An interesting story about a man. I do hope that for once NPR got it right and proper.

Friends remember Washington state social worker Alan Naiman as being frugal. He wore old shoes held together with duct tape, bought his apparel at the grocery store, drove jalopies and ate at cheap restaurants. But when he died of cancer in January 2018, at age 63, the people around him learned that he had quietly saved millions for a higher cause.

Naiman left most of his $11 million estate to organizations serving abandoned, impoverished, sick and disabled children.

The organizers cancel womens march due to overwhelmingly white participants in Eureka. I find that odd because even if all 3 black women who live in Eureka showed up it would still be a mostly pale  sort of parade. Have they considered asking Soros for a couple of busloads of pregnant Mexicans and maybe a double handful of ebola bearing lasses from the Congo?

The Wall Street Journal is asking for some noble rats to out themselves in the Trump White House and bring down the wrath of Trump and most of his supporters, in an effort to get somebody truthy and honest enough appearing to pitch the manure out of the way and show us the unvarnished President as he fulfills his roles as President and Commander-in-Chief. They allowed as how so far the only people we've heard from have been low down dirty dumb rats or anonymous sources trying to have their post-White House cake and stay employed in this White House.

I would ask where was their passion to find out what Obama was up to when he failed to show up anywhere while our ambassador to Libya was being murdered in Benghazi. Where was their concern about the Clinton Foundation and all the wayward donations that supposedly were raised for relief operations in Haiti but which yielded no relief there.

I am trying to imagine the kind of person the WSJ would find credible if he destroyed his future employment operations by blabbing about his boss to the press. I say "he" advisedly since the women who 'come forward' trying to destroy or discredit this man or his nominees seem to have a tiny little problem telling fact from fantasy and it shows.

One of the things I find reassuring about President Trump is that I don't ever see him pulling a 'Wag the Dog' kind of war to deflect attention from nefarious acts like Obama did time and again. It would be nice if he pulled all of our troops out of Africa. Americans simply have no idea how big that place is and just how futile it is to accomplish anything meaningful with even 20,000 soldiers there doing whatever futile thing it is that AFRICOM has them doing.

One of the most impressive things I find about President Trump is his complete adherence to the words first written by Sir Philip Sidney a very long time ago. I have them over there in the right hand column. "I seek no better warrant than my own conscience."

President Trump unilaterally declared our involvement in the Syrian War to be over. We are done and we are bringing our soldiers home. This was met with universal howls of disapproval from all the usual sources including democrats and some republicans, diplomats, State Department clowns, European foreign ministers and NPR. It was quite a resounding clap of disdain for his decision which is kind of funny because at one stroke he paralyzed a number of future wars in their tracks.

We got involved in Syria because the deep state remnants of Obama and Clinton argued that we had a role to play there in our ongoing war on ISIS. I think Trump bought their arguments then but has since reconsidered and for some very good reasons.

1. As Mattis recently said, Syria is "a forever war." There is no achievable end that can be foreseen.
2. As conditions on the ground change in the north we risk direct conflict with two major middle eastern powers.
3. We already killed hundreds of Russian troops in their last attack in the north and are likely to be involved in direct combat with Russia for the first time since 1919. We can live very well without that particularly since there is nothing to gain by making war with Russia.
4. By being perceived as supporting the PKK and Peshmerga in their continued resistance to ISIS and arming them but not allying with them we open ourselves up to direct combat operations against a fellow NATO country, Turkey and again, for no benefit to ourselves or NATO.

The stakes are extremely high if we continue our involvement in an utterly meaningless war. Nobody on this continent gives a damn if Bashar al Assad remains president of Syria and why should anybody here care? There are no geopolitical or political/military justifications for maintaining any forces in Syria or engaged in Syria.

All of the above applies equally to Afghanistan. It is a worthless shithole and I'm sorry for the men and women who died there and for their families. It was wrong to invade and then to stay and try to build a nation/state out of mud and slime. The place hasn't changed for a thousand years and won't change for another thousand years. Our number one stated purpose was to get Al Qaida and for 15 years our "ally" Pakistan hid him right next door to their military academy. Why would they do that one asks? Well, likely because we poured billions into Pakistan to let us use their ports and roads to supply our forces in Afghanistan and bribe them for continued access. Their They're evil, not stupid.

I think that we, as a nation, are done with forever wars. It's a great pity it has taken us 17 years of futile effusions of blood and treasure to realize that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to move, though, to foreign policy where you do seem to be aligned with the President. You've been on a tweet storm this morning saying, President's decision to pull out of Syria and cut our troop presence in Afghanistan in half, you said "the entire foreign policy establishment of Washington, DC, who two years ago were swearing Trump was going to start multiple nuclear wars. Now they're mad because he is stopping two wars. How about you just admit you hate the President, love war and have been wrong for the last twenty years on every part of foreign policy?" Who are you referring to because the defense secretary and the top diplomat handling ISIS both resigned over these decisions? 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: You know, I think that we should look at some of the statements of the people who are advocating that we stay in Afghanistan forever and that we also stay now in Syria with no sort of determined end. General Mattis, even General Mattis said that there's no military solution to Syria, and he's also said there's no military solution to Afghanistan. How do you think our young soldiers feel? I have members of my family that are going over there soon, how do you think they feel being sent to Afghanistan when your generals are saying there's no military solution? So I think the burden is really on Mattis and others who want perpetual war to explain why if there is no military solution we're sending more troops. I think the onus is really on them to explain themselves. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, on that issue, though, it's not perpetual war, the argument has been from diplomats that you need the credible threat of military force in order to get people to the negotiating table. What is the incentive now in Afghanistan-- 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Well, this is-- 

MARGARET BRENNAN: --or Syria to have any kind of negotiation if there's no leverage? 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: We've been there seventeen years. We think now we are going to take one more village and we'll get a better negotiated deal? Does anybody remember Vietnam-- 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that's what the Trump administration says-- 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: That was the strategy of Vietnam for years after year after year in Vietnam was to take one more village and we'll get a better negotiated deal. No, they waited us out and the Taliban are going to wait us out. They know we will eventually leave and leave we must. I mean I don't think we have enough money to be paying to build and rebuild and build and rebuild Afghanistan. The President is right and I think the people agree with him. Let's rebuild America. Let's spend that money here at home. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, if you accept the premise of what you just laid out here and-- and some people do agree that particularly in Syria, two thousand troops and two dozen diplomats can't make a difference. So if you accept that, though, if you look at what the defense secretary put in his resignation letter, what you're hearing here is-- is concern about how it's being done, about abandoning allies, about not having a process-- 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Yeah. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: --about not being clear-eyed regarding America's enemies. 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: But here's the problem-- I know-- 

