As I mentioned earlier, I spent a portion of the day of Christmas Eve in the VA clinic in Metroparkcentralis. I had just had the MRI and was waiting for the Ortho and was sitting in the cafeteria having a late breakfast/early lunch when this lady came up to me and handed me a little paper bag.

This was in it. She gave a little paper bag to everybody in the cafeteria and then she vanished. I know the Church. It means I'll have to head over there soon and give back.

May you all have a very happy new year.

It looks like President Trump has struck again in the way that only he has employed successfully. I won't mourn the loss of Iraq to islam. They were heading down that road now for a long time and the only way back from that is blood and better theirs than ours. The thing the government of Iraq and our State Department wallahs fail to understand is pretty simple to grasp. If the Iraqi government who this embassy has spent 19 years aiding, fails to assist in repelling the attackers? We will walk away. We may even whistle and dust our hands as we do it. You see, the government of Iraq has an obligation; we have a gravely faltering momentum that has waned to non-existence now and 90% of Americans don't care if Iraq goes totally islamic theocracy. It's no skin off our nose because we don't care anymore.

The Marines we launched out of Kuwait to safeguard the embassy in Bagdhdad are just time killers while the embassy staff burn the dross of 18 years of failure to embrace the overwhelming nihilism of islam. All that stuff needs to burn but you can be sure the State Department fools will fail to burn the files containing the names and addresses of every Iraqi who ever aided the United States of America. It's what they do.

When Iraq's government fails overwhelming to protect the Embassy and the Green Zone, Trump will approve air strikes in direct support of the Embassy Marines and then when we've glassed the zone and massacred the attackers Iraq wouldn't stop, he'll decide enough is enough and we'll leave Iraq to ISIS and Iran and perhaps the new no-fly zone will be, "nothing out of Iraq" and there will be no more air service to or from that dismal Hell on earth.

I like this picture of young rebellion. I vastly prefer them to the current crop of rebellious youth.


I was also reminded that we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of one of the nation's most forgettable wars, The Y2K war came to a resounding fliffle on 1 January 2001. We at SPAWAR struggled mightily in your defense for almost a year to ensure that come January first there would be no news of note other than holiday celebrations that went bad. It wasn't a big problem for me since my program was purely the Inshore Boats of the USN and their only connections with the rest of the world were thoroughly covered by the serried ranks of the GPS boffins and the radios were also the purview of legions of carers who made sure that the radio spectrum would continue unabated as the new decade, century and millennium crashed over us. It goes without saying, we won.

I see from Ace that this is a particularly dangerous time of year for falls. They can be far more hazardous than we tend to think. Let's be careful out there.

I've been a little off the game for the last week or so as life collided with me. I'm better now but was really hammered flat for awhile and while I came back into battery mentally the physical was somewhat harder to get back. It all started about 5 years ago when I went and looked at some debris left behind in San Diego. It amounted to some tons of debris and like an idiot I shifted through the wreckage looking for anything I wanted to salvage. It was while looking through all that stuff I tore the hell out of my knee causing it to swell up to roughly twice the size of the other knee. At that point I stopped looking, threw my golf clubs and some uniforms over my shoulder, boarded a plane and came home after turning all the rest over to a friend to get rid of however he wished.

That knee keeps coming back to bite me. The pain and swelling return out of the black without warning and it can be really quite painful and leads to an inability to sleep without disturbing people down the block when I move the leg in response to dream stimuli while I'm sleeping and scream. It doesn't make for restful nights. A plan of action and milestones was called for.

I saw the doctor and they were very very tricky about sussing out what caused the pain. The first one allowed as how it sure did look swollen and asked if it hurt. We had a chat about that. He got the 'attending' who came in, sat down in front of me as I sat there on the table and she touched one finger to just one side of my knee and asked if that hurt. Hell yeah it hurt! Not to be shouted down, she put the finger on the other side of the knee, roughly the same place and asked if that hurt. Hell yeah it hurt. She was touching me, not pushing and it was extremely painful.

Well, you all know what it is but it was news to me. While allowing as how in this case it was pointless they did want to resolve any other issues that might be part of the underlying problem and scheduled me for some x-rays while assuring me that what they suspected was wrong would only show up on an MRI. We did the x-rays and hoped for the best. I really am not fond of surgery. The MRI was done on Christmas Eve and I got the results this morning.

You know what gives one a warm fuzzy? Sliding toe first into an MRI with about 4 pounds of surgical steel holding one of your legs together with 13 increasingly 'iffy' screws. Nobody assured me that this stuff wouldn't come flying out once the magnetic field hit it so I can only assume that they knew it was non-magnetic. I guess they could read that off the manufacturer's label they saw when they examined the x-rays.

I have a visit scheduled with an orthopedist next week to go over things but for me the worst bit is that this thing comes and goes at random. I don't know what sets off each episode every year but whatever it is seems to be accelerating.

Plus I was sick.

Oh, and can't focus my right eye all that well. We'll see what Bates Eye Exercises do for that.

I'll probably drop a lot of posts here over the weekend, maybe, after we get back from the party. I've been taking notes but haven't turned them into words.

We hope that you all had a Merry Christmas and holiday!

Give a moment or two to remember all those now serving overseas this Christmas and wish them well now and throughout the new year.

It is 2 a.m and I haven't ODd on the news of the day yet but I did see that the President boasted today. There is a reason I have El Jefe on my blog roll. It tends to keep me up to date on the 3 year coup as it plays out.

With so called progressives and democrats it really does look like Corbyn in America. President Trump will probably win between 49 and 50 states  in the next election just like Nixon and Reagan. Those guys just don't get it. I hope they never do.

Way back when I last talked on a radio our national assigned callsign was "Landslide" and we called out little boat Overslide.  I'm seeing both of those as very likely and yet you won't hear that from PBS, CBS, NBC or whatever they call themselves at the NYT or WP.

I live here in metroparkcentralis and party with the libprogs and one of the things that struck me tonight was that the libprogs are actually invaders here in these chosen lands. I have to get the book back from my mother (family are the most accomplished book thieves) but I did actually read it and the history of the Firelands and the Western Reserve. These were the historic lands of the people who learned nothing and forgot nothing. The democrats are charging hard down that path that the Greeks and Romans took. Once those civilizations were a light to the darkness and then they decided to re-embrace the darkness. If one thinks back, it was the democratic party that embraced and fought to maintain slavery. I think they're well down the road. Watching Collins school them like Gowdy used to do is amusing.

