Wings

46 thoughts on “Wings”

1. Identify the Aircraft:
   1. Northrop N-1M
   2. Horten Ho 229
   3. Northrop YB-49
   4. Northrop Grumman X-47B
   5. Northrop N-9M

   1. No A-12 sitting on the ground? Tom

      1. Yes.

2. While Joe was in the basement, eating ice-cream, and watching Barney on DVD, some staffer/staffers/wife/kid next door were busy with his autopen, and the only one that knows for sure if it was authorized is soon to depart this world. With him out of the picture, it’s much easier to deny any illegal activities, since the perpetrators have plenty of time to square up their stories. Personally, I think shooting one, or two, in the kneecap will give some important answers in a short period of time. Of course, that can’t happen, since we’re so civilized.

   Locally, the really good hamburgers are hard to find. The old mom and pop joints are long gone, and the mass produced patties used by many restaurants are thin, tasteless pathetic substitutions. There are a few available, but require a special trip. The hamburger baskets of my youth are gone, and I miss the extra touch of a single, large, hand-battered onion ring on the side with the home-cut fries.

   1. I have a few favorite burger joints scattered around the country. Of the mass-produced variety, Whataburger is high on my list, but the stores vary in quality (management?). In-N-Out isn’t bad, but they don’t meet the mom-and-pop standard. A strip mall burger joint was owned by an older couple who had been there forever. I went there one day during COVID, and Pop wasn’t working. I learned that he died. Momma kept the place going. I went back when in SoCal a month or so ago and the place had closed. Never to reopen. It’s a saga re-told, as you mentioned – the old burger basket.

      1. Burgers.. Way back my favorite was Nation’s Giant Hamburger. The one in Davis Calif… the last time I remember going there was in March of 1976, just before I went to bootcamp.
         Whataburger is a great place to stop, none near me but that gives me something to look forward to.

         1. Vito’s Pizza, Corona, California. Pop (Vito) was from Barra, Italy, and before he moved to Corona, he had a small hole-in-the-wall pizza joint in Anaheim not far from Disneyland. Before that, he owned a company that catered to Paramount Movie Studios. He sold his catering business, retired, and opened his pizza shop as a hobby. The food was excellent, and he was a fun guy. He moved to Corona, opened a place there, and then died. His family tried to keep it going, but ended up selling to a MIDDLE EASTERNER – as in fresh off the boat Middle Eastern with lots of money. The opened with a Middle Eastern twist, the food was crap, and people stopped going. They had/have the financial legs to keep Vito’s Pizza going, but instead of thriving, it’s dead.
            .
            The same was true of other places I’ve gone to. The original owner who made the business great sells or dies, and somebody of a different ethnicity takes over and kills the business rather than doing what made the original place popular. They’re always mystified when people stop going.

            1. >somebody of a different ethnicity takes over and kills the business
               —
               Yeah. I’m still sad about this French take-out place in Lexington, Massachusetts. It was called L’Alouette and resided in a humble roadside strip of three or four storefronts; I think there was a rundown convenience store and a sewing-machine repair shop next door. All kinds of classic French dishes made that day, pre-packaged for takeout, and affordable (sort of) even for a then-grad student. I don’t know if a French person owned it, but the food was great. Years later I moved back to Boston and was looking forward to getting something from l’Alouette. The storefront was still there, but now it was called La Riviera and run by Brazilians. The food was very different. Still had names such as Coq au Vin and so forth, but with an “ethnic twist”. I asked someone working there about it, and they were very proud of the changes they had made. I imagine it was to French food as Panda Express is to Chinese food. Maybe I’m being unfair, as La Riviera hung on for several years. They went out of business eventually, but I didn’t bother to check up on them so don’t know exactly when. (Apparently there is a ?new place called l’Alouette in Lexington but “specializes in Middle Eastern delicacies”. Also, random factoid: There is also some sort of curse wherein every Chinese restaurant I like goes out of business within a year. We had a great place that did take out on weekends out of the back of a cigs-and-beer convenience store, of all things. Really good northern Chinese food. They got shut down after some (prolly illegal) Chinese clerk sold alcohol to something like 100 minors over one weekend. Another place had decent food, but terrible advertising and business sense. I used eat in there occasionally just to listen to the staff talk. For some reason everyone spoke beautiful Beipinghua – northern/Peking dialect – instead of the usual Cantonese of then-typical Chinkies. Now Mandarin is common even in Chinatowns.)
               —
               The flip side is a place that keeps the old name, but just becomes an ethnic restaurant. There’s a Korean place in my home town that has a totally Anglo name. I never asked if it was like “Arnold’s” in Happy Days, where (ISTR) Pat Morita’s character kept the name because “new sign expensive!”

