Intro
This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)
Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/w-o-o-d-1-july-2019/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).
Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/
So use “Tips” for “Oooh, look at the interesting ponder thing!”
and “W.O.O.D” for “Did you see what just happened?! What did you think about it?”
What’s Going On?
I’ve Begun My quasi-career as a car painter
We’ll see how well it goes… Given my collection of old cars, I did a short inventory of everything from some chip / ding touch-ups on the newest one, to “clear coat” issues to outright failure and pealing on 3 more, to just OMG That looks like crap with rust spots showing up as the paint is fully penetrated across the hood of my old 240D. (It came with crappy paint from being parked under a tree with piles of acidic leaves left on it to leach…)
I totaled it out at about $5000 all up.
Or I can buy some spray guns for $140, a sander for $60, some misc. kit for about another $50 and learn something. I chose learn something.
In usual Silicon Valley Rapid Prototyping style, I started with Rustoleum Rattle Cans. The Subaru Forester came with very rusty on top windshield wiper arms. Today I unbolted them, sanded. Wet sanded. Dried. Wiped. And sprayed. They are now dry, back on the car, and look great, if I do say so myself. Silky satin black. I just used black primer on them. If (when?) the primer starts to give out, I’ll scuff it, primer a second time and top with some satin black enamel.
This round was just proof of concept and test of skill level. Both passed.
So next step is to buy a DA (double action) Palm Sander ( I think… ) and take on that ‘rusting looking’ hood. That will involve more formal masking, removing of detail parts (grill, windshield squirters, etc), a couple of layers of primer, primer sanding, degreaser, tack rag, color coats, color wet sand (if needed) and clear coats. Likely also renting a paint booth… I’ll try one coat of primer without one, but… it will take a perfect day with no wind. The only reason for even trying being that you can always just sand out defects in primer…
This hood was bent some a couple of decades back. The Kid, learning to drive, managed to bend the nose. The hood still works, sort of… so I might try some more “attitude adjustment” on it with a plastic hammer and blocks… the point being that there’s nothing I can do to make it worse with paint. At worst I arrest the decay and hand it over to a body shop to either repair or replace the hood, and in the process change the paint. At best, I get it more easily working and looking more or less “right”.
When (If?) that works out OK, I’ll move on to fixing the clear coat on the others. From the videos it looks like mostly some careful sanding with fine grit sandpaper to feather it in to the good parts of the clear coat area, then shoot a couple of coats. I’m not seeing anything I can’t do.
IF all that works out OK, then I’ll proceed to the “detailing” chips and dips in the best car.
FWIW, it looks like THE big thing is just to take your time ( a LOT of time ) to get the cutting / sanding / surface prep Just Right, then shooting the paint is nothing. That’s what I did on the wipers. Sanded and washed and wet sanded and dried and… for about 9 x as much time as I spent shooting the paint.
I had 2 defects. One from a bit too vigorous spraying of a backside area I’d missed the first time (so someone lifting up my wiper and looking at the back side of it, closely, can find a bit of too thick not quite a drip…) and one place where I laid it down sooner than the 15 minute dry time (as standing in the yard holding a wiper for 15 minutes gets old fast…) and made a minor scuff mark on the semi-dry paint about the size of a 1/4 of a rice grain. I can live with that…
It worked well enough that I’m ready to buy the sander and move on to One Hood. Maybe eventually the rest of the car too ;-)
Any recommendations for sanders (brand, size, type, …) welcome.
It has been great fun watching YouTube videos of car painting. They range from $20,000 Custom Show Car guys doing 14 coats with various kinds of sanding, polishing and surface prep of 5 kinds between each coat (and with metal flake or pearl in between the color coat and the top 3 clear coats) ending with a mirror finish with all kinds of depth to it in various candy finishes; to the guy who painted his work truck in one heavy coat of Rustoleum Primer and a bunch of Rustoleum Enamel … leaving all dents intact and with surprisingly good results.
My big “takeaway” was that anything I do will be an improvement, and no way I’m doing all that work they did for the Show Car job. I’m somewhere in the middle but with no downsides to trying. So I am.
The fact that one of the two cars most in need of help cost me $400 and the other was $1200 sort of makes the idea of a $2000 “professional” paint job seem a bit silly. Then figure I’m pretty good at developing new skilz, and I’ve painted before. Yeah, it was a few houses and fences, some metal figurines and models… but I’ve handled brushes, rollers, and sprayers many times. I’m not coming up from zero.
I’ll be going slow on it, so don’t expect too much in the way of updates and progress reports, though ;-)
Grand Solar Minimum & Crops
We’ve got ongoing rain, flooding, mud, cold and all sorts of Bad Things For Farming going on in places as diverse as the USA, Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and more.