MARGARET BRENNAN: How do you respond to that? 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: I know. But here-- here is the problem with all of these generals. They're like, "Oh, it's precipitous." We've been there seventeen years. We've been in the Middle East most of that time. It's not precipitous. The President promised when we went into Syria, our goal was to wipe out ISIS. We took ninety-nine percent of the land, they're on the run, can the people who live there not do anything? We spent trillions of dollars arming the entire Middle East, arming Afghan army, can they not do anything? Do we have to do everything? We defeated ISIS. But now you have the-- the hawks in the administration and throughout Congress saying, "Oh, now we have to wait until Russia and Iran leave Syria." Well, that was never our goal and it's never going to happen. So those people are advocating for perpetual war. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that was the goal articulated by the national security adviser to the President, John Bolton. That is what he said U.S. policy was. 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: It-- it was never the goal-- well, it was never-- that's a new goal. That's what you call mission creep. The mission has now changed, that we're going to wait till Iran leaves and Russia leaves. Well, the President told them that's not his mission and that was never the mission. The mission was to wipe out ISIS and we did succeed. And the thing is it's incredibly bold to win a war and come home. That's what the people want. If you poll the American people, it's sixty to seventy percent of people ready to get out of Afghanistan. And I'll bet you the same of Syria if you ask the people. It's only the people in Washington, the armchair generals, that want to keep us at war forever and people, Americans, are tired of it. We want that money here at home and we want to create jobs, roads, bridges here at home not in Afghanistan. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: The concern raised by people like Brett McGurk who-- who was the President's diplomat handling the anti-ISIS coalition is that if you move out too quickly, if you agree we're going to draw down, at least have a plan on how to do it. At least, do it in a way that doesn't abandon allies. And, in fact, he warned in his resignation letter that this could create a vacuum that would allow terrorist groups like the Islamic State to re-emerge and in other-- other words, we'll have to go back in a few years.
SENATOR RAND PAUL: That will always be true. What-- what-- that-- that statement will always be true. That statement will be true in fifteen years. The place is a mess. I mean, they've been fighting each other for a thousand years. Sunni and Shia have been fighting each other since Battle of Karbala in 832 AD. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is ISIS. 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: They're going to fight each other until the end of time. It's all of them. It's-- it's a inter-complicated mess that has to do with Sunni extremism versus Shia extremism, and also some other various battles in between. But if we wait until there's potent-- no potential for anybody fighting each other when we leave, we will be there forever. But here is what we need to do. And here is the real problem, we have so politicized the relationship with Russia that there isn't a Democrat in the land that is for any kind of negotiation with Russian ally because they know it's an anti-Trump position to be heaping on Russia. Russia is a big player. If we don't talk to Russia about Syria, we will never come to a resolution. Iran is a player. We actually have to talk to Iran about-- 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah. 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: --Syria, as well. Assad is a player. We have-- we can't just say Assad is going to go. He won the war. These people have their head in the sand and they just want to send two thousand troops there. They become a trip wire to a possibility of a much-expanded war involving Russia and Iran. And that would be a huge mistake-- mistake. I don't think the American people want another big war in the Middle East. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: The Pentagon and State Department say there are tens of thousands of ISIS fighters still in Syria. How can you credibly say mission accomplished? Do you think ISIS has been defeated? 

SENATOR RAND PAUL: Right. I think the numbers are wildly inflated and nobody knows. I think there are maybe ten thousand so-called radicals. And these are radicals. They are in Idlib and they are surrounded by Turks, Syrians, Kurds others. And I don't think they're going anywhere. And right now there's not a lot of heated battles going on. But my question is why do American young men and women always have to lay our lives down? To the people of Iraq, are they incapable of doing anything? And here's the thing. Muslims need to ultimately police Muslim lands. When Americans are there and we kill someone who lives there, they see it as a religious affront and they see it as the Pagans have come to take their land and for everyone we kill, we create ten to a one hundred more. So it isn't working. We have-- have supplied them all with money we've given them uniforms we've given them weapons. They need to step up and they need to eradicate these violent people from their midst. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Paul, thank you.

I was reading tonight and ran across a rare case of the federal government playing fair. This doesn't happen all that often and in this case it deserves a bit of a push. 100% disabled veterans can be totally forgiven their student debt/loans and their children's loans but only about 20% of those eligible have taken advantage of the program.

I'm off to the local VA next week for one thing or another and I'll see if I can find out how it's working with the veterans here in metroparkcentralis.

As I wrote earlier. I was out of the country when this was broadcast. Still.



I think that this was,

timeless.

My post about getting to chat with the cops in the park just reminded me of two movies I have to rewatch. I very much enjoyed them and Much Ado About Nothing, so three movies to rewatch.

As with Higgins, I was an old man who was keeping a close eye out for one girl and as with him, got called on it several times. Colonel Pickering.



and this for the kill

Metroparkcentralis is being unusual to a relative newcomer. It keeps producing bats that find me in my Fortress of Solitude. It's getting old.

The first one bit me. There have been uncharming sorts of people who asked why. What can I say? It landed on my bare leg left knee and settled in for a snuggle before I picked it up with the right hand to toss it back out the window. That's when the damned thing bit me.

A few weeks later I found another bat bathing in my bath. Yes, in winter I keep the water as a heat sink and I don't really care if it matters-all the windows were closed and yet there was this bat winging frantically to breathe. I tossed him out of the house.

And just two nights ago, I went to the Central Repository to look up a reference from 2 score years ago and what do I find? Another damned bat snuggling into my diaries. I had to go down 3 flights and out to the garage to find utility gloves that I was pretty sure would stimy even shiny dripping with rabies pointed teeth before I grasped it and tossed it out the window.

You know other communities are bemoaning their loss of bats and the death of their bat flocks. Me? Not so much. Those little bastards are everywhere. They're like flying deer dammit!

She gets it. She wrote about it. As a species we've been around the block a time or two. We share lives and procreate and while a lot of it is beyond my ken, I rather liked this article. If reading it alone brings a long and relaxing backrub in bed into one's life, that is a start but it also sometimes is all that matters, finding someone you can live forever with.



