THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

A rather illuminating conversation on the course of history into the future. The future is now and it is not looking good for Europe or us for that matter. The west has been invaded by millions of people who don't believe at all in any of the traditions of the West and who are in fact opposed to almost everything the West has created since the Reformation. If you have 14 minutes, this is an excellent discussion on the path we are following now. In 10 years it will be brutal hindsight and people will be wishing that the people today had done something and not just stood around like boobs as they did when they watched the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

MOTIV8

Guy I used to know had that as his license plate. He was a SEAL.

I wondered tonight, after a wonderful night out, just how does a modern day football coach motivate a whole flock of prima donna millionaires he can't fire, can't send to Iraq, can't torture/torment or send to Cuba, when his peers all agree that they can't make the lousy little dirtbags stand up for the national anthem? It does pose a question.

What does it take to get the 'average' man on the Cleveland Browns to stand up and actually play football? I don't know and I don't care as the famous Carl used to say. More intrinsically, what made the Cavs win against the Golden shower when any and all observers could see that one set of men were playing as a team that knew how to pass, advance, score and rebound and the other team had never been introduced to the idea of playing as a team?

Just some late night thoughts before I start my zen moment of cleaning a floor.

FILE SUIT FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Now is the time and here is the place.

If you are a white male you have undeniably been victimized by the casual racist, misandry, bigoted and sexist policies enacted by every layer of government in this country and in most of the fields of academic and business endeavor. Your input or participation is openly scorned and forbidden by official representatives of the government and the various colleges, universities and business and NGO's that do business in the United States.

The Democrats are not the only organization that openly discriminates in the most blatant and openly officious manner possible while expecting to get away with it like they're the incarnation of Roman Polanski or Harvey Weinstein and free to screw over white men with nary a hint of guilt, remorse or even a troubled conscience. They're like sharks.

In all honesty, just about every organization in America that hires or fires people tends to obsess first over the race and then the sex and ethnicity of their employees. Now the shoe is pinching the other foot. Just think of the fun you can have by using some of the enormous number of tools at your disposal such as nolo.com and cheaply and easily filing suits in the federal courts and with the EEOC. Hours of fun and making your leisure time productive, all while working at home!

Remember, if you don't exercise your federal rights they get all flabby and unsightly, so file early and file often!

Power to the People!

GOOD PEOPLE TRICKS

I'll be satisfied if my daughter never tries any of the insane ones. Hat tip to Borderline Sociopathic Blog for Boys.



UPDATE: Srsly, watching that video will lift your spirits. It's all about triumph on a human scale.

OTHER UPDATE:

Vernor Vinge wrote a book you might like. It included the concept of 'focus'. These guys and ladies were focused. Way focused.

NOW THAT'S A HOOT

I hope it holds true because the only group we despise more than politicians, is journalists.

15 minutes after the image above here are the updated results. Pity the fascists of America who have no 'late reporting' precincts like Philadelphia, Chicago or Detroit.

Neener!

Do you think other real republican candidates will decide that the surest route to victory is to find one of the endless progressive journolist idiots and body-slam him on camera?

INTERMEDIATE RANGE NUCLEAR MISSILES

I was listening to Socialist People's Radio (NPR) this afternoon and listened to a pair of smarmy lickspittles discussing the issue of Russia's intermediate range nuclear missile deployments. These weapons were banned by the Reagan administrations negotiations and treaty with the USSR in 1987.

The treaty gave both parties the right to conduct inspections of just about any site where ground launched cruise missiles or intermediate range ballistic missiles were produced. That gave the Soviets and Russians the right to enter my classified workspace and search around for anything that might look like a Transporter Erector Launcher TEL since the Air Force and General Dynamics used to build those at Air Force Plant 19 in Old Town, San Diego at what used to be the Consolidated Vultee production facility and is now home to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. We were admonished to keep all of our secrets in spaces smaller than the footprint of the old TELs so the Russians could be barred from searching anything or space smaller than an actual TEL.

My old office top floor and where LockMart/ULA used to make the fuel tanks for Atlas Launchers

The National People's Radio discussed Trump's flailing Russian policy with the lickspittle commenter noting for us that Trump had no Russian policy and probably wouldn't until he got around to filling the National Security Advisor position and the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Policy) jobs and got some Deputy Secretary at State that could comprehend Russia.

What I despise about NPR is that they cherry pick 100% of their guests to follow the liberal chains of thought on all policy or topics and never give so much of a hint about what is really going on by asking some actual spokesperson from the non-liberal half of the country to come on and comment. The lickspittle guest did observe that Russia violated the INF treaty in 2014 during Obama's administration but offered no hint as to what measures Obama adopted to challenge or counter this violation and the NPR lickspittle naturally let him off the hook and didn't ask any of the obvious questions that immediately occur to anybody with a functioning brain.

It's pretty sad. I used to be able (many years ago) to listen to NPR for up to an hour at a time. These days it's down to about 1 minute/day. Oh well, MetroParkCentralis has some excellent music stations.