You put the box near the milk.

It was a wonderful show. I've been told that's too cryptic. Season 3 of The Good Place.

Went to the heart of the city today for a party in a professor's home. I barely knew him or anybody else there and had a great time. I probably spent 2 hours talking about flying with the guy next to me. I haven't flown since I was a student at SWOS in 1984. He is a newish pilot and has @120 hours and is already talking about getting his ATR and instrument rating.

It was a good fascinating chat and we both agreed that only foolish pilots fly at night or over water. OTGH, he flies out of Burke Lakefront Airport so water is in his future. Me? I just used to fly down the beach from Wildwood to Cape May. We both agreed that we'd land in trees before we crashed into water in a Cessna. Nobody walks away from a water landing in a Cessna.

I was just looking at Gunsmoke and Knitting and saw that she had up the Ashokan Farewell which I  took away from the Civil War Series by that Shelby guy and whossname. There are pieces of music that are timeless to me. YMMV. Ashokan Farewell is one, Sgt. MacKenzie another. There are a few others I know and treasure. I think music calls to most of us. Then there is Amazing Grace. I can hear a few chords and be lost in revery.....because I'm old. You guys keep your eyes on the road!

Cataracts. I don't feel old enough for those. On the other hand, we went to Akron for a concert and my knee with the loose screw was bugging the hell out of me trying to sit in tiny old theater seats. I'd have been fine if the theater was modern with those power lift comfy stick out your feet things but this place, while unbelievably beautiful didn't have power comfy seats. You didn't have to hear the music, you could feel it.

One of the things I could easily get used to in Ohio, it's where powered flight began and it was home to most of the great industrialists of the 19th and 20th centuries and home to many great theaters, is the music. The municipal fabric those men left behind still shines even after a hundred years and long before the engineers understood acoustics, the architects and builders did.

I attempted to read Peggy in the WSJ and found it very hard to do. I think there is a point where Trump Derangement Syndrome goes every bit as crazy as BDS did. Peggy made it over the Rubicon. She might conquer Rome but what's the point? The Goths, Visigoths and Vandals did that long ago. To be honest, nobody cares what a left wing hyperbolist thinks about anything. We're still waiting for them to wake up. Getting 'woke' does not reflect well on one's intelligence or IQ.

The answer came this morning in a call from the hospital. It was my physician's nurse and she was calling to tell me that the 563 X-rays they put my leg through last week have been looked at by either a radiologist or a very highly trained monkey and the answer to the pain in my knee was revealed.

Yes, I'm going to string this out because why not. It's too ridiculous for words. However, let me reveal to you that I was in considerable pain in the right leg about 17 years ago and asked my then father-in-law about it and speaking as a doctor of nuclear medicine who really doesn't like radiologists, he took me in to his hospital and had me X-rayed to see if any of the screws holding that 15 inch plate in my leg had come loose. Not at that time.....

Now? Now they say one screw near the top has come out and is drifting around in there which explains quite a lot of the pain if not the swelling. The knee doesn't bend without considerable pain and mostly it prefers to sit fully extended and man-stretch; if you will. No, it doesn't go wide, it goes straight out in front of me where anybody can trip over it and earns nasty looks from people trying to walk by who don't know that it doesn't bend and just assume I'm being an asshole.

I just went looking online for a book I'm reading now because it turns out that I no longer like paperback books especially ones with really firm spines. I bought it first in 1980 and it's a little long in the tooth but well worth rereading. Lee Correy wrote some good stuff under that name. I was less impressed with the stuff he wrote under his own name. It came out in 1980 and falls well into the yawning gap of copyright malarky. It may not show up on digital format for another 50 years.

To this day I cannot throw in a semicolon without thinking back to how the Exile in Portales used to school us on the proper semicolon employment and grammar. I'll accept that I'll never learn.

I was there in a


sense. At no time did I or any other uniformed person think that the war in Afghanistan was winnable. Only idiots thought it was a war and that there was some way to power through and win. None of us were idiots.

We have not been well served by our generals.

When Army can't bring itself to send a whole division. Like we had any of those anymore.

The force deploying from the U.S. mainland will be the equivalent of a heavy division, according to Brig. Gen. Sean Bernabe, G-3 for U.S. Army Europe. The major participating units include soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, 1st Armored Division, 1st Infantry Division, 3rd Infantry Division and 82nd Airborne Division, according to a slide presented at the Association of the U.S. Army annual gathering Tuesday. “The 1st Cavalry Division will serve as the primary training audience for both a command post exercise and a live wet-gap crossing taking place in Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area in northwestern Poland,” Bernabe said at the panel on Defender 2020. 

Jeebus, the quote even references a powerpoint slide of divisonary. It goes without saying that the missing army divisions in Europe are fully represented by staff and generals at the various NATO Headquarters.

I too k a lot of time today to listen to the radio on impeachment and then to watch Nadler's committee et al on the topic. I know where I stand on the issue and no amount of testimony would change that and I see that this is so with the House. I'm OK with that. And this is why, by and large, we're an armed country. Whenever the feelings get too inflamed there will be a call to arms. Not by me of course. And the ones first to leap to the megaphone and demand it are also the ones most urgently wishing us to be disarmed.

It went back and forth between men and women of good will and democrats. The tyrants toyed with the truth but then they lost it when they asserted the power of them over the 3rd branch of government and pushed hard on the other branch to uphold them. They assume an authority that they don't have and presume to lecture us to heed them.

I don't think so. YMMV.

At this point,

You can find them everywhere. The Armed Forces are thick with them. You just don't find them in Canada.


My mother always wanted a picture of me in uniform. I held off for obvious reasons. I mean, one could not die or get killed if there was no picture. Needless to say, she found my reasoning specious. I didn't cave but I did have reason to have a picture taken when the Navy decided, in its wisdom, that the only way to prove to a promotion board that one was not fat was a photo in the record of recent vintage. I had my brother do his worst with the hasselblad he loved and you, gentle reader, can still see it to this day, over there, on the right.

