enough, that is the very place that the good people of somewhere elected to build a monument to the first Englishman to land upon the Isles, Captain John Smith (yes, the Pocahontas one).

This stereo view picture of the monument is taken from: seacoastnh.com

I don't believe I'd like any of the good people of the Plymouth Colony. I imagine all their neighbors found them something of a trial and burden.

By the way, when viewed with a stereoscope, the picture above leaps into 3D just like the movies!

THE TRUTH SIMPLY ISN'T IN THEM

Iran's Foreign Minister announced today that the White House is lying. Quotes from The Washington Free Beacon.

“What has been released by the website of the White House as a fact sheet is a one-sided interpretation of the agreed text in Geneva and some of the explanations and words in the sheet contradict the text of the Joint Plan of Action, and this fact sheet has unfortunately been translated and released in the name of the Geneva agreement by certain media, which is not true,” Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham told the Iranian press on Tuesday.

Afkham and officials said that the White House has “modified” key details of the deal and released their own version of the agreement in the fact sheet.

Iran’s right to enrich uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon, is fully recognized under the draft released by Tehran.

What kind of idiot and moron and dishonest scoundrel puts out a translation that cannot and will not survive contact with the enemy?

You're not surprised. I can see it from here. I cannot think of anything put out by the White House staff or its resident that wasn't a complete lie when examined for truthfulness.

I DON'T BELIEVE THEM EITHER

According the the High Minister of Truth at Slate, all the attacks wherein gangs of urban youths cull members of undiversified main body and viciously attack them and knock them to the ground in a sort of gang-mob against 1 unsuspecting person kind of attack, simply doesn't exist. The Ministry of Truth reports,

A column on Slate.com reports that while the game does exist, there is no hard data to support the notion that it is a growing trend that has reached epidemic levels. It also refutes the suggestion by some news organizations that some of the attacks have been racially motivated.

The Slate piece makes reference to another piece on the patheos.com website that says, "Nobody seems to have any evidence that it's spreading, or that it's new, or that it's racially motivated."

The piece continues, "Most sources claim that it is spreading, and a number of sources claim that it is racially motivated. But how do they know? Where are they getting their data from?"

Some people rather suspect that the vicious unwarranted attacks have been going on in certain areas for a lifetime or longer but have not been reported upon previously by the Ministry of Truth. Those bastards are currently being hunted down by the forces of Law and Order and will be punished severely.

TRAIN TAKES A BULLET

A California Superior Court judge has ruled that the impossible train is stalled for now. Something about violating the law. I can't help but think of the impact of a bullet train in California where people have become used to doing exactly as they like. I think it would look a bit like this disaster except the train would be half a mile from the tracks before catching fire after some twit gets a school bus stuck on the rails.

The California high-speed train is being built by the Progressive Kleptocracy of California. I'm sure they won't let a trifle like law or a lack of financing stop them from building their track. The people deserve it.

THEY BETTER ARM THEMSELVES

REPOSTED and UPDATED

Our intentions have been revealed for all to see now. And now the Saudis will reveal that they have their own nuclear weapon stockpile compiled one warhead and bomb at a time from the wreckage of the USSR. Everything there is for sale and the Saudis have a lot of dollars.

The United States has genuine friends in the Middle East. I hope that they are gearing up for a major regional war without us. I think for a number of years those who went out of their way to ally with the US did so primarily because they viewed Iran as their major and most implacable enemy. Iraq and Saddam dreamed of being the reborn satrap of the Ottoman Empire and wanted Kuwait back in the fold but Persia was worse. From a geopolitical point of view she was very much the lion in the room and she has historic claims to the Persian Gulf and everything around it and Persians are not Arabs. Those were the good old days.