   2. Don’t know if they still do it, but the Runza restaurant chain used to be picky about who they got their beef from. Some of them even did an excellent job of keeping the grill cleaned. At the bottom of the mountain I live on is a mom-and-pop joint that is always full of blue-collars at lunch time.

   3. X2…Echo your full-throated comments…for decades We The People have been played by a bunch of reprobates and self-important thieves. Yet, when we finally start peeling back the onion…draw the curtain on their nefarious insider club activities…they circle their wagons in order to protect the scummy fiefdom. Started with the serpent/apple, has continued to this day with support from that segment of the population: the stupid people who love their captivity, or that other segment who justify/relish stealing from their fellow American for all manner of idiocy. These types use the excuse that “everything should be free”, as if that can happen. These people – at every level, private or public – are anarchists and need to be marginalized(to be polite).
      As for burgers…when the accountants and lawyers control companies and industries, the first thing to go is quality. Most modern burgers suck…in desperation while traveling got a cheeseburger meal at Mickey D’s…what the hay…crap on a bun. Never again, even if desperate…just as soon warm a cow pie before paying $20 for a simple burger meal. Again, idiots in charge of something, ruining a simple recipe.

3. About the Bidens: saw elsewhere where someone was wondering if Hunter is getting excited about a new widow in the family he can hit on…

   1. He may have already thrown the meat to Dr. Jill. Given his wide ranging exploits, lack of discretion and discriminating choices when it comes to women – who knows?

4. “Of the (US Citizen) Asian males who worked with me/for me during my long and storied career, as best I could ascertain, nearly 100% had arranged marriages”
   East Asian or South Asian? I’ve never met a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese-descended American (male or female) in an arranged marriage. I do know quite a few Indians and Pakistanis with arranged marriages, though most of those were (both) from T’Auld Country and not American born/raised. Most of the marriages seem to be working out, for values of “working”.
   —
   “U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell”
   Who is that? Hmmm. Early Life and Education: Sure enough, uh huh. And of course, damn it! Every single time. Every. Single. Time. It’s all so tiresome. I refer of course to the Columbia Law connection. Personal Life: I’m shocked to find gambling in Rick’s casino.
   So far as EST goes, it’s a small world. I was just gossiping with a good friend, and colleague, about how everyone knows everyone, and their supposedly “personal” business, in our patch of the professional world. No doubt the law/politics world is much like that. I’m assuming the high-speed, low drag SOF community similarly runs off of caffeine, hatred, and gossip.
   —
   “Fooled by a dementia patient”
   I was listening to Jake Tapper on Megyn Kelly yesterday. Or trying to. I had to shut the damn thing off. Contrary to what I may project on-line, IRL I’ve become a surprisingly calm person. But I was getting infuriated by Tapper’s sanctimonious hypocrisy (re Lara Trump) to an unusual degree. Not sure why I was so angry, but I think it’s because he was ticking nearly every box on the list of manipulation tactics. “But think of the stammering children!” For some reason that was even more offensive than Roseanne Barr’s “but it will frighten my children!” (FFS, you miserable obese vulgarian, your youngest child is over 30.)
   —
   Flóki Vilgerðarsson: “Naval engineer”. Sure, let’s go with that.
   See this sword? I forged that sword with my own hands, but do they call me Flóki the Smith? No! No they don’t.
   This mead we’re drinking? I raised the bees and gathered the honey from the comb myself. But do they call me Flóki mead-maker? No!
   I built this ship. But do they call me Flóki shipwright? Again, no!
   But you bring one live sheep on a lonely sea voyage…
   #tishboom
   —
   —
   PS re lonely sea voyages: So I read this case report (in a real medical journal and everything) about a ship captain who came down with the clap. It happened that one night there was some emergency and the captain had to roust the chief (and only) engineer out of his rack. This was some small-crewed freighter where everyone had their own cabin. So CHENG dashed out to do whatever he needed to, leaving his cabin door ajar. This revealed that CHENG in fact had not been sleeping. He had been busy with an inflatable companion. Apparently the captain decided that since CHENG would be busy for quite some time, he’d keep Dolly company. And so he did. And that was how the captain got the clap. Or so he claimed. I don’t know if I believe the story, but I shudder to consider what the captain had been up to, if inflata-cuckolding his engineer was the LESS embarrassing story. Some things it’s best not to think about too much.