One should always be armed. It seems like only yesterday

It was me. I was an LCDR on the NAVCENT staff in Bahrain and I'm the one that broke the uniform code. It was me. I'm sorry. I shared an office with the staff SEAL, the staff EOD and the other MCM guy, a captain. He was way senior to us but a good guy and someone I knew from the Mobile Units. He was in fact, the CO of the little bunch of us that were the Failaka Field Force back in the day, after Desert Storm. He replaced Captain Tom Fridgeon who was also a very good man and first leader of the plucky MCMs sent to serve forever in Bahrain.

 But, as I said. I'm the guy. We cats and dogs (SEALS, EOD and Me) had our own trailer next to the Marine's and down the walk from the MET guys in their trailer. We weren't quite as upscale and near to the throne as the Flag Commander whose trailer was closest to the throne. I was a mobile unit of one. I was titled N361 working with N36 and sharing an office with N37 but unlike them I had one full set of mobile unit equipment in the Banz Warehouse and it needed to be cycled and started if it was to work when called upon. I had no minions so it was up to me to start the generators and run them and then start and drive the 5 tons and deuce and a halfs around the Banz every week and because it could be dirty work, I wore my desert camouflage uniform.

I just wanna say, at least I had an excuse to wear the lightweight breathable suitable for desert climates uniform. I was almost a maintenance tech. So there I am, staff LCDR at NAVCENT HQ wearing the desert khami and before you know it everybody else on the staff, except the N6 bunch, was wearing it too. Even the admiral broke down and wore it.

 Still and all, there's no excuse for this guy. You are a chair commando and you need to dress for it. Nobody with a Pentagon office and official car and driver should wear that uniform.

Why did Horowitz need 2 full years to write a report on an investigation that should have been concluded in something under one week? Gonna say that same thing about Durham's report when it comes out. Aye, they're lawyers and bill by the hour but this is just ridiculous. I tend to agree with Al Pacino on this.

Nothing is ever final in Washington....

All’s well that ends well. Even James Comey was happy, dashing off an oped in the Washington Post touting his and the organization’s vindication. 

Except, within hours of the release of the report, along comes U.S. Attorney John Durham—who has been investigating much of the same territory but with a wider berth and prosecutorial powers— to spoil the occasion: 

“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” 

Predication is, of course, the heart of the matter. Just why did the FBI open an investigation of Trump-Russia collusion that proved, after nearly two years, to be non-existent? Was there real justification somewhere, no matter how obscure, as the IG suggests, or was it a set-up, as implied in Lee Smith’s recent “The Plot Against the President”?

Saw this in an article about the recent Supreme Court nothingburger. They decided to let stand a 6th Court decision and not take it up.

“This law is not only unconstitutional, but as leading medical experts and ethicists explained, deeply unethical. We are extremely disappointed that the Supreme Court will allow this blatant violation of the First Amendment and fundamental medical ethics to stand.”

I never really comment here about the triggers in America. We are all adults. This time, it is worth it just to show how far divorced from reality some people are. Read the quote above. Ethicists, whatever they are, agree that it's OK to slaughter the innocent. Oddly, that doesn't happen in a truly ethical world.

Words have meaning. They are the meaning. Ethical in that context? I don't think so.

I should really take in a game.

I've reached the point where I think that anybody wearing a hoodie should be shot on sight.

US Navy identifies sailor who killed 2 civilians at Hawaii base. MMFA Romero, 22, was said to be dissatisfied with his leadership, was undergoing counseling, and had a history of non-judicial punishment. 

He used his service pistol and rifle in the attack, which he was authorized to carry while providing security for the Columbia.

I have trouble believing that the submarine in question was stupid enough to give weapons to a man like Romero. You're supposed to know exactly who you can and who you won't ever issue weapons to and I don't like the thought that one of the latter category was even assigned to a submarine.

The leader's job is to keep an eye on the young and possibly crazy, not give them weapons. I'll be honest, I've served as senior watch officer and had no problem arming two sailors disciplined by an idiot at captain's mast but I had good reason to think they weren't going to kill anybody that didn't need killing. In Columbia's case, I don't think they had any right to assume that of a 22 year old loser.

God only knows what happened at Pensacola but it doesn't look good at all.

I was reading an article about the inability to free a slave and this came to mind.

I hope you'll forgive the lapses of late in blog posting and replying. I lost everything Chrome when my Chrome browser was snapped up by some evil denizen of the net and while it's all backed up with Apple's Time Machine I haven't bothered to put it back to what it was. I wiped it all and reloaded just Chrome Browser and decided to build up from new there. It's kind of a relief getting out from under 22,300,642 bookmarks. Plus I tore one of the tendons in my knee, the power is on the blink in the kitchen, dining room and basement, I've got some painting to do and we're having guests to dinner tomorrow, going out with family on Saturday and hosting a dinner party on Sunday. Busy busy. One of the problems with my new browser, Brave, is that it doesn't recognize me and refuses to keep my identity up front where it can be seen when I comment on the brilliant and erudite blogs of others or even when I comment on my own blog. Brave has many other features I value so I'm sticking with it but it does mean I have to kickstart Chrome back to life every time I want to make a comment anywhere as me.

I thought it was time for a repost of one of my favorite stories. When I got back from my first deployment I attended the guided missile school in Damneck, VA where the CO had a policy that every person that reported aboard be issued a little paperback copy of a booklet by Elbert Hubbard. It made a very simple point very effectively.

You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office—six clerks are
within your call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio.”
Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task? 

On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of
the following questions: 

Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don’t you mean Bismarck?
What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is he dead?
Is there any hurry?
Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
What do you want to know for? 

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the 2 other clerks to help him find Garcia - and then come back and tell you there is no such man. 

Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.
Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Corregio is
indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? 

A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce”
Saturday night holds many a worker in his place.
Advertise for a stenographer, and nine times out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “down-trodden denizen of the sweat shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power. 

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to
get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, this sorting is done finer - but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. 

It is the survival of the fittest. self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.

And with that self-interest came pay raises as the usefulness of the employee grew and his or her value increased to the employer. The governments have been doing their damned worst to sever any connection between the labor value cost and the cost of labor.