For many decades Persia has been actively waging a religious fueled and driven attack on all the Sunni emirates and Kingdoms. She has actively engaged in systematic destabilization of the State using religious means. Clausewitz would have fun with that one. If war is diplomacy by other means, what is using religious hysteria as an extension of diplomacy? Iran has been attacking all of the rest of the Middle East using its religious supremacy of the Shia muslims to goad them to overthrow the Sunni rulers and join the islamic caliphate as another islamic republic. Sort of like how the Soviet Union running the Communist International used liberals to overturn the rational leaders of the world community and become a Soviet Republic. It was very hard on the rationalists, starting with the countries of Eastern Europe. In Africa and Asia the COMINTERN used nationalism to overthrow the remains of imperial rule and then destroy the stability of whole continents.

Saudi Arabia seems like a backward and inward facing region to people that haven't been there. That's largely because it appears to give that impression. It's not at all what people in the West think. One might say the same thing about Bahrain and Kuwait and some would say it about the United Arab Emirates and Oman. What liberals fail to see is that all of those countries are very stable and well governed. In each of them the ruling family and the ruling class decided early on to hold the line on civilization and power-sharing.

They didn't fail to note that civilization itself suffered wherever in the world power-sharing was applied either by the liberals or the nationalists who fell sway to the COMINTERN. The COMINTERN had only one purpose and that was to create satraps of the Soviet Union. In the Middle East, Iran was using the Shia to overthrow stability, toss the country into chaos and then use religious fundamentalism to destroy the state and become an islamic republic.

I think it is very clear now that nobody in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world can rely upon the United States for diplomatic or military support. This is a struggle that they will have to deal with with their own resources or turn into another Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Gaza. They knew that decades ago when they agreed to band together after the first Gulf War. As Shia violence ramped up to topple the government in Bahrain the US did nothing but the Saudis sent in heavily armed troops and shots were fired and people thrown in jail.

The gloves came off in response to both the violence in Bahrain and the Arab Spring. They accept that if government cracks and lets the mob win it will destroy the state. They've seen it now with their own eyes and there is only solution. Violence will be countered with violence and repression and if you're a violent person seeking to overthrow the state you have just two remaining options, death or imprisonment.

Here in the west the liberals are going to whine about the death and imprisonment and seek to 'end the misery' and 'get the government to negotiate power-sharing agreements.' Well I think the remaining Arab rulers know that simply isn't a realistic option anymore, not with these people.

So the question is, what are we going to do to all the religious, hysteric, government and authority hating zealots created by Persia? Because another option would be to deport them. Does anyone on earth want them?

IT'S ONLY A TEST

Direct from the front lines in the Drug War, a horrible story about vicious cold blooded thuggery. Why is it so easy to believe that the judge and State sentenced this vicious criminal who ruined thousands of lives to serve just 3-5 years?

FOOL'S WAR

The New York Times notes that there is now an agreement signed by President Obama between the Obama administration and Head Taliban spokesman Karzai, requiring the United States to retain 8000-12000 soldiers in Afghanistan for another 10 years. The soldiers are there to administer the $4 billion that the US pledges to send to the Taliban every year for the next 10 years.

It will sail to ratification in the Democrat controlled Senate where Harry Reid will ensure that it receives a good solid majority vote in the Senate. So Democrats have signed us up as advisers only, for another interminable war of their own making.

It's interesting to me that the Pact will sort of almost kind of protect American service men and women from facing tribal justice administered by enemies of civilization but leaves all our contractors over there swinging in the breeze. I'm not posting that image but keep it in mind.

That's the Taliban covering our soldier's backs for another 10 years while our contractors go to jail for life if they cross the Talibani running the new Afghan Islamic Republic. Our soldiers deserve better leaders.

CONSTITUTION MUM ON AIR RAIDS

I suppose everybody in the world except me saw this when it was first aired back in September.

Whoever came up with it I think is brilliant. It absolutely captures the liberal belief that absent boots on the ground we didn't really mean to go to war when we dropped high explosives on you. This is something that the United States does every single day of the week somewhere in the world. But you know know that, otherwise you would not have voted to declare war on Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Eritra, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Lebanon et al. I remain surprised Obdurate Imbecility didn't do it to Syria. Yet.