The notion that one area can bail out a fluke failure in another area in times of GSM; that looks broken to me. My answer was a few $Hundred of preparation. I suggest that it doesn’t hurt anything, it costs less in the long run (as those beans and rice cost a lot less than TV Dinners per pound) and way less than dining out, even if you blow a batch learning to make good chili beans or Spanish rice; and, well, you just ought to be prepared.
I’m not all “doom and gloomy” about it. 1/3 of our corn crop is fed to cars. Just make that optional (don’t need to stop it, just remove the “mandate” part) and we can take a 30% cut in crop. About 50% is fed to animals. It is a long standing classical response to crop failure to first eat the animals and then eat the feed that you would have fed to them. Between those two, we can take about an 80% crop loss.
Realize this does NOT mean “kill all the animals” nor does it mean “no meat”. Ruminant animals can eat a lot of stuff we can not eat. Corn cobs, stalks, and leaves. Pasture. Brush. It does mean that herds get reduced to the level of “Breeding stock and grazers / browsers”. Thus has it always been.
Can our “modern” industrial farming machine do what farm families have done for thousands of years?
I fear they can not.
Just take the standard traditional behaviour of a “catch crop”. Before, if it rained until July 25 and THEN you could plant, for about a 60 day growing period, well, 120 day corn is not going to make it. Instead a fast growing, if less desirable, crop like buckwheat would be planted to “catch something”… Now, instead, we have Crop Insurance, but it stipulates that you get NO MONEY if you plant anything that gets you a profit off that land prior to November (when it is winter wheat time and a “new crop year”). Basically, by law and contract we now forbid the production of “something we can eat” during bad times when the main crop fails.
This is not very bright.
Sure sure sure, but the 5th or 6th year they will fix it. But by that far into a horrible EOTWAWKI AwShit, it will be way too late for a lot of folks.
No, I’m not saying this IS the EOTWAWKI (End Of The World As We Know It), I’m just saying that when that comes, it will not be handled well by present systems.
The Mormons are directed to keep a 1 year supply of food (and be prepared to defend it). I grew up in a Mormon Town, and I think they have a lot of clue. The Bible says to keep a 7 year stock in the granaries. It is highly likely that’s good advice during the very worst of times. At present, our “modern” food corporation systems are designed to maximize profit, not survival, and tries to keep as close to zero inventory as possible. From grocery stores back through grain mills can be out of stock in a couple of weeks. Most silos are empty at least once a year. It is up to you to carry inventory, or accept that when a natural catastrophe hits, you will exit stage left first.
Waiting until the global crop failure is on the nightly news will mean you are among the first to die. I’d rather have $100 of beans and rice in the pantry and learn to love burritos refritos and Spanish rice…
Venezuela
A Groundhog Day Moment:
“God Only Knows” continues.
Has it fallen completely off the radar?
Will it resolve? Will anyone notice? Does anyone care anymore?
Global Warming Push
Even as we have snow falling in July at high Rocky Mountain Ski Resorts, and frosts killing crops in places that ought to be warmer, and winter like flooding all over the place; TICS (The Idiots In Charge) continue to express their desire to suck our blood… One can only hope they don’t know anything about food storage, prepping, and tactical weapons use. I’ll be glad to see them going first.
Brexit
So is Brexit still “a thing”? It’s just dropped from view. In theory, it is a bit over 3 months to Spontaneous Freedom And Liberty along with the ability to “move freely about the planetary markets”. Yet there’s a curious silence from Parliament and the EU… Which makes me wonder what fresh “No, you checked in so you can’t check out” they are plotting now.
Antifa
Screwed the pooch when they beat up an Asian Gay Guy. Son of a Friend is a Gay Guy. I have a great fondness for Asians and their generally rational cultures. I’ve got some kids (as Donor Dad) via some Gay Ladies. I get cranky when folks beat up my friends… Antifa just committed a Capital Offense in my book. I will need to see someone “swing” for this (or the moral equivalent), or else this particular bit of spite is going to simmer and grow.
The YSM (MSM Yellow Stream Media…) needs to stop endorsing Antifa and start calling them the Communist Violent Shock Troops they are, or accept that they will proceed to zero trust and zero viewers in the real America. (Ooops! Too late!… CNN scoring fewer views than the History Channel or folks pounding nails into old houses…)
There’s a “Ramp” that happens, that those on the Far Left seem to just not understand. Polite folks will tolerate a LOT when they think maybe it was just a mistake. That tolerate less when it is clearly “by design”, but still grit their teeth and bear it. But brittle fracture is a serious thing. There comes a moment, impossible to predict when, when folks just say “Enough is enough. I’m done.” Currently that’s called a “Jump The Shark” moment (after a Happy Day’s show with The Fonze on skiis jumping over a shark… folks could no longer accept the plot line and “willing suspension of disbelief” ends). For me, we’re way past that on Antifa, the Dimocrats, and more.