Back when TV started, couples were always portrayed in separate beds. I was friends in the south up north down south in Cali that had totally separate bedrooms. He snored like a grizzly, knew it, and she needed sleep. They still got it on and then retired to neutral corners. For the sleep that was in it.

I'm checking out other ways. That movie with some famous actor who''s name I never remember...Not Al Pacino, the other guy,...."get off my lawn". He knew it.

For a year or so I worked with a seal who liked bananas, a lot for the potassium that was in them because, seal.
He never ever pealed one and ate it like that. Every time he cut off a little piece and put it in his mouth.  I think he watched firefly when the XO told the recruit why the captain always cut up his apples when he ate them.

You know, the socialists don't remember or care how many their leaders sent to the headsmen. They just don't give a damn and they don't believe it even after they are spattered with gore and body parts.

This guy needs killing and so do his followers.

Whenever I ask myself, "where in the freaking world do all the AK47s and their ammo come from, this kind of thing is the answer."

This was amusing. They were a century old group of almost pure volunteers. People joined because they wanted what  Baden-Powell offered them; a chance to slip out of civilization and behave like men in the wilderness for just a little while.

Then they got converged by the social justice warriors who ordered them to take faggots into their young male society in the wilderness and while that was doable under court order they then decided that the society for boys wanting to be men in a wilderness now had to take girls. I'm sure that the more predatory boys that weren't already turned by their gay scoutleaders had no particular problem with that. I mean, girls like to go camping in the woods, sleep in pup tents and go for long walks carrying backpacks with all the stuff young pioneers take into the wilderness. See it all the time.

Once it fell to the social justice types it was doomed. It was merely a matter of time.

This has lain in abeyance while I searched in vain for the instagram page of a gorgeous HM2. She chose to join the navy and climb mountains in the remote and her gram was one any father could be proud of. I regret to say that I lost it and it needs refinding. She's an HM2 but, she's a scout.

Frequent readers, both of you, know that this place pitterpatters on little feet between the beautiful and the sublime. (one free turtle on this blogsite for anybody that gets that reference) In the wider world almost everybody mocks Kant. As a young man riding the trains between DC and URI, I read his book and what I remember was written on the inside front cover of a book thousands of miles away and a decade behind me.

He talked to me about stereotypes and you know all that crap that we were lectured to about how one should not stereotype the truth was pretty simple and any idiot can figure the truth out. Stereotypes are a guide and warning and serve just those two purposes. You wait until you begin to know before you simply tell yourself that those black guys walking behind you late at night on a city street that doesn't really have a lot of foot traffic are friendly. By stereotype, they aren't and that's because they almost never have been. People know that. The race baiting ministers of the left are famous for saying that they would cross the street to avoid their own kind in that kind of situation.

Kant lived in the imperial age and what he wrote about was the French, the Germans, the English from back when those words were racial and could be safely addressed with a pen. They're all pretty meaningless now. You might call them africans or jihadists now.

I mourn the passing of the old world. It had it's moments, but I won't go back again.

For the second time in my life I called the police to make a noise complaint. The non-emergency line of course. As with the last time, the objectionable noise ended in about 2 minutes. Encinitas cops are almost as fast as the locals. I don't call the police lightly. Back when I walked every evening I'd call them about once a month after witnessing some idiot breaking into a car.

I did for me, the normal thing and confronted the noisemaker and he invited me to step off the planet. I'm not so inclined yet. I told him the consequences and he sneered.

As a rule, a sneer is not a good thing.

I kind of regret not keeping even one of my cammo uniforms. OTOH, this is precisely why not one single one of them accompanied me over the Ginnungagap. I still have one of each of the dress versions of others but not ones worn out by protesters who never served a minute in this country's armed forces. As a rule uniforms aren't that scary but to the ones who know, the colorful bit tells a story about the man wearing it.

Oh, Cities in Flight by James Blish is the reference to the end of time.

I actually got actualized to FIREFLY by Lex on his blog. I missed the broadcasts because I was out of the country. I own all of it now but over the last few years I only watched Serenity which is different from Firefly. I'm watching FIREFLY and it is amusing. Just watched the pilot episode. For strength.

And those of you who never roamed the blog of Lex won't have a clue what that means. Tough.

I started this blog and maintain it just for two people. One of you is kind enough to comment from time to time even if I am remiss on commenting on yours.

I think little girls go into fully self absorbed at about 15 and so I won't hear from her for a bit.

I may stop trying to keep open the channel she knows about.

I remember a couple of times when the concerned citizens called the cops about me oggling at the little girls in the park. I didn't hover over her when we went to the parks. I sat on a bench at some of the nearer parks or the grass on the slope of the hill when we went to VG's and the Donut Park. And,
 all things considered, bless them for their vigilance and response.


i didn't marry until i was 42. she came along a year or so later and ....

this picture is from some years later. it always reminds me of a book by David Palmer. Emergence.

He covers the ignorant with nitric acid, explosives and a dead pan delivery. He and Sunny are some of my favorite humorists in the age after Wiley Post and Will Rogers

Press shocked that President Trump isn't asking them to attend his Christmas party at the White House this year. I think it's funny and the only way it could be funnier is if he invited them to the altpress party in Washington's sewers. Srsly, it's like the vapid airheads running the largest news networks in the world just don't get it that their constant, non-stop, incessant attacks on the man largely leave him with a deeper and deeper abiding hatred of them. Srsly?

The decision is hardly shocking, given Trump’s constant attacks on "fake news" and the overwhelmingly negative coverage of him and his administration. In recent weeks, the White House pulled the credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta after he refused to give up the microphone at a news conference and restored his pass only after the network filed a lawsuit.

I haven't even bothered to look but I think President Trump has held roughly 256,000,000 more press conferences in the last two years then both Hillary and obama combined. Where was the press then?

All of a sudden we lost sonar. It's not a big deal unless you're mine hunting with sonar. CIC had repeaters for anything the bridge had. They were right there in front of me and showed that our engines were near their limits for driving the ship backwards. That prop wash completely wipes out sonar at any depth we used in the fields.

This is a science anyone in ice country should know. Unfortunately there is absolutely nobody in charge who teaches it. All those rotten b@stards say, "stay off the ice". As one of them in spades, stay off the ice!