BIO WAR

The government is not so savvy as all that. They just sheathed our local federal building in armor but you have to wonder if they have upgraded and improved the central air conditioning to eliminate potential bio-hazards. You know the standard Mission Impossible Format where the 'good guys' infiltrate building security and knowingly move to release a chem/bio element into the central air system of the building? Yeah, like that. Zika mosquitos from hell.

Do you think the feds are set up to deal with this kind of attack any better now after the ridiculous flail ex we went through following 9/11 and the anthrax spores? No? Me neither.

You can almost see the heavy hand of the fed though, can't you. They'll lock up and guard the access to the ventilation room and maybe, just maybe, think about the air vent intakes on the roof. Maybe. But they won't even think about the vents and intakes in the parking garage next door to the federal building where all the federal employees park. That's not how federal security thinks.

Remember, these are the ones that institute draconian screening at the main gate and then have their employees lined up single parked for a mile every single morning to get in the gate to go to work which makes them easy prey for any killer with an AK47 (CIA). We used to get this thing in Bahrain where the line to get into ASU was backed up to the main road all through a Shia village.

You get to laugh as you listen to the Base CO at Norfolk talk about what happens whenever he goes to maximum security at his Base. He told us that he had traffic backed up to the North Carolina State border and it's not that much of an exaggeration.  The lines when you do it are huge.

Look at the recent sad events in Belgium. The bombers attacked the people outside security because, they were vulnerable. There was no need for penetration of the security barrier in order to inflict casualties all out of proportion. The people were deliberately piled up outside the palisades and vulnerable to attack. That was what the government mandated. That's what the Red Brigades did at Rome not that long ago.

Rule # 7  Don't tarry at security interfaces. Get there, go through and move on. You don't want to linger on the boundary of life and death. And, it's not like anybody was stupid enough to arm the TSA.

WHERE ARE THEY?

Are there any overt pro-America American groups out there anymore? Everyday I read about another pseudo or quasi American group that isn't really about America and Americans. They seem to have splintered into competing groups of budding little fascists.

I read too much news which is kind of a travesty since I took to reading the news again after I found watching television news unbearable. Now it turns out that even the written news that crosses my eye is so full of irritating things it is best avoided. I wonder how many of us have found ourselves sliding comfortably into home each day without paying the slightest attention to the news of the world, the nation, or the city around us.

I vacationed a time or two in a place which is no more where I was were totally cut off from the outside world. No TV, no radio, no newspapers, no cable, no internet. Oh sure, you could get in your car and drive to Kona but there wasn't much there and the idea of doing it so you could pick up a copy of the New York Times in order to feed your news Jones was too much even for me. Besides, every morning at breakfast we got a 9 page extract of the news from the NYT. I say 9 pages but it was only 8 because the last page was the crossword puzzle. That was enough.

I've about reached that point again. Fortunately, spring is almost here and I will be able to take in the gentle breezes and walks in the woods that make a day a splendid thing. I have also rejoined the life aquatic since I trailered home the latest addition to my fleet. I have to fix the electrics on the trailer and figure out how to make it work with the car and then I'll be able to hit the nearby river and the lakes and find comfort in the fact that Lake Erie is the shallow Great Lake and therefore warms up to practically blood temperature by late June. Yep, easy days and lazy nights.

I'm still writing four or five posts a day but perhaps that will slow down when I stop reading the news. Buck and I used to swap numbers sometimes. Not the unimportant ones, but the ones that showed how much effort we were putting into this trivial thing called blogging.

THE VIEW FROM OLYMPUS

If not for electricity, it would be hard to tell anybody lives here. It is sometimes hard to believe how much of the world still rations electricity or does without. When you think about it, the very words used to describe electricity come not from the last century, but the one before that. Some of them were born into an even earlier century.

André-Marie Ampère
Charles Augustin de Coulomb
Alessandro Volta
Charles Proteus Steinmetz

There is, here, an almost detectable disdain for the echelons of modern liberal government but I admire the people who hammered out the hidden agreements about the use of space. We and the Russians exploited orbit without any binding agreements because retaliation, but not all were so inclined. As it happens, few countries were technologically virtuous enough and militantly indifferent to cost. We're happy with what we have but it could have been so much more.

It's amazing to me that airmen alive today saw many of the cities shown in the images above, aflame from high above them after they dropped tons of bombs on them. Orbit was a battlefield. And, by the Grace of God, a peaceful one.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

The third light of the world owes its existence to a tiny handful of people who were nurtured by a renaissance that happened in just one place on the planet. It's rather nice to see it finally spreading its wings and embracing the entire planet.

ROUGHLY WHERE I STAND

Skippy-san thinks I'm a fascist, Jane would agree but she might be nicer about it

I DON'T THINK SO

The school administrators made students watch a bullying, racist attack on white people. All of them. Henrico School leaders (unnamed sources) released the following statement:

"The students participated in a presentation that involved American history and racial discourse. A segment of the video was one component of a thoughtful discussion in which all viewpoints were encouraged. As always, we are welcoming of feedback from students and their families, and we address concerns directly as they come forward."

 revised to simply say, how amusing. And leave it at that.