I am, now, 100% intolerant of Antifa. If I’m anywhere and they show up, I’m going into full on defensive battle mode. Irish Pipes playing in the mind’s ear and all. THEY have declared themselves enemy of peace and enemy of safety. They have declared themselves violent and a major threat. I STRONGLY suggest and recommend that the Dimocrat Mayors and Governors who are ignoring (or condoning) these Thugs and the Violent Political Gang that they are better clean up their act and get these folks into custody; or pretty soon they will need protective custody. I say this as I am one of THE most peaceful folks on the planet. I have never struck anyone in anger. If I’m at this point, there’s a whole lot of folks far far further along…
For anyone who’s never been in a fight:
There’s a lag time as you “cope” and come to understand what is going on. It takes TIME to realize you are being attacked, and that negotiation isn’t going to work. During that time, the attacker has the edge. Part of Martial Arts Training it to “become of no mind”. To remove that “Evaluate, decide, response” loop. In the end state, a fist or foot comes flying at you, and you have already blocked it by the time you realize it was an attack. My martial arts training reached that level. BUT, I was NOT ready to deploy a damaging counter strike the first couple of time I was confronted with this “on the street”. I learned from those to remove that block early. So what I’m saying now is that, given the violence with which Antifa has blinded folks, clubbed them, given them brain damage, etc.: ALL restrictions and blocks are OFF if I see someone in “Black Bloc” mode. On first sighting; lethal force is permitted to my brain stem. (Highly trained martial arts happens below the level of conscious awareness. Like riding a bicycle it is in the brain stem.)
What this means in practice is hopefully nothing. I avoid confrontation risk places. I don’t do political actions or “direct action”. I buy groceries, cook dinner, tend the house and cars, I am “Doggy Doorman”. I’m an old retired guy looking to exit the world with grace and not too much discomfort. So the odds of this meaning anything in The Real World is about 0.0001% possibility.
BUT:
If, at any time, I’m somewhere by accident and Antifa are there, and for whatever reason threaten me, mine, or anyone else I perceive as innocent victim: There are a bunch of Martial Arts moves you practice, and learn, but just don’t DO in sparing. Or in random street confrontations. “Knife hand strike to the throat”, “Eye gouge”, “Knee to the nose driving it into brain”, “palm heal strike to the nose”, and more. Part of being well trained is knowing how to keep those off the list of tools as long as you have any choice. What Antifa have done with their “yellows” tossing blinding liquids so their “reds” can deliver potentially lethal head shots, and their pack of Hyenas policies, is they have put ALL of the techniques known in the “use now” group. Why? Because against a mob dedicated to maiming, blinding, or killing you with brain damage, you can not hold back any available technique as an individual person.
That is what they have done by their actions of attacking as a mob, an innocent Gay Asian Guy. “All the safeties are off” now. As I’m basically a Buddhist Pacifist type, I shudder to think what state others take.
Musings from the Chiefio 
For a very different point of view… From a friend of mine.
An upset Trump supporter at a Trump Rally asked: “Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?”
Here’s what we liberals really think about Trump supporters, whether rich or poor, malignant or innocently well meaning, the ones who think, and the ones who don’t:
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.”
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.”
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.”
That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.”
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you chirped, “Damn right.”
That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, “That’s cool!”
That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
That when you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?”
That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said “That makes sense.”
That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters, and that he would hire attorneys for them, you thought, “Yes!!!”
That when you heard him tell supporters at a rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “Hilarious!”
That when you heard him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries, and demanding that they praise his Electoral College win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.”
That you watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating, and you said, “What a genius!”
That you heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the U.S. Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you said, “That’s smart!”
That when you heard him say it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was the middle of water, you said, “That makes sense.”
That you saw him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you said, “That’s statesmanship!”
That you said “Well, OK” when Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1,500 kids, and opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas, explaining that they’re just “animals”.
That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption, low moral character, outright
rudeness, and sheer contempt for you, the working American voter, and yet you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who thinks otherwise.
What you don’t get, Trump supporters in 2019, is that we liberals, if we succumb to frustration and think of you as stupid, may be wrong and unhelpful—but also excessively charitable.
Because if you’re not stupid, then we must turn to other explanations, and all of them are far less flattering.
RE ANTIFA
Agreed they have removed all doubt that they might be susceptible to reason, talking or non-violent options.
By dressing in black blok they are openly advertising their tribal affiliation with a violent group and their intent is to cause trouble. Mobs of people in masks and protective gear are not peaceful.
If you some time watching videos of these clowns, you begin to recognize at a subliminal level actions that often precede their attacks.
