Bullet Points:
** Never regret raising dragon slayers in an era where there are actual dragons.
** BRM chats about the Houston, TX Police Department. I ran a Congressionally funded law enforcement task force for a while, and we had a long reach. It reached to Houston among other locations, and I was surprised to find officers in uniform, with HPD cars, “working off duty” protecting locations controlled by organized crime. I’m not saying that HPD was completely corrupt. I worked with two detectives there who were honest and very good. Two. There are 5,400 sworn officers at HPD. Enough said. There may have been a handful of others parked somewhere else on the PD who were honest – but the two HPD detectives I worked with said, no.
** (right) Easier going in than coming out.
** There are two people you should never trust: a religious leader who tells you how to vote, and a politician who tells you how to pray.
** Shopping at the company stores in New York City (Whittle). Put on your Ché Beret, wear your “Bernie” t-shirt, and get that free cheese while it lasts. Hum the Internationale while you’re on the premises. It’s a toe tapper.
** (h/t EdB) When you get to the point when you say there are no differences between men and women: such as emotion, gender specific behavior, traditional (historic) roles, etc., you ignore biological imperatives normally driven by testosterone levels, etc. You get a Supreme Court Justice who doesn’t know what a woman is. You start pushing women into Special Forces and other non-traditional roles. The ultimate slide is to transgenderism, which, although an extreme, is a logical progression. This guy says stop it.
** Unpacking the MV-22 Osprey.
** Under the Gulf of America.
Whose side is God on?
The phrase, “In God We Trust,” emerged as an American national slogan that started in the national cultural narrative during the War of the Southern Secession. “See Battle Hymn of the Republic” – God is with US. It began with the 1864 two-cent coin and was on most circulating coinage by the late 1870s. It was in the 1950s that the phrase was added to paper currency. It was also occasionally used on military banners/flags by both the Federal Union and Confederate forces. Historically, God is on the side of the victor. If you have doubts about that, read the history books, written by the victors. “If God is with us, who can be against us?”
I’ve mentioned the same thing on the VM blog recently when discussing the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Pope Alexander II gave William I a papal blessing and a sacred banner (the gonfanon) to support his invasion of England. While medieval chroniclers described this act of papal backing, it was conveyed as a consecrated standard and decree rather than a formal physical “papal bull” in the later administrative sense. It carried the same weight. If you fought against the army that the pope recognized, you were automatically excommunicated, were excluded from divine grace, and consigned to Hell for all eternity.
“Gott mit uns” translates to “God with us”. It’s a slogan that originated in common use under the Teutonic Order and the Swedish military before becoming a royal Prussian motto under King Frederick I in the 18th Century. The German Empire later adopted it as a unifying military slogan stamped onto imperial belt buckles and spiked helmets to symbolize divine sanction. This motto remained in use under the Nazi Government during the Second World War.
Make of all that as you will.
In Iraq
The report (below) from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) ignores the larger situation that has arisen from the US backing away from, and some would say abandoning, its Kurdish allies. I know that the Kurds feel that they have been abandoned, and they’re not wrong. The US had to choose between the constituted Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government (three states in Iraq) and the Turks, who have their own internal Kurdish minority. We picked the Turks and Arabs over the Kurds. I understand the dynamics at work, and they are both complicated and long-standing. It is not over yet.
(ISW) The Iraqi (twelver Shiite) militias were reportedly planning multiple “imminent” attacks on Saudi Arabia coordinated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Houthis, according to a senior Saudi official speaking to Western and regional media. The Saudi official added that the attacks could target civilian and economic sites, including energy infrastructure, according to Saudi, US, and other regional reports.
The scale of the Iraqi federal government’s security precautions to thwart militia attacks on Saudi Arabia demonstrates the continued armament of Iraqi militias in the face of the government’s ongoing efforts to restrict arms to the state. The Iraqi federal government continues to insist that it will complete such efforts by its September 30 deadline, which corresponds with the planned withdrawal of US-led international coalition forces from Iraq.
Iran may have supported the Iraqi militias’ planned attack against Saudi infrastructure as part of Iran’s broader pressure campaign to coerce the United States and its allies into agreeing to further diplomatic concessions. An attack to the extent the militias reportedly planned, or even the threat of such an attack, would be consistent with Iran’s established pattern of using military escalation and regional instability to gain leverage.
The Houthis have increasingly coordinated with the IRGC and Iraqi militias to attack Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, likely as part of a multi-pronged effort to compel Saudi Arabia to accept Houthi demands. This increased Houthi coordination with the Iraqi militias comes amid continued Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-backed Republic of Yemen Government (ROYG) targets.