FIVE PLANETS AT A GLANCE

You have until February but the show starts in the morning. Here in MetroParkCentralis the skies just clouded over with the news of another celestial display.

Enjoy the show.

SUNDAY AT THE BEACH, IN MY MIND

Because it is snowing again here in MetroParkCentralis...

Del Mar Beach Camera

I lived for many years on that mesa and walked this beach almost every day.

Easton Beach Camera, Newport, Rhode Island

I used to live at the top of the hill in the background on Annandale Road while I was at school in Newport. I walked this beach most days or nights and would have a beer at the first bar in Middletown before heading back home. It was cold.

Bailey's Beach, Newport.

This was the first beach I lived on. Easton Beach is the beginning of Cliff Walk and this is the beach at the other end of the walk.

FUN WITH LADDERS AND GRAVITY

There is no place a man with a ladder cannot reach. Admittedly, most of them are in the down or falling direction.

BOOKSTORES SHOULD GET LIQUOR LICENSES

offtrack betting, comfy chairs and daycare. That way they could make money and still sell books.

SANS CHEVAL

This was ruthlessly stolen from Maggie's Farm.

I laughed out loud.

I hack at French but my formal days of reading and writing the language are long behind me so I used google translate to double check my words. Did you know sans cheval is translatable as:

Free Horse, Without Horse, Horseless? Me neither. How flexible is the French.

ANOTHER TYPICALLY MODEST DEFIANT PROPOSAL

All those Syrian migrants that President Obama wants to bring over in order to enhance our security by importing a better breed of peaceful muslim could be easily accommodated in world class beach resort facilities at Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure they'll fit right into the President's Socialist Paradise and that way everybody will be happy. If Cuba is good enough for the Mayor of Chicago and his family, it has to be good enough for Obama and the muslim army headed this way across the Atlantic. If we give the JV ISIS from Syria a few bucks I'm pretty sure we could arrange with Castro to have them turned loose in Havana.

BLANDLY STUPIDLY OBTUSE AND IN CHARGE

We are all used to elected officials of surpassing stupidity who nevertheless thrust themselves into the limelight to throw their idiocy and ignorance into the harshest glare of public self-shaming. Here's a new one. This one wears a uniform.

A Pentagon spokesman expressed concern about the surface-to-air missiles and other aerial targeting weaponry because it suggests the Russians are rejecting a call from American officials to focus on targeting the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL or Daesh.

“Certainly we are aware of what they’re putting in there ... it’s a capability that we don’t see as being productive in the fight against ISIL,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday.

“Whether it’s putting air-to-air missiles on planes or putting in surface-to-air missiles, those are things that are clearly not about ISIL, as ISIL doesn’t have any aircraft,” Davis said. “So far it has not had any impact on our operations [over Syria] but it's certainly something we're aware of, particularly with the surface-to-air missiles."

I don't know why this idiot is surprised that Russia is 'rejecting a call from American officials to focus on targeting our friends in ISIS.' To paraphrase the captain, I wonder why the Russians don't view themselves as the selfless myrmidons of the Greater EU like we do and simply do as they're told by their betters, Dammit!

Isn't it fascinating that a navy captain is the Voice of Quality Assurance and can tell the Russians that they don't need to defend their aircraft from other aircraft in the ongoing spat over Syria. Evidently, the captain suffered through one too many Deming TQL/TQM sessions and fixated on productivity to the exclusion of results and accomplishment, high on the list of which, in war, would be surviving the engagement.

I like that the missile deployment hasn't had any impact on American operations over Syria though. That's a good touch. So far as it can be determined American operations over Syria haven't had any measurable effect on ISIS so things are balanced with total futility on our side and a cold-eyed assassin's approach to killing its enemies on Russia's side.

You know, we haven't even started to discuss the eventual "unexpected discovery" of Stinger missiles in ISIS inventories. "How'd those little suckers get there," mused Pentagon Spokesman, Captain Jeff Davis. I mean, you just know that if our FBI and ATF couldn't resist selling guns and ammo to the Mexican drug cartels, their military and intelligence agency counterparts will be unable to refuse to give away surface to air missiles to ISIS.

On that note, I see this morning that Robert Crumplar has a new essay; How Offering Tomahawks for Foreign Military Sales Will Strengthen Allies and Deter Adversaries. Idiocy isn't confined to Turkey and the Pentagon. It's everywhere.

SOCIALIST WORKERS PARADISE

Socialism appears to bring about sloth, decay, crime and a weakening in the strength of building material. It has many other flaws but one would think the visible accomplishments would force practitioners to consider the inevitable invisible flaws that follow from imposing social justice by fiat on people who can still get up and move away. It isn't like one has to guess what is going to happen next after nobody gets around to paying the workers and peasants.

They all moved away one day and never returned

GREEN LIVES MATTER

Student protesters unleashed a purgative venting and waved banners while conducting a tantrum. They insist that Green lives matter and to hell with all the rest! Who are we to argue?