Someone creates a face to face confrontation type situation, (hoping to force the other to get tunnel vision and lose situational awareness)
Often the provocateur is an “untouchable” like a person who claims to be a woman, – – this blunts normal defensive responses that would be used in a similar situation by a male.
Meanwhile several others slowly converge to wall off their victim, cutting off support and blocking peaceful exit from the situation (ie turn to walk away and you come face to face with provocation V2)
Then, when they feel they have enough “direct action” folks on hand (translation people willing to use violent force), one of them initiates an attack or provocation sure to illicit a response from the victim (turning them into the aggressor) then as the victim tries to respond he gets swarmed by the others.
First rule in those situations, if possible don’t be there or if you must, travel in pairs or threes with other clueful people.
Learn the tactic to deal with group attack, try to position yourself so #1 thug blocks #2, if two approach re-position to re-establish that relationship or if necessary, use passive Aikido like redirection to turn #1a into the path of #1b so they end up both being ineffective.
Remain aware of those which have long reach weapons (like flag poles) – if you can’t get out of reach of the long weapon – go inside the effective danger zone and crowd them so they block the use of other long weapons and cannot use their own..
Be aware of “innocent appearing” items like umbrellas, milkshake cups with a rock in, gloves that appear to be sap globes etc.
If they reach up to pull down their mask, as if to talk to you, likely they are going to try spitting in your face, as a blinding attack, or provocation, same goes for someone carrying an open container.
If possible, do not be there
If you must be there – do not get sucked into confrontation – exit quickly and unobtrusively
Don’t make yourself a target (wear hats etc. that flag you as someone they want to attack)
New item – Epstein (not Juan, Mr. Kotter).
I understand your anger about Antifa and agree, but decided 3 years ago to just ignore the bung holes as I did not want to be angry all the time. So I completely ignore any article that wants to tell me how some hollywood idiot thinks or acts. And I look for the fun in the news. The stuff that pisses off the left because there is not thing one they can do about the slow motion train wreck coming at them!
And those have been plentiful in the age of Trump. Some because of their pure stupidity (the result of their hatred). But mostly of course it is Trump merely using reality to his advantage.
And so we have the latest episode of how the democrats scurry into the dark recesses of the room like the cockroaches they are, How to avoid being associated with Epstein, when in reality he is just a few years ahead of his time for the democrats. After all, the 24 dwarfs want to give kids that age the right to vote, and if they have that right, then how can they be denied the right to sell their body? I am sure Cuomo is already drafting the legislation making it legal.
But they were hoping to enact that “right” in a few more years, so now they have to explain it away and try to divert attention (LOOK! A squirrel!).
And then you have the perfect example of my previous post in the first post in this blog. A tired cliche that believes every lie told, and knows absolutely no facts what so ever. He made one key error in his post. He said liberals think. And that, as we have seen, is demonstrably false.
@EM, drive by. Take a peek at cold galvanizing spray if you’re dealing with reasonable rust. It works for me on tractor decks to external ferrous fittings on everything. Albeit, I don’t care if the paint job is perfect for my applications.
The Epstien thing will be interesting. I saw Mr. Clinton was on his plane 26 times from the records. He said 4. I will raise that.
The smell is strong in this one.
@Serioso, apparently you ignore who was voted against, not necessarily for. Did you finally get a VPN?
@Ossqss I second the cold galvanizing spray. I have had great luck with Rustoleum brand, not so much with other brands.
I came upon an article about Antifa today. Here is a URL:
http://interestingitems.org/wp/2019/07/08/interesting-items-07-08/#more-450
Part of it says this:
“Antifa. I have started listening to the Scott Adams periscope features during the day, mostly to continue my education in persuasion skills. He spent parts of several episodes last week talking about Antifa and the assault on Quillette reporter Andy Ngo in Portland a week ago. Adams ran across a video of an Antifa insider that described the group as basically a fight club that uses politics as a cover for rolling out in the streets, hunting people down and beating them up. This would at some level explain the cops standing by while they fight with other fight clubs. It in no way explains local politicians allowing them to take over the streets of their communities beating up anything and anyone that moves. Adams takes particular offense at their use of weapons and fists to hit people in the head. Adams lost a son to the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury and is extremely hostile to anyone who would intentionally cause that sort of injury, calling for the death penalty for any such an attack. Rationale is that once you suffer TBI, you are never the same afterwards, something he has seen up close and personal. His point is that politics is being used as an excuse for planned Antifa violence. None of this in any way explains or condones what is going on. Rather, it is presented as a data point to help know what we are dealing with. And society should collectively come down on these clowns like a ton of bricks to ensure this particular fight club operates in private rather than on the public streets.”
So one of them says it’s a “fight club”. Well, that’s a new one to me.