   1. I’m guessing they didn’t ask the cabin boy?

   2. “long and storied career…”, which we M lurkers benefit from the career “long stories”. Ya gotta write a book, make it a tome, no sense leaving out the juicy bits and critical details of said funvee stories.

      1. *VM lurkers (a special club, only with good people)

   3. Arranged marriages: Some of the Vietnamese who worked for me were from aristocratic families in South Vietnam and were relocated to the US by the US government (so they came with their silver taels intact). They all had arranged marriages. The “boat people” who came later were, for the most part, ethnic Chinese who had Vietnamese names and were subjected to a form of ethnic cleansing after the Vietnam War. I don’t know of any of those people whose marriages were arranged. For the most part, they were culturally and personally shattered by their experiences in the camps. When they arrived in the Land of the Big PX, they didn’t have the advantages the political and cultural elite enjoyed.
      .
      Among the Hmong, there was a lot of pressure for those relocated, to marry within their blood-tribe structure. I don’t know if that still exists all these years later.
      .
      I have far less exposure to Subcontinent people than Mike_C does, but my sense of the matter is that there is pressure to marry within caste and within established financial structures for the wealthy – even those in the US.

   4. “U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell” took over some of the Presidential duties, this makes her still another Presidential Judge (the coup continues). Anyone have any idea of what number she is of the current Presidential Judges?

      1. Why do all these lawless judges overstepping their very defined boundaries always look like Ichabod Crane and/or his wife?

   5. I looked it up. It wasn’t a freighter.
      It was a fishing boat that had been out to sea for three months.
      The particular type of clap was gonorrhea.
      The case report was submitted from a Greenland hospital.

5. Most of what you write this morning proves WTP need to wrestle back our freedoms…somehow. By my far off view it appears TPTB are working even more overtime to keep their ill-gotten Clubhouse. Time For A Yuge Reset.
   Big Bill…pass this damn thing even if it adds temp debt. Need to cut peoples taxes, if not, WTP get hammered with a 68% tax increase. The incompetence…assuming it’s only that…among the ruling class, is unreal. These people are not your friend…none of them. They hate you.

   1. Ps: Feeling like the abused girlfriend this morning, and the cops are doing nothing except tell me I have to get a [worthless] restraining order. The more that comes out the worse it gets, and mostly for WTP. Something’s gotta give, this Federal dumpster fire is unsustainable…as they continue to throw gasoline on it…need to cut them off.

      1. Feeling much the same way, Paul, about the abused GF thing, but I would pessimistically recall that whilst Rome wasn’t burnt in a day, burn it down they did, and I’m convinced that The Swamp would rather rule over Hell-on-the-Potomoc than follow their oath of office to serve We the People. Or is it “orifice?” It’s all so confusing.

         1. Comes and goes as at my age I want them all to just go away and leave me and mine alone. But then we find out that a thousand other nefarious things have been happening or are in play. After watching The Big Conn even MrsPaulM was shouting at the screen, which she rarely does…seeing those in charge at the SSA, who were directly involved in the theft coverup….not one was prosecuted, tossed, or publicly flogged, yet the two SSA employee ‘whistleblower’ gals were railroaded. Two levels of “protection under the law” operating, one for us and one for so-called public employees, as we hear all (maybe) the MaL docs were returned, meaning these documents were not illegally held in the first place and the entire episode was a DOJ operation to sway low-hanging citizens. Then we get Tapper hawking a book that includes information we now have gotten for free via media outlets that are covering their sorry rear-ends from the lies they spewed for years. Snake/Apple. 90% of them need to go.