This is a lesson on how to survive being an idiot and falling through the ice

I death rolled a laser about 20 times on the downwind leg of a race under the Throgs Neck Bridge in late November. There was no ice but there sure as hell was a suspicion there would have been if it wasn't thoroughly polluted by New York, New York. I don't even want to think about what kept the surface from forming ice. At least, in Newport, you had a reasonable expectation that the ice you were breathing in Frost Biting was mostly seawater.

Oh sure, looks harmless in summer.

I have done all that can be done to keep those little bast@ards out. I am sick to death finding bats up here every time I venture to the Bat Cave.



If I am forced to I will use grenades.

The books on the left were all written by me and sometimes I dive in to a different era. Not lately though, on account of the damned bats living on top of them.

I had a little help with the sign for the window.

The definition has changed since then but all these die-hard anti-trumpers are left wondering why hasn't two years of special prosecutial hell on earth star chamber investigation into trump led to charges. Every single crime of the clintons is simply glossed and air brushed out of the feature.

Some of us wonder if the special hell is reserved for people with IQs in the 60s, you know, the special hell.

It's proving elusive and the maddening thing is I don't know if it's of recent vintage or something from Paradise Lost.

From the not too distant past and Writer-At-Arms, Robert Frezza,

“No, Juffrou Bruwer, it is not. There is most of heaven and all of hell between the unstable situation that exists and war. Until the Afrikaner nation has taken up arms or until I say fiat justitita, ruat caelum, let justice be done though the skies fall, there is no war.” 

Immediately, he softened his voice. “I realize that the heavens appear to be falling around you. You, Burgemeester Beyers, a few others, are straddling a widening abyss. Still, however likely it may be that war will manifest itself within this next week, it is not yet, and I greatly dislike inaccuracy.” 

“I do not understand you. Are you saying there is no war?” she asked, the unexpected way in which he expressed his thoughts dulling her intellect. 

Vereshchagin ran his thumb across the surface of the pipe he was holding in his hands. “May I clarify? The situation is volatile and unstable. Within a very few days, if no cause intervenes, the fanatics who initiated this sterile conflict will begin to suppress moderation. Yet as a nation, at this moment in history the Afrikaners have not yet chosen a course of action. Your work with Shimazu, I take it, has given you an understanding of the narrowness of the support the fanatics presently enjoy.” She made no answer for several minutes. “Are you saying that there does not have to be war?” she asked solemnly.

The above was written as fiction about war on another planet. The author worked for the CIA or State or one of the other shadow governments and yet it is very much a paradigm of our times. We in the West are kind of settled and it is the darker war that we fear now. We know who the dark are but since none of us are butted up against their countries, we pretend not to know or fear. Every single one of them is primed to explode.

At the end of the day, there is a little problem with multi-culti.

It isn't real. It is nothing more than a fiction that people of the West believe in the face of 80% of islamics who are quite willing to set alight those who screwed up and think they can get away with a little thing like Apostasy

I'm more than tired of these deep states shits. I would ask if there was anyone to rid us of these turbulent scum but the idiot that leaped to answer would shoot all the wrong people.

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.

Jimmy Buffett

1. When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

2. You can observe a lot by just watching.

3. It ain’t over till it’s over.

4. It’s like déjà vu all over again.

5. No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.

6. Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.

7. A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.

8. Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.

9. We made too many wrong mistakes.

10. Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken.

11. You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.

12. You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.

13. I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.

14. Never answer an anonymous letter.

15. Slump? I ain’t in no slump… I just ain’t hitting.

16. How can you think and hit at the same time?

17. The future ain’t what it used to be.

18. I tell the kids, somebody’s gotta win, somebody’s gotta lose. Just don’t fight about it. Just try to get better.

19. It gets late early out here.

20. If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.

21. We have deep depth.

22. Pair up in threes.

23. Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel.

24. You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.

25. All pitchers are liars or crybabies.

26. Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

27. Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.

28. He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.

29. It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.

30. I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won twenty-five games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.

31. I don’t know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.

32. I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.

33. I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.

34. In baseball, you don’t know nothing.

35. I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?

36. I never said most of the things I said.

37. It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.

38. If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.

39. I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I’d never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field.

40. So I’m ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face.

41. Take it with a grin of salt.

42. (On the 1973 Mets) We were overwhelming underdogs.

43. The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.

44. Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.

45. Mickey Mantle was a very good golfer, but we weren’t allowed to play golf during the season; only at spring training.

46. You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go.

47. I’m lucky. Usually you’re dead to get your own museum, but I’m still alive to see mine.

48. If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’. I didn’t like to work.

49. If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.

50. A lot of guys go, ‘Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.’ I tell ’em, ‘I don’t know any.’ They want me to make one up. I don’t make ’em up. I don’t even know when I say it. They’re the truth. And it is the truth. I don’t know.

I ate a late dinner just now and laughed out loud at some of his words. I wish I had that power.

Night fell many hours ago. OK, didn't fall, it was tripped and pushed over only to be mugged but I did mean to write something light this evening. It actually featured my favorite mongoose who did, ultimately, make a cameo in the very very very long post you won't see because once we left Nag dead we sort of went crazy writing which is a hazard of the profession.

We had a dinner party tonight which was fun, enjoyable, wonderful, rich in exotic food (corned beef on  rye) and much other good stuff. Unfortunately for the blog, it brought out the pompous in me. You don't want to see me being all pompous.

When it happens, I think back to a couple of aviating gentlemen bloggers who could take the pompous out with total class. I think the exile in Portales would cavil at being called a gentlemen. Tough. I outrank him. I'm pretty sure Lex would have agreed with me.

I would like to think it is a night of reverie.............and it is.......for values of is.

Just waiting for the crew to have all gone to bed.........we had about 6 kinds of yummy dessert that I missed and which is waiting in the kitchen for me softly calling my name. I hear and obey.

It was supposed to be a simple there and back again. Easy peasy. I worked in customer service jobs, heck, I was Fleet Liaison for all our fleets for almost 5 years. This evening took the biscuit, the french toast, all the chocolate cake and the coconut cake leftovers.

I joined a line of about 20 customers to buy some meat. Yeah, yeah, my bad. I like meat!

I stood in that line for almost 15 minutes while it didn't move because there were customer service types, 8 EIGHT OF THEM right there on the other side of the counter.

Every single one of them studiously ignoring us. No kidding. One or two would glance at all the waiting customers and then go back to ignoring us.