However, it fits in with a new can ‘o worms that keeps coming to mind. Considering that so many of the states on both the West Coast and the Eastern Seaboard (also maybe the Northern Coast of Chicago) have set themselves up as places where a person can go to “off” their infant offspring…and seem to simultaneously be trying their darnedest to attract violent and lawless scum…it just looks to me like they want to suck in as many disposable humans as possible.
Well, what DOES one do with a surplus of disposable humans? Well, we have video evidence of what they try to do with pieces of unborn children…sell them.
Well, that’s pretty sickening IMHO. But a couple weekends ago I started watching a movie called “The Fifth Quarter” on UP TV. I couldn’t keep watching it because it looked like heavy-handed propaganda.
The story starts out focusing on this family with a couple of athletic sons. One was in college, and the other was still in high school. Both were athletically gifted. The younger one ended up in a car wreck with 3 peers. He got the short end of the stick, so to speak. He ended up in being life-flighted to a major hospital, in a coma. The doctor told the family (once they had arrived at the hospital) that he couldn’t give them a prognosis until 24 hours had elapsed. Well, in pretty short order (I’m not sure that 24 hours had elapsed), the doc came back in and said that since no blood had reached the boy’s brain for (I forget how many) hours, they were legally allowed to pull the plug. The family vehemently opposed that.
I’m skipping some stuff here…a woman who said she was a nurse arrived…she was actually representing some company that harvested organs. The family was repulsed at first at the thought of letting them take the boy’s organs. But before long, it looked like they were going to let that happen.
I turned off the movie at that point. It was deeply troubling to me because “I know a guy” who probably could have been left for dead like that, but he lives and walks and talks today.
Then I put two and two together and started wondering how today’s trends towards throwing defenseless people (people who have no defender, no one who would die for them, or who otherwise are held in low esteem) into violent confrontations with killer types might play into that “market”. I would guess that organs from someone who got whacked on the head and ended up brain dead would be in high demand. I mean, how long have we been hearing stories about the Chinese harvesting organs from their prisoners? We keep hearing about how there is such a shortage of organs for transplants, right? I wonder how severe that shortage really is… Is the supply so short that the guy saying, “Let’s you and him fight–I’ll hold your coat” gets to call the shots?
EM, I am not telling you not to be prepared to give them “what for”. More power to you! But since TPTB are turning politics into a blood sport, some of what they show may be made to look worse for effect…so people will start taking shots at each other and they can really get the civil started. And if they “reduce the surplus population” a bit, well that’s gravy!
Oops…I meant to say “civil war”, not just “civil”.
I should have put “/sarc” at the end of the gravy comment.
Besides that, I figure the fad of having your DNA analyzed and tracked also plays into the market for organs.
We used to talk about the “military-industrial complex”…now do we need to talk about the “medical-industrial complex”?
The folks in black blok are by definition people who think violence is justified to support a cause and are willing to use it. They call them “direct action” groups, and they justify their actions by “un-arresting” their own protesters who get picked up by police, if they can organize enough chaos to break up the detention prior to transport. They also create a superficial justification for it by calling the opposition fascist.
This is just a social game called “norm enforcement” where they create a situation where “by their standards” the violence is justified, therefore they see themselves as some sort of white knight (or in this case black knights) defending their tribe.
They seek anonymity and group violence because they are much less likely to get arrested and if they do, the political manipulators who support the causes they use strong arm tactics for, will pay for their legal defense and label them as poor abused political prisoners.
So in short they are Adrenalin junkies who like beating people up, and have found a socially acceptable way to do it, by working as brown shirts for groups who endorse political violence to take down the system. Everybody wins, they can view themselves as heroes, their cohorts see them as the Calvary riding to the rescue, who defends their political protests, they delude themselves into believing they are doing the “right thing” by their values and some rich evil bastard is willing to cover their legal costs if they get busted to buy their use as hired thugs.
Well this will inspire confidence in the airline.
https://twitter.com/NewsBreaking/status/1148783780196261889
Cold Galvanizing Spray, eh? Never heard of it, but I’ll be investigating it soon. I really like galvanizing….
Oddly, on the Subaru, the only rust was the top side of the windshield wipers and a couple of spots on the roof, easily reached. (They’re number 3 on my list of things to do). The rest of the car is fine.
The 240 D had sat for a decade plus under the leafy acid tree and it positively destroyed the hood paint. Now it is just starting to show some rust spots. Something about 18 coats in Mercedes paint then ;-)
So I’m ready to use it as my “learning workpiece”.
@PhilJourdan:
Lucky for me, I was raised by folks who knew that “Leadership lies and reporters make up crap”. Something about a town of persecuted minorities and a family history from a couple of others.