COASTAL RIVERINE GROUP ONE

I wondered what Coastal Riverine Group ONE does and now I learn from military.com that they are in charge of port and harbor security in San Diego. How the mighty are fallen. Once upon a time, when they were known as

they did port and harbor security all over the world except Europe and parts of the east coast of the United States.

Back then they were an expeditionary security force and mostly left the security of San Diego port and harbor to the Harbor Police and the Coast Guard.

Oh well, things change and if its just coastal and riverine I suppose they can't get much beyond Point Loma on a good day.


UPDATE:
Rainbow Warrior arrived for a visit in San Diego Sunday. You remember her right? She received the unfavorable attentions of French divers while in port.

GOOGLE 5OTH ANNIVERSARY OF DR WHO

If you visit google today and click on the icon it will take you off to play a game with Dr Who and the Tardis. Enjoy.

FACEBOOK

Well, whatever brought you here, welcome. I have absolutely no idea why 152 people elected to come here direct from facebook and can't seem to find what generated it. It may have had something to do with Neptunus Lex but at this point that's just a guess. If you know, share.

Have a look around. Kick the tires. Comment if you like.

STAND YOUR GROUND

I missed posting about this, but duty lasts forever.

A story about a pair of ordinary Marines who stood their ground. It is so very worth the reading.

WHAT TOXIC POLITICS MEANT TO SAY

One cannot listen to NPR in the 21st century without the air being polluted by their talk of toxic politics in Washington. They have guest after guest on who heaps criticism and spews hatred of Republicans for creating, operating and maintaining a toxic political atmosphere that keeps the good people of the People's Democratic Party from enacting more Constitution gutting legislation that takes away your rights and gives them all to bureaucrats. I'm heartily sick of it.

The underlying presumption of the pseudo-intellectuals at NPR is that government is about compromise and that all must compromise in order to achieve what the majority want. Maybe that's what it is to them. They, for instance, are enthusiastic supporters of Venezuala's king, dictator-for-life, tyrant president who has compromised with his opposition by looting them of all they have in the name of the people. You see the same thing in Argentina, Mozambique, South Africa, most of Europe and of course, right here. Some drank the acid of Marxism and others slurped up the idiocy of Keynesian economics and transformed it in vile ways and never a peep of complaint from the neo-falangists at NPR.

I'll throw in some analogies. Take them for what you will. How exactly was it beneficial for the States and Congress to compromise for so many decades on the issue of slavery? Those who opposed slavery did so out of sincere belief and those that favored slavery also acted out of sincere belief. We had from them the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Do you feel repulsed by that or should the nation have torn itself apart over States Rights in 1820?

The lowly state of weapons technology, limited manpower and the lack of railroads would have significantly reduced the number of casualties before the South burned Washington DC to the ground and declared victory. It's amusing to think that Andrew Jackson, the slave-owning President from Tennessee and founder of the Democratic Party, could have thrown the first torch into the White House. He never hesitated to shoot men with whom he could see no compromise and launched the Trail of Tears that sent a whole people into exile.

Slavery was a toxic issue upon which men compromised because Constitution. There are other life-defining issues that will not permit men of good conscience to seek compromise because Penumbras. You may put your own names to some of them but one with which I strongly agree is, no taxation without representation. It is utterly foreign to me how this country and most of the rest of the world have decided to saddle future generations with enormous debts that pay for the foolish blandishments of a today, none of which will last until tomorrow except the debts which look like they'll last forever.

Evolution of America   courtesy of wikipedia 



PS Look at the size of the original colonies and also the Indian Territory.

A NEW GAME

Yeah, the media says it's new but I think not. What I found interesting was this story. I've never seen a story that had just 19 comments but one of them has been given an up arrow of agreement/approval over 4900 times. The 19 comments seem to capture the attitude of everybody who has seen the story without need for further embellishment. How often does that happen?

Random vicious attacks on defenseless people by van loads of murderous thugs. That's terrorism. There's plenty of room in Gitmo isn't there?