            1. “Snake/Apple. 90% of them need to go.”…
               Where is a crowd of Hungry Cajuns when you NEED em?
               I’ll donate rope and matches…
               MSG Grumpy

            2. There ya go.
               Was at a neighbors get together, the newest neighbor and I were chatting about technical stuff when all of sudden a squirrel drops down the tree and starts making noise. She looks up at it and says “Ya know, I like me some squirrel stew, the best!”. Squirrel got quiet then left. She was from suthun’ Arkansas.

6. Cajuns-Being raised in the Texas version of Lapland (where Texas and Louisiana lap over into each other), very familiar with Cajun food…don’t care what the main ingredient is but a good Cajun cook can make most anything taste good. Best Cajun meal I ever had was at a duck hunting camp in Cocodri, La. Naturally, the cook was 24 carat.

   1. The right chef makes all the difference. In all circumstances. It’s an underappreciated profession.

7. >>BREAKING<< Ok, not completely breaking – yesterday – but I was very busy yesterday and didn’t hear about it until today.
   .
   The Guardian: “The Mexico City mayor’s personal secretary and another close adviser were shot dead on Tuesday in the capital, in a highly unusual crime targeting senior officials at the heart of power.
   .
   Ximena Guzmán and José Muñoz were on a central road when they were gunned down in broad daylight by assailants who were travelling on a motorbike, said Mayor Clara Brugada, whose post is considered the country’s most important elected role after the president.
   .
   President Claudia Sheinbaum, who governed the capital until 2023, received the news while starting her live morning news conference.
   Her Security Minister Omar García Harfuch was due to give an update on arrests and seizures of drugs in the country when he conferred with the president and walked out to make a call in view of reporters.”
   .
   I’ve been dragged back (at least to some extent) into Mexican and cartel politics and drama through my history there and lawyers with their clients who are caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. If MEXPRES Claudia doesn’t do what the various cartels (each with its own interests) want, they kill somebody close to her. It’s playing out in real time.

   1. ¡El pan de cada dia!

      My wife mentioned this incident to me this morning.

8. “but there is very little love for Ottawa in Alberta.”
   There ain’t much love for Ottawa outside of Ottawa, certainly not out here in rural BC. We’re just hoping that Alberta takes us with them when they leave, of course that means excising the Greater Vancouver and Victoria areas out of BC first.

   1. Being from South of the Border, I don’t have a horse in the race, but I do have friends in Calgary and the suburbs who are not woke and are unhappy with the arrangements in place in Ottawa. I’ve heard people in Quebec say that if Alberta goes, they go too, which is strange because I have no idea how Quebec would survive without the capacity to leech off Western Canada. But Quebec people march to their own drummer, so whatever. The US has gone through its political struggles lately. If the last election were rigged like the previous one was, there would have been a civil war. Those with firearms vs those who can’t decide which restroom to use. It would not have been pretty. A lot of the rot and corruption in the US is being addressed (sort of), and the ship is righting itself – but it’s been a close run thing.
      .
      Good luck to Canada. I don’t see as though Western Canada has much choice but to forge a path of their own. Having visited Vancouver/Victoria and having worked (a number of years ago) with colleagues at the RCMP against criminal organizations there (that also roamed the USA), I can identify with wanting to excise them from a solution. They have more in common with Ottawa and Beijing.

      1. “excising the Greater Vancouver … area”
         “They have more in common with Ottawa and Beijing.”
         Ai ya! Always with the anti-Sinotisms.
         But Unit 731! But Nanjing! Oh, wait, no one’s heard of those. (RIP Iris Chang) Competing narratives and all that.
         —
         Less sarcastically, I used to love Vancouver. But that was over 30 years ago. I was there earlier this year and surprised by how cheap downtown hotels were relative to say, Burnaby. Then again, needles and human excrement on the sidewalks aren’t exactly a draw. A few years ago the Pretty Korean Girl and I spent a night there en route to Whistler. We took an after-dinner evening walk. There was this huge turd in the middle of the sidewalk, perfectly coiled up like a poop emoji. Being a naturalist of sorts, PKG peered at it intently. “What kind of dog did that come out of? It must have been a really big one. Do you think a Great Dane? Or maybe one of those Bernese Mountain Dogs.” I burst out laughing, but I still don’t know if she was serious or putting me on.