Brought about a very deep and rich level of suspicion of authority. The odd bit, though, is that for much of my professional life, I was the authority… Go figure…
@Larry L:
Absolutely. First rule of combat: “When two tigers fight, one dies and the other is seriously wounded” – try not to be in the fight.
As soon as I see “Black Bloc” shit on folks, I’m going to asses “Is there an innocent who is about to be mobbed?”, if the answer is “No.” then I’m gone.
I saw an interesting video (I’ll try to find it), the guy said he had infiltrated Antifa. Said there are three levels. “Green” are the useful idiots who are there mostly to provide a mass of similarly dressed folks so the “bad guys” can disappear in a mass of the same “look”. They carry signs, chant, make aggressive noises. Next is the “yellow”. They coordinate (with specific “calls” that he stated. Things that mean nothing to anyone out group, but say “get ready” or “now do it” to the rest. They also have the “milkshakes” or bear spray or “whatever” who’s purpose is to blind and disorient the target; potentially also to turn them in a given direction away from the “direct action” folks. Then there are the “reds” who do physical assault and try to do actual damage to the target. Concentrating on head strikes.
FWIW, in Karate Class we practices multiple attacker drills. How to use one person as a shield against the others. Moving away from the encircling mass and getting clear space behind you. Now I know why…
Serioso:
So avoiding the topic at hand, Antifa, and doing the “Insult for effect” on Trump and the “change the subject” to your target. Nice try. No bites.
I fully and 100% support Trump. NO reservations.
Why?
He’s doing a good job. Look at employment and the economy. Look at North Korea and how he’s inviting them into the world, IF they come in peace, and taking the first step of trust into THEIR turf, without a cadre of guards around him. THAT’S courage. One handshake away from poisoned death, and he takes it.
The Left would not know courage and strength if it bit them on the ass. (Which he is doing, BTW…)
Hell, even China is realizing it needs to cut a deal or die of starvation.
Just because The Left are too stupid to know how to “negotiate” doesn’t mean we are. (Trump, channeling The 5th Element: “Anyone ELSE want to negotiate?”)
The days of the slow bleeding to death of the American Republic are over. Stuff it.
We’ve seen your slow “boil the frog” insinuation into key institutions and how they have been turned to Political Apparatchik Havens. And we are now “staying away in droves’ (CNN, MSNBC, NYT, etc. etc. ) or are working to fix the corruption (charter schools, home schooling, and more).
Then there is the whole “Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA!!!!” crap. Didn’t sell the first year, selling less now. It DID drive me to watch some interviews of Putin and find him an intelligent and thoughtful Russian Nationalist that I’d be happy to share a beer with and swap stories about our Fathers in the Great Patriotic War. Before, I’d thought him an unscrupulous evil man bent on world domination… Yeah, I’d swallowed the Propaganda Lies about him. Has he ordered people killed? Certainly. That’s the job. Didn’t Obama have a Kill List for review and drone strikes? Eh? What’s that? Crickets?….
And about those Children In Cages… wasn’t that an Obama Program? Isn’t that what is done with US Citizen Delinquents? Isn’t “Baby Jail” something that has been around for kids since at least the 1950s (when I was first informed of it as a child…)?
What I see in Trump is someone Just Like Me. A guy who comes from “regular folks”, but can also speak politely with Her Majesty The Queen of England, speak knowingly with Putin (and sharing his experience at the hands of Eurocrats and Dimocrats as an anathema “Nationalist”) — which is his JOB BTW, to represent our National Interest- and can see a Dictator Kim and show him an alternative path to prosperity and success… but also strong enough to shut it all down if “games” start to be played.
Now you may never have done any horse trading (or the more modern “car deal”) but I have. A Lot. In Trump I see a guy who very much knows now to do it. You may also have never had to deal with an 80 (or less) IQ Pissed OFF Asshole who want’s to do harm to you (and is bigger than you), but some of us have; and we see Trump knows how to “cool out the guy” without harm. I see him “leveling” against folks (something I do too) and speaking 8th grade “yard talk” when needed, and going full on Wharton Business School when appropriate.
So you may well find his “Grab them by the…” comment rude, crude and offensive. BUT consider the context. He was doing “locker room talk” for effect to get the guy going the direction he wanted. Nothing at all indicates it was anything more than that. “Locker room talk” does not come naturally to me. I had to learn how to “pose” with it. Yes, I freely admit I’m a “poser” on the macho shit talking. Always have been. But it is essential at some times to “go there”. Doesn’t mean I’ve ever even thought about doing 1/10th the stuff stated. Just means I “know my audience” and that’s what it takes to get what I want out of it. Personally, I find “Jock talk”, much like most Jocks, something I really don’t like and leave as soon as possible. But I can do a pretty good job of it when necessary. I think Trump is the same.