I reached my limit and the two loaves of rye bread I was holding in line, I tossed them over my shoulder as I headed out the door.

Every now and then, the shape of reality is shown to me and I see it. This was downtown Mordor and I had just had a wonderful interaction at all levels at a different food shop deeper into Mordor but where 100% of the staff and the owner were pleasant, nice and helpful. Vienna is running 0 for 2.

As a rule, I don't do posts about the past. On the other hand, the past caught up to me this week in a large way and I liked it.

It's the day America remembers that we let our fleet get slaughtered by Japan because we had absolute idiots in charge.

No thing has changed since 1941. You would have to be a chump to believe different. Me? When I was still in the uniform, I used to wonder why we had every kind of service ship in San Diego at our second largest west coast base but there was not one single solitary cruiser or destroyer allowed to radiate or protect the base because that would interfere with garage doors in Chula Vista. Yeah, the Russians could have Pearl Harbored us again any time they wanted. Let us thank God they were not blood thirsty killers.

Srsly people. You're supposed to learn from history.

I ran across this today. I really liked that show. I never saw it in broadcast but I own it now.

Out of the blue last night I heard from the one I love as a daughter. Haven't really heard from her in years. She is still nought but a young teen in high school and will be forever young in my reckoning of ages. Because the universe exults in irony, I had been listening to a rarely heard song from my youth that I remember listening to when picking up my sister at softball practice a long time ago.

From one of the usual places.

I read this story about a man who has been sailing the seven seas for the last thirteen years on the same ship. He hasn't gone ashore in ages and these days he is just about blind but still he sails. He has settled into a routine. That was where I heard the distant echo of another man at sea in eternity as he fled from his nemesis.. It was a good story and yes, the two men in the story settled into a routine. On the gripping hand, one of them had died over a hundred thousand years earlier.

Fiction is fairly rich in stories of the man who sailed forever. It includes the stories by Larry Niven and The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson and any number of other stories that probably had their start before time was recorded but in my case started with the The Man Without a Country by Everett Hale.

I saw the stories about the giant liner that one can buy passage on to sail on forever about 14 years ago. A few years ago I read the zombie apocalypse by Ringo and it didn't seem like a good deal to me. Then too, I spent quite a bit of my own time at sea.

Mind you, I don't think it is a bad way to spend time. I certainly enjoyed that life.

This was true to a sad extent. A dozen men out there on the street after midnight, a crying women and all of us armed with guns, knives, baseball bats...... and she said no, she was just crying and don't hit him.


And out of the blue this followed.

We aren't always there. I've brought guns and knives to the "No NO NO! a time or two. One feels
a little silly standing there armed to the teeth for confrontation and hearing, "no no". We persevere and say, "just you stand up and come to my side of the street and say that, that's all and I'll go away." And they do and you go back inside.

Some of us were raised on the story of Kitty Genovese and we are not ever going to let that happen on our watch. But it ultimately isn't our call. In the half dozen calls I've never once had the girl accept our offer of help. On the other hand, each case seemed to resolve without violence then or later.

It is almost hard to believe that the ever obtuse Maureen Dowd of the New York Times slime rag penned this about the Clintons this week.

Nothing they have done lately suggests that they have learned anything, including their obtuse post-#MeToo comments about Monica Lewinsky, who has been far more candid and sympathetic in the 20th anniversary retellings of the impeachment saga. The Clintons are still unable to hold themselves accountable. The formerly golden couple who dominated their party for nearly three decades is traveling North America in a bubble, shockingly un-self-aware.

It was her and those like her that relentlessly, persistently failed to remove the scales from their eyes and see those two as they really are. Not one single aspect or characteristic of either Clinton has changed one iota since Dowd, the New York Times and every democrat in the world swooned over how wonderful the two of them were and how good they were for America.

It is hard to believe that she just outed herself and all the rest like her as hopeless dupes.

Ripped off from Gunsmoke and Knitting.

I watch the River Dance and the rest of Irish Dance and think of the flow. I like it.

He was, for all his faults, a naval aviator who flew against the Empire of Japan in World War II. He was a far better man than Clinton ever was and even with all the decades after leaving behind his final office, he was better than any who came after him or tried to be his rival. It was under his Presidency that the decades long Cold War finally came to an end we could all cheer for because there really was no loser in that War save those who fought and died and were wounded in the proxy wars that culminated in an enduring peace.

LTJG Bush piloting an Avenger in World War II

Congressman
United States Ambassador to the United Nations
Chairman of the Republican National Committee
Envoy to China
Director of the CIA
As Vice President he stood fast after the assassination attempt on President Reagan.
As President, ended the Cold War with the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the USSR.
Led the nation as it fought the 100 hour war that gutted Iraq in the First Gulf War.

A lifetime of service to the Nation.

I would just like to add for the sake of George jr., I was out of town and living in a tent on Ford Island in Hawaii when President Nixon died. I was midway between San Diego and San Francisco when President Reagan died and I was away in Ann Arbor when President Bush died. George, if you want to pay me to stay home for a few years/decades, you can reach me care of this blog.

It is sorry I am to see the light that failed at sondrakistan.




This is gone. She was the essential kibosher.

About a decade ago I asked KIP to keep her in lieu of any of the wanna-bees.

He was the voice of the people in Congress. We will miss that voice of reason as the new Congress presents itself to we, the people. 

I am left wondering today if what President started with and continues with will become the minimum requirement for the nation's next president. I have included his voice on my blog roll lately because what Americans and the rest of the world see now is a ruler who speaks directly to the people without having his words filtered by his administration, his spokesman or the editors and news jockeys of the press. In other words, we get a direct pipeline from the mind of the President of the country to us without all the smoothing and spin applied, as they have been for decades, by the main stream media.

I know vast numbers of people object to his approach but I laugh at them much the way the media tries to laugh off the Presidential broadsides he levies against them every single day. No, no, I don't read his stuff everyday. I seldom look at it unless there is breaking news of that ilk and I'm curious what his take on it is. For instance, we drove by Lordstown on Monday on the Ohio Turnpike enroute to Latrobe, Penna and saw that at 1015AM, the lot was empty. It has been that way for some months as we saw GM ramp down Cruz production. It was no surprise to drive back by Lordstown at 1745 Monday and see an empty lot.