Nothing about socialism has changed in the 120 years since Hubbard sat down one night and penned this little story. I see that our military intelligence professionals poo-poo the whole notion of a Rowan in the modern digital age and yet what they miss is that it applies equally well today. They imagine that since the digital realm didn't exist in 1899, that it therefore all lies outside the scope of what Hubbard intended when he wrote it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So you come to the Essential Man Theory of Everything. The weak ones won't. Nothing will motivate them to exert themselves. As with any endeavor, 75% of the organization won't be pro-active unless you light a fire under them. 

You now face the dilemma of most leaders. There's a guy you know. He could do it. He could tear into the guts of the machine and he could give you not just an answer, he could fix it. He's the guy you go to. 

He's a good man to have. You are truly blessed to have such a man who is willing to use the training and knowledge he has to solve your problem. Of course, if you go to him too often? He's going to reconsider the deal unless you sweeten the pot. You've also found yourself in the trap of the essential man. You need to get beyond this one guy.

There is chat on the chat networks on the darkside about how just about every horrible person one can think of was a frequent flyer on the lolita express and a frequent visitor at Epstein's various underage brothels. No sane person thinks Epstein killed himself and there is a lot of room to doubt that his Deutche banker did earlier this year.

It's always amusing to me to see how the low level enablers of the Left seem to commit suicide or die suddenly and suspiciously at something like 150X the ordinary rate. A simple list of the Clinton's suicide connections is worth a review.

The compiled list of victims of Clintons grows longer every year. We can add the names of the nearly departed soon. I could have sworn Donna Brazile wouldn't have made it out of 2017 alive. One can contrast their list of victims with Trump's or just about anybody who isn't a member of a Mexican drug cartel. The left have always traded in lives for power. Nothing about that has changed since 1917.

The democratic party really is a gigantic fraud perpetuated on the people, for the people by the peepul. A long time ago the Pope used to die and his son would get the job. For a celibate prelate, they had an infinite number of 'nephews' to call upon to serve as cardinals, etc. With the democratic party it is usually the blessed widow who bravely steps up to assume the family throne in Congress.

I'm a little tired of it to be honest.

I had occasion last night to wonder how much of China's real history is left now. I've spent a lot of time in Korea and know that the Japanese were particularly thorough in stealing or destroying as much of the historic material as they could during their decades long occupation. Every museum except the one I visited in Mokpo had a number of empty spaces in the display cases with a card reflecting that the item that once adorned them had been stolen by the Japanese. I figure the same thing must have happened to all of Japanese occupied China.

Then there was the long war between the communists and the Kuomintang which didn't really end until 1949 and still sees the remnant of the Kuomintang occupying Taiwan with whatever they managed to pack up and take with them when they fled the mainland. Who knows what they have and what was buried, hidden or destroyed by them before the left China forever.

And yet even before the ruin and destruction of the Japanese invasion, the Chinese themselves overthrew the Empire and established a Republic and who knows what vanished as the final empire in China disappeared into the welter of civil war, the Boxer Rebellion, confusion and outright theft as treasure hunters made deals that many must have found hard to refuse.

Perhaps the worst of the trashing of Chinese history was done by the communists themselves after they finally drove out the Republic and then instituted the 20th century's years long curses of the Red Brigades and Red Terror and the Cultural Revolution. I suspect a lot of China's history went up in smoke or was hidden away by caretakers who might not have survived and so never returned to salvage what they had tried to shelter from the antifa and the SJWs of their era.

It's probably a good thing that a number of Orientalists got in there early enough to make a record of what the history was before it was swept away. The thousands of years of civilization is on par with the thousands of years of Egyptian history. You'd never know it existed to visit Egypt today. There is precious little of it left that was small enough for the conquerors or the people to pick up and carry away and Nassar and the rest did a fine job of wasting or destroying those things that were too large to carry off.

I just saw this at Traditional Vibe and had to post it. How very oddly true.

Travel safely and keep in mind that patience is not just a virtue but can be a life saver. And with that, we’re off!

Take a minute and watch the wheels come off the entire democratic party charade of an impeachment. Congresswoman Stefanik basically eviscerated Schiff and the whole impeachment sham, a most providential treat for Thanksgiving. In fact it sort of puts me in mind of the Three Stooges and their gag, 'slowly I turned....'

From the admirable folks at gcaptain comes news that the French are to stand up a naval headquarters in the United Arab Emirates to serve as the European Headquarters for their newly assumed duties assumed by them and some of the usual countries, as being in charge of ensuring the safety of some shipping in the Persian Gulf. As you can see, they've given it some thought.

If they had been cleverer, the arabs could have suggested that the logical place to set up a headquarters to oversee the safety of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz would be the UAE islands discussed here. Abu Musa and the Tunb islands have been occupied by Iran since 1971. That of course was before the arabs learned the essential lesson of hanging together or getting hanged by Iran. It was also, sadly, about the time they really started making Americans angry with their OPEC strategy to cripple economies worldwide.


On the other hand, I think it is only we and the Russians who believe in the truth of things expressed by the old saying, Go Big, or Go Home. On the gripping hand, we are talking about the Europeans and they spare no expense in building headquarters and why not plop it down in the premier go-to resort city in the Middle East? Have a look at the article below.

 A French naval base in Abu Dhabi will serve as the headquarters for a European-led mission to protect Gulf waters that will be operational soon, France’s defense minister said on Sunday.

France is the main proponent of a plan to build a European-led maritime force to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz after tanker attacks earlier this year that Washington blamed on Iran. 

Tehran has denied being behind the attacks on tankers and other vessels in major global shipping lanes off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in May and which increased tensions between the United States, Iran and Gulf Arab states. 

The command center will host around a dozen officials representing the countries involved, she said. In a speech to French military personnel, she said the next time she visited the base she hoped the mission would be operational and thanked the UAE for supporting it. 

The UAE has tempered its reaction to the attacks and has called for de-escalation and dialogue with Iran. 

On Saturday, Parly said the initiative could start early next year and around 10 European and non-European governments would join, pending parliamentary approval.