         1. That’s my take on Vancouver too. I used to love Seattle. No more. I doubt that I will ever return to either place.

            1. Concur with above.
               Seattle and Vancouver were fantastic places, in 1990. Now they’re little Hells.
               *
               Perhaps the solution for West Canada and the excision of Vancouver Metro
               is just to make it into a sort of reverse Hong Kong?
               – Kle.

9. Canada
   Seems the illegal drug industry is relocating to Canada.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvFG4rbcM-k
   I would like to see Canadians fix their problems without USA (Trump) interference. If they can’t get their s**t together, soon, we may need to do it for them.
   For all those who blather about “our democracy”, they should be glad we are a Republic with a constitution made to keep the democratic majority from exploiting minorities (rural, religious, etc.) For a glaring example of “democracy” exploiting minorities, look no further than Western Canada, especially Alberta.

   1. Circa 2005, so twenty years ago, the major cartels started buying LARGE ranches. They paid over market price and bulldozed/paved runways on the ranches. We were aware of it and warned the RCMP, which was told THEM to let it go. The new ranch owners greased everyone in cash, and the grease stuck. A lot of criminal bike gangs migrated north and entered into a symbiotic relationship with the narcos operating in Canada, and so it went. The solution for Western Canada rests in going MEDIEVAL on the narcos, seizing their property and ejecting them. It can be done, but you need a heavy hand when dealing with them. And if they’re on First Nation (Indian reservation) land, you need to ignore the bought First Nationers and still go for the throat. The narcos will leave and go to Ottawa and set up shop. Only relentless pressure and severe sentencing will move them.
      .
      Narcos are not stupid; they hire good lawyers and often the best PR firms and have money. They will push back, and if you’re not tougher than they are, they’ll take over (see Mexico). The only word I can think of is medieval. Some people feel that there is a way to accommodate terrorists, Marxists, and narcos. There is not. It will go one way or the other. Alberta and the new confederation have the opportunity to make effective laws and forge a new path. If I were them, I’d have a military treaty with the US, but that’s me. I have a bias.

10. Burgers. May have mentioned them before. Fresh ground beef every day. I suspect they make their Ranch dressing fresh too. Sure tastes like it.
    ——
    https://www.kincaidshamburgers.com/?page_id=78

11. In Ludowici GA there is a hamburger and milkshake shop called the Speedtrap that makes a great burger and fantastic milkshakes. Since the county is one of the counties that can grow Vidalia onions they make great fried onion rings.

    FYI: 55ish years ago the governor got fleeced by Ludowici police in a speed trap. Lester Mattox had billboards erected outside of town warning travelers there was a speed trap in Ludowici. It was a big scandal.

12. “So he has six months to a year left to live.”
    Too long by six months to a year.

    1. He’s too feeble to testify in his own defense so he’ll never stand trial on this side of mortality. I’ll let the Great Arbiter handle his case on the other side.

13. The little hole in the wall burger joints were/are the best… sigh… Hodad’s for example. Now with the son running it, so hopefully it will hold on for a few more years!

    1. I was at Hodad’s about six months ago. Nothing has changed, still big crowds. I miss our lunches there.

14. Sidebar: Town run today, was walking out of the local supermarket, see a gal (yeah, that type) standing by a stanchion of sorts with ‘WWF’ stamped on the front. Ignored her as best one could…until she launches into her sales job, “Sir, come over and chat, we’re saving the planet!”
    – Kid you not.
    Me (continuing to walk): “From what exactly? The planet is just fine and doesn’t need your help with anything, ask the people who just got hammered with tornadoes.”
    No answer.

15. I can smell that Double-Double through the screen! I’ll have to drive down to Loveland and get one. Curiously, the In-N-Out is located about half-a-block from the UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies.

    1. You can feel your arteries crackle after a Double-Double and chocolate shake…

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