On Tuesday I read about GM's decision to let go 14,000 auto workers including everyone who worked at Lordstown. I was curious to see what the President's take on this matter would be and there it is, in the blog roll for all to see because I don't think Jack Dorsey or the other SJWs at Twitter have the balls to shut down President Trump's twitter account.

Yes, I know, there will be another loser deep in the bowels of Twitter who will decide, unilaterally, to shut down the President's account for violating twitt's terms of service. I imagine half the country is looking forward to that day and hoping for sooner rather than later.

I don't see how any candidates from the popular and progressive party of loose communism and die-hard socialism could fail to tweet their every passing thought if they hope to beat Trump at this game. Likewise, I don't see America accepting a candidate so vile and weak that he or she cannot lay out his or her thoughts in clear definitive script for all to read. Twit makes the standard obfuscation difficult to say the least and encourages clear thinking and brevity over all other considerations, even for politicians.

The Supreme Court in a unanimous decision on Tuesday limited the reach of the Endangered Species Act, ruling that the government can designate a protected “habitat” only in areas where a threatened animal could currently live.
The justices set aside a ruling that restricted development in a wooded area in Louisiana where an endangered frog might be able to live in the future if some trees were removed.
At present, the roughly 100 remaining dusky gopher frogs live only in a single pond in a wooded area nearby in Mississippi.

I did not expect anything like a unanimous decision from the Court. I do, however see a downside to their ruling for the poor remaining dusky gopher frogs. I can see now in my mind's eye the dedicated eco-warriors sneaking into that lonely pond in Mississippi and capturing a few of the remaining frogs in order to release them into nice private lands in Louisiana in order to call the ruling into question. Since ECO and SJW warriors are about as coordinated as a pack of two year old kids playing soccer, I expect most of the captured frogs will die and there will be so many attempting to "save them" that all of the dusky gopher frogs will be dead in a few months.

The SJW/ECO warriors have a long and horrifying record of laying waste to the places they attempt to save leaving behind thousands of tons of garbage, trash, human waste, bodies and that sort of thing along with their various drug stashes which they forgot about after heading to town for some munchies.

A tiny fraction of the waste left behind by eco warriors at their Dakota Pipeline protest camp

It seems that the resistance is allowed to toss around fire bombs with impunity. I can't recall anyone throwing one at a riot and later being hauled before the bar of justice. Admittedly, these fascists are so blooming incompetent their aim is always off, they have twig-like arms and throw like girls but still, fire bombs!

If it is not proscribed or cracked down on by the cops, can we throw fire bombs at anti-fa and BLM? I mean, it's only fair isn't it?


And besides, it's not like anybody cares what happens to a bunch of black clad fascists rioting in the streets. It is just possible that they comprehend this but then, they don't score all that high on comprehension, civilization or public decorum. Maybe we could just send them all to Cuba or Venezuela for a couple of years of finishing before letting them back on the streets in America. I'm sure they'd agree since those are well known socialist paradises. It could be like 2 years at Club Med for them.

Is Club Med still around or is that one with history?

Whip out your coloring books. You may easily color me musically superstitious.

As Chief Engineer of a forward deployed wooden ship I had a lucky flashlight. Yes, yes, it took me 4 months to learn that I also had a lucky .45 cal pistol hanging on my door.

I was listening to music on the tube of u tonight and almost, but not quite, wandered too deeply into the past and cued up some music I know better than to listen to. As I recall, the last time I heard it a house burned down. The time before that I was using the outboard motor of a zodiac to dispel a 500 gallon oil spill from the vicinity of the guilty ship somewhere else.

When I was the sole bearer of bad news and young, there were no myths, voodoo or legends. It was only when I was a department head that they reared their ugly fanged beaks.

MInd you, it is some of the music of my youth and I like it. I mean to introduce ice to my knee in a bit and drive to Pittsburgh and beyond in the depth of morning. I'm not stupid enough to take chances. There will be no music.

What does life look like when you follow the script?
No blown head gaskets on the mains or generators for 9 months
100% availability for 9 months
Not hitting a mine because you can see them shining in the dark on sonar for 9 months
Having the engine catch fire over Saudi Arabia and making it back to Bahrain alive.
Crash landing same plane in Greece.
Crash landing same plane in Italy.

At some point, you just decide.

It's a mystery why people still give money or assets to some of the more famous organizations run by the Kleptocracy. I stopped giving to them when I learned that the head of the San Diego Red Cross was drawing a salary well in excess of a million dollars a year.  Ditto the head of United Way. There are better ways to spend my money for disaster relief. To be honest, stepping into my backyard and setting the bills on fire would be a better use of the money.

The apologists for the ruination of charities seem to think that they must pay superpeople to raise money using experts. Sadly, experience shows that people give because that's our nature. You know, except for those who don't. A lot of us? We aren't going to give anything to an organization that claims to be for the good of all but that compensates it's executives on the lavish scale of people who own townhouses in New York City.

Not going to happen.

We hope that you have a joyful and wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends or just by yourselves.

Last night we went to the pool as is our usual routine for Tuesdays. While I was floating around watching the news on the big TV a woman engaged me in conversation and so we talked for a few minutes. It turns out that she is a nun and just left the job as Principal of a school in a place very well known to me several states away. It took her about 2 minutes to turn the conversation to what a complete idiot President Trump is and I could only nod in agreement in a pool full of the enemy and without weapons to hand.

She found it absolutely and utterly amazing that her brother with a severe learning handicap was outraged every time it crossed his attention that Trump beat Clinton and she herself was quite outraged that her "college educated brother" was actually a fan of President Trump. What could I do? I nodded in agreement. She almost but not quite said, why do the smart ones favor Trump.

It was interesting to meet someone in Metroparkcentralis who, while from here, had been teaching in Arlington for many years about 4 blocks from my parents house. When she told me that her school was just by the metal diner I burst out laughing and said, "the diner on Lee" and she allowed as how it was so. I probably walked by that school a hundred times.

I think it's interesting, for values of interesting, that everybody I meet just assumes I voted against Trump.  On the other hand, many people today like to portray Nixon as a great villian and way too stupid to shave a narrow margin of victory like Ronald Reagan's squeeker in '84.

Yes, both of them won 49 of the 50 states in their second elections to the office of President. Nowadays you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who said they voted for either of them.