You probably noticed that it said that perhaps 10 European governments would join but as usual with the Europeans there was not a peep about how many ships, armed aircraft or coastal missile batteries would be sited in the Strait to safeguard whatever it is they consider essential shipping.

There's a marvelous HQ up in Bahrain which is host to the US Fifth Fleet, Naval Forces Central Command, some sort of Joint/Combined Maritime command that serves as host to scores if not hundreds of Europeans there to keep an eye on things and improve the quality of coffee served in the break room.

One of the worst commanding officers I ever worked for had this really obnoxious saying that he kept telling me, "if you take care of the small things, the big things will take care of themselves." I was in the process of realigning two main engines and my #1 generator with the Diesel Inspector and was somewhat undermanned. OK, hideously undermanned. With the Europeans on board in the Persian Gulf I'm sure that we and the arabs have in hand the perfect crew to take care of the little things and leave the big things to US.

I see the worthless Mr. Vindman prefers to be addressed by his rank. It reminded me of a long ago day in the Pluck realm when the skipper came down to address us all (junior officers that we were) and so was he by Navy tradition, right up until he pulled off his collar devices and handed them to me and told us that he was now a real commander and nothing like a lieutenant commander anymore since lieutenant commanders, lieutenants and lieutenants junior grade were all just lieutenants. I found him one of the most relaxing CO's I ever worked for. What he was, through and through, was a solid professional who had your back and you knew it. He had character.

He finished his time as Technical Director at one of our SEACENS on the east coast. I daresay a lot of people were really unhappy with him there. He had a hasty way with idiots. I think he raked a battleship with CIWS during the gulf war part 91.

I saw the crossed rifles on the worthless scum testifying in Congress and wondered enough to break out my own set of crossed rifles. They are mine in the sense that I own them but they were my grandfathers. When did the Army change from putting the numbers on their crossed rifles? I'm guessing it was sometime before the War back when the Army was small enough it was like the Marines and one could say, I'm with the 1st of the 5th and guys who know, would know.


I was on the fringes of the 1st and 2nd divisions but never served with either. Still, I remember well the Big Red One when they got home to Fort Riley and the Indian Head, the first much more fondly than the latter. If there was a way to screw troops by the numbers what 8th Army didn't think of, you could count on USFK to implement but for all of that, one thing I don't recall seeing at Yongsan was 2nd Division HQ. No doubt it was there over by the helo pads which I never went to since everything needed for life was at Dragon Hill and my meetings were in the theater.

Public service.

Barring that, Honda Point will do. Don't ask our loyal young to go to sea in crappy ships.

I probably should have taken note when she insisted on going to this concert in San Diego. It was the only time she wanted to go out for music. In hindsight, it's really really obvious.



In retrospect, it's an easy tell. It still came as a thunderbolt out of the blue. My S/A was aimed at terrorists and I didn't expect it in the most domestic of places.

It's probably not new. Probably been around for a hundred years but new to me. I like it.


Yep, a picture of Black Jack Pershing. I like it for a couple of reasons. It reflects the man as he is/was. And I like that once upon a time, a 4 star general of the armies was able to wear just 3 medals and because he was a soldier of ours, there weren't enough actual medals to make up a ribbon bar of 3 so he had to wear some French doodad and some other doodad from some other country, mabye even Belgium.

I followed the example of my dad and his dad and just wore the 3. That was enough. I still remember EN2 Anderson asking the Commodore if we would get any medals once we went to the Persian Gulf and started sweeping mines. This was back in the last millenium and as Anderson said, he'd been in the Navy for 5 years and still didn't have a single medal to show for it. By the time he got back from the Gulf he had 3 rows. It was a medalish time and there was a war you never heard of there. Praying Mantis. Me? I'd already spent time sweeping mines in the Red Sea and a year in the Iran/Iraq War Zone and I had two whole ribbons but none of your actual medals. 18 years later I learned that we had been awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for our actions in the Red Sea. And there, I thought it was nothing but a complete waste of time.

There are people that work hard. The only carriers I stepped foot on were Midway and Lexington.

Still, to watch is to see the power.

Yes, exactly. Found at Had Enough Therapy Yet.

But what really gets me is how it's been almost seven years since Barack Obama left one of his ambassadors to die in a terrorist attack on a U.S. consulate, and the same people who defended the Obama administration endlessly over that, are feigning outrage over Trump's tweet expressing his opinion. Democrats have been crying "impeach!" over everything for years, and now every time Trump expresses an opinion, we're hearing "intimidation." The same party that defended the Obama administration's failure to protect our consulate in Libya from an attack that claimed four American lives, including that of a U.S. ambassador, are now trying to tell us that we should be outraged over a harmless tweet—a tweet that, regardless of what one thinks of the content, was written after Yovanovitch started testifying, and as far as Trump knew, she wouldn't have even had an opportunity to see until well after her testimony concluded? A tweet that she'd have been oblivious to had Schiff not brought it up.

...... Now if you look at the Department of State's regulations, conversations between American officials and foreign heads of state are automatically classified CONFIDENTIAL and NOFORN. 

You normally — at least if you're not Hillary or one of her minions — store classified information on classified servers. Even confidential. (This one hasn't been as exciting since it became clear the Obama administration was using the same server for the same stuff.) 

Some people want to argue that this shouldn't be classified, but they miss a couple of points: first of all, classification is another one of those Article II powers of the president (see Executive Order 13526). If he says it's classified, it's classified. The second is that the White House was concerned about stuff being leaked and warned Vindman explicitly about talking about it. 

So why is it surprising that material is being stored on a classified server? Why the hell was it ever stored on anything BUT a classified server? 

The point here is that all of these things would, in the normal course of events, be security violations punishable by everything from actually losing a job to extended terms in Kansas making small rocks. 

Why was this not the normal course of events?
I'd really like someone in Congress to ask those questions.

There are an awful lot of people who need to be in jail for decades for what they've done in the name of social justice and hate. We can't tolerate their ilk in the State Department, Justice Department or CIA/NSA/DIA. They're tolerable in places like the DOE only to the extent that we need to defund them of $59 billion/year. After all, they really only hurt minorities now don't they? I think so. We need to get rid of them too but they are secondary to securing our national security. Plus? the gulag large enough for all of those killers hasn't been seen on earth since, oh, wait, the Chinese depopulated the Uighurs and the Soviets deported the Balts out of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.