Carrier Aviation
Developing, maintaining, and deploying aircraft carrier aviation is exceptionally difficult and expensive in any systematic way. Yes, I know that Americans take it for granted these days because we’ve been doing it for so long. But it remains a significant challenge. I recently reviewed some of the problems that the Soviet Union and Russia had in trying to ‘make it all work.’ An aircraft carrier is not only a ship, but it’s also an air wing made up of different aircraft and many specialties, which evolve over time based on needs. They require layered protection against air, surface, and subsurface threats if they are to be effective.
Aviators taking off and landing on moving decks in all weather require a ballet of people performing different functions in the aircraft and on the ship itself. Russia struggled with this.
The Mikoyan MiG-29K (Products 9-31 and 9-41) is a 4+ generation, all-weather, carrier-based multirole fighter. Within the aircraft’s development history, Product 9-62 was the designation assigned to a proposed two-seat training variant, known as the MiG-29KU, which was intended to be derived from the naval MiG-29K program.
However, the Soviet/Russian Navy canceled the original MiG-29K program in the early 1990s. With the single-seat carrier-based fighter effectively put on hold, development of its dedicated two-seat trainer, Product 9-62, was also abandoned before a prototype could be built. Rather than revive the abandoned 1980s Product 9-62 design, Mikoyan later developed an entirely new and extensively modernized tandem-seat trainer, the MiG-29KUB (Product 9-47). It was designed to operate alongside the modern single-seat MiG-29K (Product 9-41).
In Arizona
Beneath every street, house, and hillside in this photograph lies over 2,000 miles of hollowed-out tunnels, roughly enough to stretch from Arizona to New York, making this one of the five largest underground mines on Earth.
That’s the real scale hiding beneath Bisbee. Since the Copper Queen Mine began operating in 1877, nearly a century of continuous digging carved this vast underground network into the Mule Mountains, extracting over 8 billion pounds of copper along with millions of ounces of gold and silver. Miners worked as deep as 1,500 feet underground, at a constant 47 degrees, riding narrow two-seat mining trains through tunnels so extensive that longtime residents grew up with daily blasting sirens as background noise, and every local kid learned blasting-cap safety as a matter of course.
By the mid-1970s, falling copper prices finally shut the mines down, and locals feared Bisbee would become another ghost town. Instead, Bisbee’s mayor turned the old mine into a tourist attraction in 1976, letting former miners lead visitors deep into the same tunnels they once worked, headlamps and all. The town that copper built now survives by letting people walk through the very earth that made it rich. A quiet mountain town on the surface, sitting directly above a labyrinth vast enough to swallow entire cities’ worth of tunnels. The famous Queen Mine Tour in Bisbee, Arizona lasts for about an hour. Following a brief introduction and a comprehensive safety briefing, you’ll board an original mine train for this underground excursion. You will board, straddling the bench seats, akin to riding a bicycle, as the train sets off on its captivating ½ mile round trip, complete with two stops.
Identify the Aircraft
1
Navy & Marines
2
Three Graphics – might be a tough one. It flew, but the war ended before full production could begin.
3
Do you know the differences?
Parting Shot
CDRSAL offers a cautionary warning. Well worth the read.
End
1 is A4 Skyhawk on the second Lexington. Australia used them of the HMAS Melbourne.
They are Skyhawks! Nimble light attack aircraft. The Argentines used them too.
Identify the Aircraft
1 – Douglas TA-4J Skyhawk
2 – Hughes D-2
3 – Top – Lockheed 322 – Export version of below aircraft
– Bottom – Lockheed P-38
322 Lacked superchargers and did not have counter rotating props
Resulted in less power & maneuverability
Outstanding on all accounts.
More Whittle:
Communism for Dummies (with Mike Rowe). H/T to my son who knows my appreciation of Bill Whittle since Eject! Eject! Eject!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4q30tPejuQSNm9n227GSQK?si=29b1bdbc23704545
absolutely great.
TNX 4 the referral.
I’ll be sending the link to some of my relatives (we all have ’em).
Every generation seems destined to pee on the electric fence for itself, hoping for a different result.
OH, the humanity…..
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Douglas TA-4 Skyhawk
2. Hughes D-2
3. Lockheed P-38 Lightning. The RAF variant lacked turbochargers and contra-rotating propellers. They evidently did not like the P-38.
Excellent
>Never regret raising dragon slayers in an era where there are actual dragons.
I denounce your vile antidragonism. Don’t you know that dragons are our greatest allies?