My bottom line is pretty simple. Trump is doing a good job.
As long as he continues doing a good job: I don’t care if he has an affair with a lady coming to the white house via the Kennedy Tunnel (oops, wrong president…) or abuses his pet by lifting it by the ears (oops, wrong president again, that was LBJ…) or trash talks like LBJ, or abuses the constitution by packing the courts (oh, wait, that was FDR…) or even if he uses the DOJ, FBI, CIA, IRS etc for his personal Hit Squad (oh, wait again, that was Obummer…)
MY Bottom Line is that Mr. Trump is far more a Constitutionalist and an Effective Manager than anything we’ve seen in a very long long time. He’s doing far more to fix all the accumulated Socialist Crap and make an effective working economy than anyone since Kennedy or Reagan (BOTH of which I support BTW…) so if he wants to play “patty cake” with an intern (of either of the 2 genders…) or “make nice” with Putin, I’m FINE with that. (And why would you want to piss off the leader of the only country with enough nukes to destroy us? Better a friend, eh?)
What I reject is the Doctrine Of Soros, the Power Grab of the EU and UN, and the One Size Fits All Globalist Agenda. I’m an American, not a Euro-mutt nor an African nor an Asian nor… and I’m happy with Traditional American Values and an American President who is working for the interests of America and Americans. That’s what we elected him to do. Not sell our Uranium energy assets to Russia, pack districts with illegal aliens who vote for more illegal aliens, nor export our industrial capacity to China. Not even collect millions of “aid” for Haiti and become filthy rich in the process (to quote Bill Clinton “Doing well by doing good. Yuckle…”)
Here’s your problem, Serioso: You are trying to sell Snake Oil to folks who have seen the bottle being filled at the local horse barn… and then sent it out for analysis at the lab and found it full of horse piss and rot gut whiskey.
When you want to win a war, you do not hire a Politically Correct pantywaist who has done nothing. You get a rude, crude, offensive Son Of A Bitch like a Douglas MacArther or a Patton. When you want a Real Leader you get a drunkard bipolar Churchill or a womanizing duplicitous Kennedy or a lying bastard manipulator like FDR.
You want a saint? Go to church on Sunday and you will find them by the dozen, accomplishing nearly nothing.
Me? I’m voting Trump 2020. AND I don’t care if he has Putin in the White House for a “3 way” with a bunch of interns either. As long as they are all adults, not my place to say.
@Power Grab:
I have zero interest in being “involved” (and thought I made that clear) and even if accidentally I find myself around when “Stuff happens” will be spending 100% of my attention on getting the hell out of there… UNTIL there is no choice and no alternative.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never face that point.
BUT, if it ever comes to pass, all the decisions on level of engagement have been made. I’m pretty sure it won’t be me on the table….
(For one thing, I don’t look all that impressive and folks don’t think I can move as fast as I do or have as much situational awareness as I have… I don’t “do” tunnel vision, I do strategic movement… )
IMHO TPTB do not work to increase the supply of parts. Their bent point of view is that more need to just die.
I can see their point of view. The Elite are, by definition, in charge of the world. It would just be oh so much easier for them if all these People bringing them problems to solve would just Go Away.
Why work out how to do economical desalination of sea water and how to grow food in hydroponic greenhouses using it when you could just have the “problem” go away instead? Sick and twisted, but so are they… The lazy powerful choosing to remove the deplorables who cause them so much trouble. It fits… WE are a “disturbance” in their otherwise comfortable lives…
I doubt the thinking goes much beyond that.
FWIW , picture a bar. At the counter, one big guy is picking a fight with another big guy. Me? I’m the guy dropping a $20 on my bar bill and booking it out the door… ONLY if there is NO way to avoid it, will I ever be “engaged”. But when that day comes, I’ll be well prepared… (am well prepared…)
Antifa. That herd needs to be thinned. Efficiently. Tiny pricks won’t do. You hafta get them together.
Maybe a dead man switch?
You need horror. And everyone needs to understand why it happened.
If you want to understand the mind set and tactics of the Anarchists and black blok spend a few hours (not kidding) digging through these. Download the Black Bloc Paper if you can since it tends to change URL’s the first version I found a few years ago no longer works but a search under the full title found a copy.
http://www.infoshop.org/an-anarchist-faq/
The Black Bloc Papers
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-black-bloc-papers
As noted earlier by E.M. they have designated groups with in the group, these papers list a 4th sub group, “the arrestables” these are people who pre-plan and volunteer to be arrested (knowing their expenses will be covered). By doing so they tie up lots of cops, and form a point of interest for the press.(ie photo ops) which can be staged to serve the protest agenda. If they resist a little they tie up 2 cops each, then when the red group direct action shock troops stir up chaos and then start “un-arresting” them (ie snatching them out of the control of the police, it causes a great deal of confusion and things quickly go sidways into general destruction of property, which draws the police away from the folks they arrested for simply refusing to clear the street etc.