Honestly, the only hate crimes I see these days are democrats lashing out at orangeman and the fake hate crimes created by minorities who deeply wish they were hate-crimed against since it would explain so much failure. They are forced to hate-criming themselves which speaks ill of the entire idea of so called hate crimes.

The headline at the Hill captures it all. It's absolutely true. How stupid does one have to be to fail to understand that ALL foreign policy is the realm of the President of the United States and not that of the people who work for him? The President makes foreign policy and owns it: all of it.

Yet here we are with a show trial in the House carried out by the ignoratti as if they had some sort of beef with the President. There was a fable once about this sort of idiocy.

If one thinks about it, some people who are die-hard democrats must surely feel some sense of shame and embarrassment that they support exactly what is happening in places like California. They support every single shingle of the Cali democrat and yet they can see what this has led to for the vast majority of people living in the state with almost one third of its people in poverty, a third nearing it and just 5% of so living robustly on the coast while making the rest of California a third world country. Of course, that 5% is watching the cities turn into the typical third world sewer of a place but they don't care because Californiastan is also home to the gated community and none of the 5% most involved in wrecking California live in the actual cities.

I used to live there in various places. I remember San Diego started to go a little bit crazy shortly after Orange County arranged to bankrupt itself and before they tossed Randy "Duke" Cunningham, my Congressman, in jail for living on a boat in DC. He was 'corrupt' or 'taking a bribe', not like Nancy Pelosi who steered billions of $ to her husband's business, or was that Diane Feinstein. Macht nich.

I also lived in the Bay Area and dated a girl who lived in the city. I can't imagine the awful feeling it must be to have to park one's car 10 blocks from home in Pacific Heights because there is no parking closer at 2200 at night when you get there. I had the good fortune to date a girl living across the street from a hospital, a cheapo hospital, that had a parking garage right across the street. I could pull in and park anytime after 2200 and the barriers were up (no attendant) and leave before 0600 when the bars were still up and no attendant. I had to be in San Jose NLT 0700 so I was up early.

I just wonder sometimes how any democrat who votes that way doesn't see that what they're voting for in the short term is 3rd world conditions, increased immigration from economic migrants which slams the working poor who are citizens who never get a pay raise because there are always migrants willing to work for little money, hired by people who don't have to worry about paying their social security, FICA, etc taxes. These are some of our topnotch legal citizens. How many female supreme court nominees got their nominations pulled because they hired nannies and didn't pay the required taxes? A couple, maybe as many as a bunch.

What the Democratic Party shower of sh#t  candidates reveal is that they are hard over to create here in America, all of it, the same kind of hellhole created by Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Mexico, They know it to be true and they don't appear to care. None of them seem to have any real feeling for their fellow citizens.

These are the kind of people that turned AIDS into an epidemic. They are the ones that gave us all the crazy mad lunatics that now own our streets and beat people and kill with impunity because nobody can lock them up in the name of safety for the rest of society. They're also the kind of people that think that Trump must be guilty of some crime and look under every rock while at the same time dismissing and ignoring the real, no shit crimes of Hillary and Biden and most of the rest of the nomenklatura running the Deep State.

They effortlessly gut institutions in the name of social justice and having trashed it, move on to kill another institution that maintains the old ways and the old morality and they do it because they just know they're better than those guys. It is always profoundly weird that they don't know who led the Civil Right campaign and passed the Civil Rights legislation and who actually maintained the rights of man.

Admittedly, "Je Maintiendrai" is the motto of the House of Orange. I daresay most democrats would geld and strangle themselves before letting such a motto pass their lips given their contempt for the President they call Orangeman. I will maintain.

The USS Grayback (SS-208), reported overdue and missing since March 1944, has been found. I didn't realize that there is a project to find all of our submarines still on eternal patrol.

An entire generation of young men came to the end of a stupid war that cost them their lives and well-being. It finally came to an end in the 11th month on the 11th day at the 11th hour and you know there was some rat bastard out there shooting right up until the cease fire took effect in 1918.

Once the slaughter was over the French went to work to guarantee that the Germans would only slake their hatred with the blood of Frenchmen even if it took another generation for them to recover from the wounds inflicted by the 'peace' of Versailles.

Today is the day we remember the ones who fought for this country. When I was a boy it took the form of parades and yeah I even remember seeing some of the surviving doughboys march by when I was a boy in Carlisle. They were wearing the uniforms they had been issued some 45 years before but they were still spry enough to march in the line with the new veterans home from the war in Indo-China and with the veterans from the Korean War, World War II and the Cold War as  it slowly consumed men and wealth stolen from 3 generations in a fight so many idiots are eager to recapitulate and so bring about more human misery and suffering as they convince themselves and the other people too stupid to live, that socialism/communism/fascism is just the thing for fixing America.

It's enough to make a grown man cry. You see, the Cold War ended as it was foredoomed to end with the failure of every single communist state as each fell so far behind the West that there was no hope of competing. They're all nation states now and each seems bent on wiping out the vestiges of what ruined them for over 50 years, even Russia. The stubborn holdout is Cuba which is slowly starving to death because they chose a form of government so fucked up it cannot even feed its people on a tropical island paradise. They have been joined by the likes of Venezuela and that is quickly circling the drain as it is emptied of wealth, people and prosperity and looted by the victors who took power in their last 'free and fair' elections.

It is aggravating to watch the Democrats do everything in their power to make an enemy out of Russia which is barely a tithe of America. Russia still has the means to wage thermonuclear war but lacks both the will and any reason for waging such a war.

Interesting times now but hopefully our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen will finally knock the dust of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Africa from their boots and come home to stay. And with them will probably come most of our armed forces in Europe's old countries of what used to be the NATO alliance. It's been a long time since NATO meant anything at all and it's probably time to push it into the dustbin of history alongside the Washington Naval Treaties, the Kellog-Briand Pact and the League of Nations.

Heading a little north of west.

An excellent point and a part of why I don’t believe the media about much of anything.