—
>some would say abandoning, its Kurdish allies.
Welcome, Kurds, to the long list of allies screwed over by Occupied USA. As the saying goes, the only thing more dangerous than being an enemy of the US is … well, you know the rest. But at least we have the virtue of consistency in both external and domestic policy. [rant removed for space considerations] It’s almost as if our policies are determined by people who actively hate us and seek to foment Forever Wars externally, and eternal class and race conflicts internally. What a curious thing. Weird, innit?
But back to the Kurds. What could they possibly do to be more “worthy” of American support? Maybe they need a foreigner to rule them, much as the Swedes selected a Frenchman, Bernadotte, to become their king. Maybe the Kurds need to be ruled by someone selected by Victoria Nuland.
Well said Mike_C. AS you say there is consistency. Off the top of my head I can think of the following, although there are, if one was to research it, probably more:
South Vietnam – 1975
The South Vietnamese generally and, in particular, the Montagnards (often called the Meo by the ignorant and uninformed – Meo being a derogative term meaning savages) to whom explicit promises were made.
Cambodia – 1975
Cambodians generally.
Laos – 1975
Laotians generally and, in particular the Hmong (often called the Meo by the ignorant and uninformed – Meo being a derogative term meaning savages).
Iraq – 1991
Kurds
Marsh Arabs
Afghanistan – 2021
Afghans generally and, in particular those who fought alongside, or who worked for, the Coalition allies.
Iraq – 2026
Kurds.
One could say that the Israelis need to watch out. However, I think they can look after themselves. I recall having a conversation with a senior Israeli officer, some years ago, in which he said that if Israel was losing, and they were likely to lose completely, they would, following Samsons example, in which he pulled the temple down around and upon himself, “pull the house down”. I took this to mean, and am pretty sure that he meant, they would nuke the entire Middle Eastern Islamic Arab world and turn it into a glass covered carpark. Nowadays, given Sultan for Life Erdogan is running a now Islamist Turkey, that they would include Turkey and, if they have submarines with a nuclear warheaded missile capability (I have no idea if they do or not) also Pakistan.
Well, France didn’t do too bad when they were ruled by a Corsican. At least they won a number of battles.
The Kurds definitely feel hard done by. The Iraqis were positioned to make this move last year (before the present war) and were able to pull it off by eliminating some of the more significant Twelvers and de-nutting those who didn’t die. It’s not over yet, but the handwriting is on the wall. In that maneuver, the Iraqi Kurds were marginalized, saying, “but the CIA promised” (famous last words). In a healthy democracy it is probably not desirable that the intelligence services be wholly efficient, or wholly admired. —John le Carré
Tommy Atkins used to write “we’ve got mittens, too” as trench graffiti in WW-One.
God is with us: a lot of people, whether out of ignorance or pride, have said a lot of things about God over the years. The mindset should be asking “Are we with God”.
It’s always dangerous to look in the mirror and craft a god in your own image.
“** Under the Gulf of America.”
LL,
Thank you for taking the time; I shudda dun my own research.
I’m still of a mind that it wasn’t one large block of pitted asteroid that hit that (supposedly) shallow sea.
I’m of the opinion that it split into two creating the Caribbean Sea basin at the same time; possibly even three creating that bight outlined by the easstern shore of the U.S. from North Carolina along Florida’s eastern shore and running SE along the northern shores of Cuba and Hispaniola.
How much did it change the speed of the orbital rotation of the Earth; the moon? How much (if at all) could it have altered our orbit?
I have absolutely no background or evidence to be stating this.
The size of a rock necessary to ‘kill the dinosaurs’ is a completely different mass from that necessary to alter the Earth’s rotation speed or to knock the Moon out of orbit, for example. Krakatoa is a volcanic caldera in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It is famous for its cataclysmic eruption on August 26–28, 1883, which destroyed most of the original island, produced the loudest sound in recorded human history, and killed over 36,000 people via massive tsunamis. One volcano.
.
The “Year Without a Summer” took place in 1816, when severe global climate abnormalities caused average temperatures to drop by 0.4–0.7 °C (up to 5 °F). This massive cooling was triggered by the colossal 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which spewed millions of tons of ash and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight across North America and Europe. One volcano.
.
Young Miss Boron is likely well-versed in this. If the well-documented Yellowstone supervolcano blows, it will wipe out half of the United States for all practical purposes. You don’t even need a big space rock to fractionally destroy 100 million people in our modern era. One volcano can do it.