I almost pity poor Nancy Pelosi. She has obviously had some moments on camera where reality became a little too hard for her to cope with but she soldiers on. As I read this sad article I wondered what it would be like to lead a House divided but where your side is represented by some of the dumbest clucks to ever come down the pike.  With Maxine Waters, easily the dumbest person in Congress, set to Chair the House Financial Services Committee, one can see that the Deep State is set to reign supreme in Hell (or at least the U.S. House of Representatives.)

It promises to be a hilarious year as the House feels its way all the way into full mediocrity and the various branches of the Administration do to them what Holder, Clinton and all the rest under Obama did to the House back in the days when it was a Republican House. I expect both a slow roll and a complete deluge of the archives of every single malfeasance committed during the Holder, Clinton, Obama era, when demands for records and archives are submitted. Perhaps we'll see the real records on the ATF's gun running scheme, what really happened when our Ambassador to Libya phoned home to ask for help and other interesting tidbits.

I'm looking forward to it.

I just finished reading an interesting short article, The Kind of Men Who Carry Pocketknives. It was interesting reminder of another time that is lost to history for most of us who live in or around big cities.

I got my first pocketknife from my grandmother when I was 10. She gave all of us pocketknives from her vast collection when we reached that age and no, my parents were not aghast. We were all trained to use them as tools and use them responsibly and so we did. There couldn't have been more than 20 or 30 flesh wounds between the 4 of us caused by those sharp little knives.

Back then every boy scout had a pocketknife and usually a sheath knife and a hatchet and camping gear and went camping on weekends and built fires in the woods and on the prairie and I swear, once on a frozen lake. I think the pocketknives sometimes went to school and nobody cared. In the entire time of my education from kindergarten until post college, no classmate was ever so much as scratched by a knife.

After 9/11 pocketknives were relegated to the dustbin of history here in America. One cannot board an aircraft with anything sharper than wit and you'd be well advised to keep that under control as you pass, literally, through the hands of the TSA. God help you if you caught with a simple box cutter.

One cannot enter a courthouse or a federal building or a school with a knife. My last journey by train downtown was to go to my bank near the top floor of the Federal Building but I was stopped from entering by my pocketknife. Not some dangerous thing, it was little more than a penknife. One of the 2 dozen guards screening people entering the building told me that they had no means to keep it for me while I did my business and maybe I could just go outside and hide it in the bushes and come back for it when I was done. I wonder sometimes how many people fall for that scam.

On a recent trip I arrived at an airport with my usual flight bag but I forgot that I had put my grandfather's knife in that bag when my father passed it on to me a few weeks earlier when we made a road trip to visit my parents in another state. I wasn't going to let the TSA confiscate it and fortunately they now have an arrangement where one can pay $25.00 to mail it home.

I don't routinely slip a knife into my pocket. They are handy for many things beyond most mortal ken but I'll only remember to put one in my pocket if we're driving somewhere. The little hatch in our Subaru Outback that guards the dashboard vault that holds the usb chargers sometimes gets stuck in the down position and has to be jimmied open with......a thin bladed pocketknife.

some of the dozens we have around the house

I noticed this last week that there was an issue concerning the NRA challenging doctors and the AMA to stay in their own lane and stop trying to abuse the Civil Rights we enjoy under the Constitution. The doctors claim to be outraged about gun violence because, guns.

The NRA should simply advise those in the medical profession who would deny us our Civil Rights to work harder to prevent the over 250,000 deaths every year attributed to medical practice. Guns are a pale shadow of the real killer we know as medical malpractice and maybe doctors should improve their house before attempting to overthrow our rights.

Honestly, when you look at all the so-called scientific studies just on food science that health experts got completely wrong, how can you believe anything they say? Why do we all accept that when we get a diagnosis, we should also get a second opinion? It's a common refrain in answer to a common problem which boils down to the fact that even highly educated and trained people can and do make mistakes.

I could see their point if I believed in the nanny state. If the AMA and doctors were sincere, they would also request a ban on all use of automobiles, buses, electricity, bicycles, swimming pools and beaches. Yet the only one that bothers them is the one that is Constitutionally protected.

I had hoped, 30 years ago, that David Palmer would write more. Sadly, he didn't. Tracking was his last work and that was decades ago.

I was denied the opportunity to try to turn my little girl into a serious menace but I strongly suspect her mother has taken care of that. Not my kind of menace, it goes without saying. I would have taught her how to sail, build a campfire, shoot, replace a tire on a car and many of those sorts of things girls should know.

I've used the picture a time or two here but one more won't hurt. If you find the book and hate it to death, please don't share it with me. A young woman, striding confidently into the future was all I hoped for when my daughter was born. She might make it still.

Mr. Palmer
has a way with words.

Preflighting the plane, including draining the fuel sumps, took a little longer. But during flight training, not departing with water in the fuel had been the subject of so much discussion, delivered with such frequency and intensity, that by now I could probably eat a bacon cheeseburger while scrubbing the temple floor bareheaded on the Sabbath with less personal distress than not verifying that the fuel was water-free before a flight.

Back when I used to fly I was most careful about getting the water out of my fuel. Later, as CHENG I was most careful to not to have that crap in my fuel. When my ENC came up to see me on the bridge, one beautiful day in the Santa Barbara ship chanel, southbound to our homeport in San Diego after our epic voyage to San Francisco, he took me out back where the captain couldn't see or hear us and he was sweating as he told me all he was getting out of our last fuel tank was water. We still had a couple hundred miles to go at that point. Things were not looking shiny.

I still remember doing a hotrefuel on the Desert Duck. It settled onto the flight deck as helicopters do and one of their aviation bosun's mates took to the cockpit a sample glass of JP-5 and held it up so the pilot could see what color his fuel was. It was as clear as water. It looked like water. This was back when nobody cared if we stripped the fuel tanks daily. There was seldom any water or sediment in our fuel samples.

Back in 1984, a pilot and only a pilot was the sole apostle of true fuel. This pilot shut his helicopter down. A hot refuel was no longer going to happen because one look at that sample of fuel convinced him it was water. What we had was some JP-5 of unusal clarity and without a tinge of color.

I was a little surprised he didn't insist on a Pensky Martens test.

I did it a few years later when a fuel barge came alongside at Sitrah to fill my tanks. I took a look at the offered fuel before I let it flow and said, no and we'll test it. What happens when one puts gasoline into diesel engines results in a diesel engine explosion and finding bits of your former engine buried in the wooden hull, if you're lucky. My counterpart on the other ship at anchor that took that fuel found that out the hard way when his generator blew to bits in the forward engine room. He was lucky nobody was killed. He still had his primary generator blow up and wouldn't be sweeping mines again for some time.