I have read a number of articles describing California's descent into the Dark Ages as the fires waste the land and the electricity operates like it does in any other third world country. Those of my bent casually mention the causes for the fires, the idiotic policies behind the causes of the fires and the impact of the fires and the random electricity supply and sometimes mention that the smart people who can see just a little into the future are leaving.

I haven't actually read or seen a single thing that describes how California plans to deal with the impact of moronic legislators passing really stupid laws limiting utility companies ability to maintain their lines safely.  I just read an article in the Sunday NYT by Manjoo and his is the only article I've seen that even gives lip service to the FACT that this is the new normal condition for California from now on every time the wind blows. His solution is as stupid as the NYT usually is.

He proposes that people and business be forced to locate in urban cores that build up, not out and cut back on the people living in the wildlands. He never gives even a peep to limiting the brush and fuel loads in the forests or doing what every other state's utility companies do which is to clear the trees and brush away from the transmission lines. Not a peep. He also neglects to mention that these so-called 'wildlands' are cities and towns with up to 90,000 people living in them.

It's odd that we don't see more states spontaneously bursting into flames every time the wind blows. They must be doing something different.

I read last week that San Jose was looking at buying, at bankruptcy auction, what it wanted/needed out of the PG&E equipment and creating its own electric company to service the city of San Jose and perhaps the airport and the outlying bedroom communities. That strikes me as a wise investment but it does leave me wondering about the poor bastards living back in the hills and hollows well removed from San Jose and other like minded self-generating city utility companies. Will we need to recreate something like Rural Electrification and build a sort of California Valley Authority along the lines of the TVA to send power to the poor benighted losers living in places that time forgot?

In 1996 Californians did something really stupid.

This bill would prohibit any person, corporation, electrical
corporation, or local publicly owned electric utility or other
governmental entity other than a retail customer's existing electric
service provider as of December 20, 1995, from providing electric
service to a retail customer of a publicly owned electric utility
unless the customer pays to the utility currently providing electric
service, a nonbypassable generation-related severance fee or
transition charge, as defined, established by the regulatory body for
that utility. 

The bill would prohibit a local publicly owned electric utility or
other governmental entity from providing electrical service to a
retail customer of an electrical corporation unless that customer
pays a nonbypassable transition charge to the electrical corporation. 

The bill would require the local regulatory body of each local
publicly owned electric utility to determine whether it will
authorize direct transactions between electricity suppliers and end
use customers, subject to implementation of the nonbypassable
severance fee or transition charge, and provide for procedures to
implement the direct transactions.

As you know, we're dealing here with California so the losers told themselves that they did this all in the name of increasing competition in the delivery of electricity. You see how that worked out, right? What was the effect of the California legislation?

Provisions of AB 1890

The Electric Utility Industry Restructuring Act (Assembly Bill 1890) makes the generation of electricity competitive in California. The legislation became law on September 23, 1996.

Before restructuring, a single utility provided each customer with generation, transmission, distribution, and metering and billing of electricity. As of March 31, 1998, the new structure allows customers in most, but not all, existing electric utility service areas to choose their electric generation supplier.

Restructuring also brings changes to the transmission of electricity. Previously restricted transmission facilities will be opened to power generators on a fair and equitable basis, overseen by a new organization, the Independent System Operator (ISO). The ISO has been given the responsibility for assuring reliability of the high voltage transmission system. Local utilities will continue to distribute electricity.

You see that the ISO was given 100% of the responsibility for assuring reliability of the high voltage transmission system and yet who does California blame for their ongoing disasters? Not the ISO. In a way, this captures the very essence of so-called 'net neutrality' and what happens under that regime.

I suppose the question now is, would you get on an elevator in California?

A little spiritual enlightenment for Saturday. 

I'm sure it has occurred to some people that there may be some truth to the proposition that mankind itself is responsible for rising temperatures somewhere or other. On the other hand some of us who have traveled the world wonder just exactly how does one measure the temperature of the whole earth in the same way we wonder about people who claim that sea levels are rising. How does one measure the rising sea level when the earth is subject to tides from the pull of the sun and the moon and they vary depending on where the moon is in the equation which is why we have spring tides and neap tides.

Nonetheless, I have finally come around to  accept that there is some truth to the man made global warming theory. It's caused by a bunch of lying thieves who have slowly been corrupting the climate databases going back centuries so they can lower the observed temperatures in the past and raise the temperatures as they come closer to the present time and by carefully including all the data from sensors in the various heat islands while discarding or massaging the more pristine wilderness sensor observations.

So it is clear to me now that if global warming is man made, it's made entirely with pencils, erasers and computers.

The House democrats voted some sort of exotic nonsense into being in a strict party-line vote today although 2 democrats jumped ship. It was entirely expected and it still fails the smell test for any true or actual Impeachment to begin. Nobody was surprised by the results but they did put me in mind of a couple of earlier democratic government's action which invited the contempt of better men.

As usual, they are known by their utter lack of character, honesty or integrity, as are their little whistle blowers who all seem Hell bent on their crazed path to dislodge the duly elected President and dissolve his government.

Randolph Churchill in a Letter to the Times-

He proceeded to review the conduct of the Opposition during the last three sessions. ‘Such a series of neglected opportunities, pusillanimity, combativeness at wrong moments, vacillation, dread of responsibility, repression and discouragement of hard-working followers, collusions with the Government, hankerings after coalitions, jealousies, commonplaces, want of perception on the part of the former lieutenants ... and if it be the case that Ministers have lost ground in the country, they have only themselves to blame, nor have they the slightest right to cherish feelings of resentment against the regular and responsible Opposition in the House of Commons.

His friends were distressed and I'm sure his enemies were appalled while his party was exceptionally upset.


Oliver Cromwell – Dissolution of the Long Parliament 1653 Dissolution of the Long Parliament by Oliver Cromwell given to the House of Commons, 20 April 1653.

Oliver Cromwell’s Speech

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!”

Oliver Cromwell – April 20, 1653

There are some things that happen where it's like one is hit by a bolt of lightning and Wildfire erupts near Reagan library in Southern California is one such event. The story is from the AP so I take it all with grain of salt the size of Utah but the wack jobs out there in California are well known for using fire as their most infernal method for expressing their political will. After all, they're socialists and firmly believe that the ends justify the means.