And for all the talk of a Moon base or a Mars colony saving humanity…how would you like to be on Mars or the Moon if two or three supervolcanoes blew on Earth? That’s really all it would take. Three supervolcanoes at roughly the same time. It’s all that fragile.
Before the super volcanoes blow and wreck the planet can I finish the new hovel first please?
Yellowstone
In 2015 a University of Utah study found an even deeper, and four times larger, magma chamber than the known “supervolcanoe” magma chamber. Is there any possibility a large nuclear bomb, say the Russian “Tsar”, set off over Yellowstone cause a volcanoe?
The nuclear winter scenario would drive humanity to the Stone Age if they were successful. But magma in a supervolcano is very thick. So I don’t know that a surface fusion detonation would do the trick.
I want LL to finish the new novel first.
🤣
**When you get to the point when you say there are no differences between men and women**
You’re either fooling or lying to yourself AND everyone else or you’re dumber than a rock.
As to the Supreme Court (DEI) justice who does not know the difference between a male & a female the answer is “both”.
I’m not a lawyer, but I am interested in following (closely) and trying to understand SCOTUS opinions over the years and how they’re molded.
(And yes, I scourge myself daily)
IMHO, Ketanji Onyika Brown-Jackson is not fooling or lying to herself and she’s certainly not dumber than a rock.
During the hearings she said, “She said that ‘when you are interpreting the Constitution, you’re looking at the text at the time of the founding and what the meaning was then as a constraint on my own authority.’ adding ‘I apply that constraint.’ (justia.com)
She was not lying to herself, she was lying to WTP.
Considering (what I understand of) her subsequent writings/rulings, she appears to be way far further left than either of the current “liberal justices.
Definitely. But “further left” is a form of functional dementia.
“In God We Trust”…We could include “God Wills It!”
***
Dragons are everywhere, just don’t look like what we think.
It’s easier to say God wills it like taking Gods name in vain…
It is a self important statement that gives one permission to do whateverthehay while clearing the conscience. Was thinking of that scene in KOH…and all the boot-licking priests parroted the line as if they had some special knowledge it was true.
Mine tours. While stationed in West Germany (mid 70’s) took the opportunity to tour the salt mines in Saltzburg, Austria. I remember the cloth hooded “ponchos” they issued everyone to protect your clothes from salt stains. Groups of tourists looked like some religious order the escaped from Monty Python.
—
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JsxOV7umyug
When I was a lad, I would lay on the front lawn and look at the sky, occasionally hearing and feeling a detonation in the Morton Salt Mine below me that lay below most of metro Detroit.
There are trucks from the fifties down there that were taken down and re-assembled. Rebuilt regularly and never rusting.
That’d be unnerving, having the ground shudder and know it could collapse at any moment. But the mine tour successfully took the lemon-lemonade route, like a lot of other off the beaten path places; tourism of their one unique ‘thing’ promoted to bolster the local economy…like Wall Drug offering free ice water to draw folks in for 300 miles or more.
Mine tours – in a region with lots of mines, I’m sure there were naysayers who said nobody would want to pay money to tour a mine. Similar to Chattanooga, a number of years ago, looking for something to draw in tourists and someone suggested an aquarium. Scoffers said that, with all the lakes and the Tennessee River, nobody would pay money to look at water and fish. Yet it turned into a big attraction.
I spent a lot of time in the hospital in Houston in 2020. My wife was almost assaulted several times but she has excellent situational awareness and got the hell out of there. She called the police a few times. The police said the Gay mayor wouldn’t allow them to arrest the violent homeless. They also said the beggars commute to work in a nice truck than they owned. The police did drive by several times at her request. The new Black mayor a few years has made things better.
We drove through Bisbee in 2008 when my Corvette was new. It reminded me of San Francisco in the 70s. We went to a classic bicycle shop the Bisbee Bicycle Brothel. 90% of his hundreds of bikes were NFS. He had quite the hoard. His collection taught me to buy a life time supply of whatever really cool bikes, guns or cars etc. you want. A lifetime supply gives you a certain freedom.
Chicxulub did a job on the world as we know it, including ending the ground based dinosaurs along with pretty much everything down to the insect level. But a Yellowstone eruption would probably be enough to put an end to the US as we know it, in addition to putting us in an extended ‘winter’, making food even more critical. Losses probably 200-300 million at the minimum…
Public Service Announcement: Reacher S4 dropped on Prime…dude’s in Philly eating cheesesteaks, ‘Whiz and wit’. Dang.
the wife likes the show, but i’m having a hard time ignoring his politics. still, its a decent break from our mundane reality.