The nice thing about Cessnas, as I recall, is that you can sample the fuel in the wings just by pushing the sampler into the tank on the bottom of the wing. Water has a higher specific gravity than fuel and will be the first thing to flow out. Now that I think about it, I only ever flew Cessnas.

It was right there.

It was wear a silly hat day.

Not me. I only wear them to keep the sun off or hide bedhead.

Macron delivered a stinging indictment of nationalism in a 20-minute speech and called on leaders to learn the lessons of the past.
"Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism," he said.
"By saying our interests come first and others don't matter we are erasing what makes a nation precious, what makes it live, what makes it great and most importantly of all, its moral values."

Where exactly was it spelled out that we had to lose our countries?

Oddly enough, to wish that your country survives is not racism or fascism.

Acosta lost sight of his professionalism is the news and the truth.

When his network rushed to conceal it, you screwed us out of the truth.

And the facts are, he was a little bitch.

And doesn't SNL try to make it look like Trump was the dopey one.

As Pat Healey used to say, Jim, your position has been established.

I don't fall asleep. I have to reach out to grasp it and I seldom do. It's elusive to get there. Once asleep it is hard for me to give it up. I'm something of a night owl although the only thing to fly through my window and bite me was a bat. Perhaps I'm a nightbat.

It’s a point Ace of Spades has been making lately:

Either we have a two-way social compact or we have no social compact at all, and it’s just pure Street Power and vigilantism and vengeance raids.

I very carefully buried our social compact in my backyard before I left California.

It made it hard to find. Real hard. I wanted the fab 5

Close your eyes, look up and listen.

I used to carry but it was in its holster by my side and for use on the enemy should he come calling and outside these United States of America.

I never carried at home in these United States and perhaps my reasons were selfish. I did not ever want to be the subject of a law suit and just about every use of a gun that leaves a living corpse ends in a lawsuit.

People I know carry and I have no problems with that. What I figured to do was to avoid going to those places that made carry a practical and necessary form of dress. I just don't go to any place that I think will feature armed killers. This is somewhat harder to do now that schools, colleges and theaters are such places.

I am also, now, 29 years older than I ever thought I would be. I have, by and large, done what I came to do and if the exit is shown via a gun wielded by an enemy, that's not really anything new for me. I so don't want to lose my mind and slip into dementia and senility. I watch in quiet despair as the smartest man I ever knew slips away moment by moment. He was the smartest man I ever knew and taught quantum physics at West Point in a gap year after getting his Masters Degree and building a nuclear reactor in a swimming pool as a break from fighting the war in Vietnam.

OTGH, I almost always carry a locking blade knife whenever I leave the house. As the reader can see, closing in for a kill in a terminal attack is still an option. Short of a shot to the head, I figure I can reach or die trying.

Take a minute to read about the destroyer of the universe at the mouse killer.

Today is that day that ended the Great War, although yanks fought on for another year or two for no reason in Russia in the long forgotten war. I like how wikipedia still maintains the fiction that President Wilson was the one making decisions long after his brain had died and his wife Edith ran the United States as one of our unelected presidents.


It is also my mother's birthday.

There were people I never would have let hold a rifle in the field and that was my last 19 years in the Navy where we carried rifles. Given the opportunity to leave behind the useless and dangerous, I did, every single time. My wars were kind of come as you want affairs. I really truly didn't want the ones who didn't know how to shoot with me and so I didn't bring them to my little wars. I could be choosy back then.

Still, this is a date that lives forever just as 7 December does. If you have the time, watch the video to the end. On my first ship, I did have one of those guys who crossdecked to be on LaSalle. He maybe had an IQ of 80. As my CHENG used to say, "You have the smartest and dumbest sailors in your division." I used to respond, with it was "A" division. We're auxiliaries. We sort of make things happen everywhere else.

A plucky little bear.

Wanta do a trillion dollar damage to America?

Build a fire and let it get out of control in California.

That's what illegals do.

Used to live there for 30 odd years. I used to drive this road, a lot.

I had the good fortune in the Navy to work for and with many men of outstanding wit and character. One of the best was Wild Bill Snyder. He was the one that told the story of himself at a younger age and mind you, when I worked for him he was nought but a Lieutenant Commander, so a pipsqueak in these rarefied times.

He was in a billet, chief engineer of steam, that used to be what they call a spot promotion because hard. His old destroyer was in company with a brand new cruiser fresh out of the shipyard and due to commence its full speed trial. The insolent cruiser captain sent, via a flashlight, an insulting message to the ancient destroyer telling it to try to remain within visual signalling range and set about its full speed trial.

Both ships raced to the horizon except that the cruiser suffered a crippling engineering casualty. The ancient destroyer kept blasting along until at the very horizon sent back a flashlight message of its own to the crippled cruiser.

"Slowing down to remain within visual signalling range."

A ship's captain of any rank used to have joy in getting underway. Not sure if it remains the same today.

I reread old books, all the time.

Places and time. I store memory by both because we moved a lot. This time of year, I recall, sitting on the floor, legs crisscross, as my daughter would have it, listening as my father read aloud, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe.

I haven't been back to Narnia in decades but it was always a friendly harbor when i was young.

The Sweep was my fourth ship. I was taut early on (yes yes, I know how to spell taught but what the hell?) My first day, the CO confirms my letters of Officer of the Deck which also means Con and hands me the deck while telling me to snuggle up to that bouy, number 5, as I recall. He comes back up from Combat and tells me no. What I need to do is have the ship embrace that buoy in the San Diego Ship channel while he and they initialize the GPS hunting 3M nav system from Hell.

Snuggle up we did. One of the things I can do well is drive a ship. When the skipper came back up out of Combat and asked where was the buoy, it was enough to point, down.

When the big movers got underway, outbound we didn't play. We'd leave the channel to the carriers and LPH and LHA. Those things are really dangerous.

From the instapundit. Talking Obama.

Oh, yeah, I'll stop the world for you.

You know who you are.

Our cars are full of them.

I would be happy to serve as a juror in any case involving anti-fa or baseball bats against the fascist thugs the press calls ant-fa. I would let anybody who beat them to death with a bat or hammer off.

Because, justice.