Lovely piece of racism right out of the NYT. I read it because I am a masochist. In essence, it talks about blood. I'm not one of those hundred million gallon doners but there is one thing I notice whenever and wherever I give blood to those blooodsuckers.

There are exactly zero blacks.

Zero asians.

The nation's blood supply comes from guys like me.

There are almost never any women either.

Obviously, I need to go to different places or at different times.

My ex took my 3 year old daughter and moved to Texas.

So there I am driving the right way on the one way street and what is probably the new superintendent of schools is driving at me, the wrong way on the one way street. I allow as he's kind of a stupid mother abuser and he starts to get out of his car to fight because ignorance knows no bounds and


I drive away.

Yes, it was a glorious morning.

He was going the wrong way anyway.

I'm a vampire again

This is just evil. So I like it.

Which is interesting because it was fading away quite nicely.

We went out to dinner at Blazing Bill's and it was good. 45 minutes to get a table. Weekend not planned well but good company and then we went to their home to play games. I was married and I remember going out to a PEO night almost into the mountains of San Diego where we had a really good time with all. My distaff half preferred the billionaire set of PEO and so we partied with them too. Oddly, they were equally nice if a little distant. I prefered the other group. Nobody was asking my preferences. She decided to go with the billionaire crowd.

As we played tonight our host got a pad and pencil for which to keep score. I noticed that after the first hand the score card fled and nobody discussed who was winning, because. That I think is the best way to play card games after 2200. Nobody keeps score and you laugh at card disasters.

The moon was huge in it's half-lit state just over the horizon just above the high school. And so tonight I read about the shame that is NASA and just now wish it would go away.

I used to work with the Navy labs and they were a sad herd. Ask them to do anything and they'd stovepipe it so just one guy could help you and they always asked for funding first and then if there was any reason at all to spend the money they had maybe they'd do that. I got invited to meet the D3 at SPAWAR after I wrote a STATEMENTS OF WORK for the lab that contained the language used in all of our statements of work for industry and told them to submit monthly reports and give an accounting of monies spent. The D3 told me I would be on my way to see Captain Valdez next and I told him to bring it on. I was fed up. More to the point, I was also a captain and not any sort of 'aquisition professional' and I had my congresman's address right there with me. Admittedly, my congresscritter was Randy Cunningham so really, no stick in the bag after all.

Valdez went down later that month for cheating on the physical fitness test. I was out of the country that day. Talk about lame. If you are out of town on the day of the PFT, or the wizz quiz, oh well. You pass. He was the CO, he could have just been 'out.' Still and all, I didn't work for the CO of SPAWARSYSCEN, I worked for the big cahunna. And to be honest, I didn't really work for him either. That's what made life so interesting. We were like Russians. We pretended to work and they pretended to pay us. We worked for codes in the Pentagon and they were all at war with each other. Plus, like girls, they renamed themselves every other month.

Oh, the girls, they were the GURLS, general unrestricted line GURL. Then they figured that out, ha ha and the GURLS picked another name, I forget. They then renamed themselves a couple of dozen times. We stopped paying attention.

NASA is worse. They are the complete losers of space travel. It is almost like Space Cowboys was the death knell for an agency looking for someplace to die. It will take them 4 years to build a rocket. Right. I could build one in the garage in no more than 3 years.

Just because.

The national media has let itself go in declaring him a solon and statesmen but we know the truth.
He was an idiot.



UPDATE:

It has been pointed out that I am an idiot and so, time to rush in with an update.

I mixed up one idiot with another idiot in Congress. In my defense, it's an easy thing to do since Congress is stuffed with idiots. Elijah was the one who represented Baltimore and Hillary. The other idiot is still living the half-life that idiots like that exist in.

Ripped from the very bowels of Assistant Village Idiot.



Enjoy.

Every now and then I capture it in an image and paste it here.


I'm still willing to write a lot more than I'll get around to posting. For some of them, it is the topic that is perhaps too dangerous and the writing too over the top. For others, they were overtaken by events which can happen to even the best commenting. Others were written after the little grey cells had gone to sleep. I resurrect some of those for posting later.

I tore the hell out of one or more of the tendons in my knee last week before we drove to South Carolina. It got worse and worse and then yesterday it was feeling better right up until I tripped over a pillow case. Snagged one on the floor with my big toe and the pain roared back. Tonight we went out for an evening of graciousness at the Intercontinental downtown by the Cleveland Clinic and it was all good. After that we stopped at one of our favorite bookshops for an authors talk about the book, Maps of Cleveland.

The book was interesting, the topic was interesting. It was standing room only but one has to admit that is because the world's most dangerous bookshop cat took up residence on a couch next to a guy who was a little more afraid of him than I was. My right hand looks well tenderized after being the inspiration for the bloody affections of Otis (Red in Tooth and Claw).

As the talk progressed the pains forced my body into a planar formation on the couch. My better half tells me I was asleep but who can say? It didn't feel like sleep to me but the pain did recede for a brief time. Ah, I see you there wondering, was it the pain from the knee and back or the pain from the affections of Otis?

There is a cold rain falling and as it does every time, I wonder if it brings the ache from the old metal and the old wounds out to play or if it is just the absence of the fading sunsets that mark the end of summer days. This did not use to happen when the metal stayed in southern California and basked year round in what easily would pass for long summer days even in winter.

I saw a 'journalist' was recently outraged to discover a man using his right to freedom of speech with a T-shirt. The 'journolist' was outraged and his sister was appalled and the press was disgusted and amazed at the chutzpah of some citizen expressing his first amendment rights on an airplane of all things.

Evidently, they saw some guy boarding the 'journolist's' plane wearing one of these.


I don't wonder that the bro-sister were shocked at a mere citizen denigrating them and their right to speak out while at the same time condemning his God given right to speak out. There was this guy who put into words what he found unique about Americans. Here it is:
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith

Paris Nov. 13. 1787.

the people can not be all, & always, well informed. the part which is wrong [. . .] will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.

You see the dilemma. To speak now in the manner of Thomas Jefferson is to invite a visit from the new red coats and their evil minions. For some reason, those eagerest to squelch your right and my right to free speech are the journalists who believe that only they may speak truth to power.....and even then only when that power wears a Republican hat.