The point is to put the police in a no win situation where no matter how they respond there is trap set for them. The hard core black-bloc folks are well trained (indoctrinated) and understand their tactics well, and how to cause the most disruption possible with the least risk to their own.
Interesting that Serioso would simply publish a Trolls Cheat Sheet listing of a bunch of made up lies and talking points. Maybe Serioso is losing faith and just radioing in the assignment, pitiful…pg
@EMSmith; I have used Cold-Galv a number of times in sever service applications. Damn expensive stuff but it really works well. If you have any rust in the steel it will bloom under the paint no mater how well you sand to remove it. Apply to clean bare metal and let dry for a day or more before sanding and wear respirator protection as it is zinc dust. Supposed to protect 96% of hot dip.
Tip on painting; first put on a “tacker”coat, thick enough to almost cover( you can just barely see the substrate), let it almost dry and be barely sticky, then apply your heavy “color” coat. This will generally prevent sags and runs.
Just before you paint, do you final light sanding over everything. To stick well the final paint must go over a “fresh” surface. Oxidization takes place quickly and paint won’t stick well to oxidized surface…pg
E M I just an Aussie. So I’ll stay out of the US politics stuff. But if I was American, I \d be voting for him in 2020. A straight forward US nationalist ! It’s been a long time since you had such a president. So I suspect that for a lot of folks, whether American or other nationality, it feels weird.
But I disgree with you on one thing : General MacArthur.
We had him here in Oz for quite , 1942-44, and came to a very different opinion of him. Aussie digger troops in Papua New Guinea thought he was an arrogant ar#eh#le.
Informed Filipinos also have a very different view of him as well. Both for what he did not prepare for in Manila in 1941 pre Pearl Harbour when the red flags were flying about Japan. And for what he did in the battle of Manilla in 1945. The city of Manila was utterly destroyed. Destroyed more than Warsaw by the Germans…
A lot of folks were relieved when Truman sacked him as Supreme Commander of UN forces in 1951 in Korea. Why ? Because he was pushing to nuke the Chinese & North Koreans…
Ready set install!
https://thehackernews.com/2019/07/kali-linux-raspberry-pi-4.html
Re yr Antifa, ’tis a misnomer like ‘Tyranny bein’ freedom. ‘Antifa’, it’s fascist , hateful like yr Black Shirts, Brown Shirts
….E.M. I actually came in. re yr comment, 17th June 2019, ‘Remember that one of THE most broadly prosecuted crimes is ‘Conspiracy to…Very few complex crimes can be done by just one person working alone. Most of the crime is done by conspiracies. ‘ Mind if I quote it in my forthcoming serf post on Conspiracy theories ‘
Do you mind if I quote it in me forthcoming serf post on Conspiracy Theories?
If you looks at riot footage from years past, we know how to break up violent crowds. It’s the politicians fault for not doing it – in fact, too many of them like antifa. And many if not most of the citizens of the affected cities likewise like antifa. The truth is there is a large swath of people who don’t respect the foundational concepts of the United States of America. Back in the 50’s, Joe McCarthy was right!!! While some rights were abridged back then, look at the volume of rights being trashed now! Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good!
Serioso? Suppose we stipulate all the character flaws attributed to Trump. Suppose we perfer Jimmy Carter’s character, virtue, and basic human decency to set the standard for all presidential candidates.
Wasn’t available. Not even in primaries, to tell the truth.
So now, given a choice of Evil Bastards, what should be the selection criteria? Competence? Nice phrases about policy (whether the policies are actually any good or not)? Race, sex, age, or other “like me” -ness?
On what characteristics does a “smart” person choose an executive?
Well this should be interesting!
https://lauraloomer.us/2019/07/09/laura-loomer-files-3-billion-lawsuit-against-facebook-for-defamation/
Finally someone willing to file a damage claim large enough the totalitarian – media cannot ignore as a cost of doing business.
Meanwhile Nunese goes after twitter with a large lawsuit for anti-conservative bias.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nunes-files-bombshell-defamation-suit-against-twitter-seeks-250m-for-anti-conservative-shadow-bans-smears
Surfs up gulf coast.
Blood pressure is up in the Clinton house!
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/epstein-sex-scandal-flight-logs-show-clinton-not-trump-more-likely-involved-3onx7WVPwkydxT8j–LwOw/
“So is Brexit still “a thing”? It’s just dropped from view.”
Brexit only appears when there is a deadline approaching. Nothing can be done until there is a new PM. A couple more weeks until that vote. But that doesn’t mean that things aren’t going on behind the scenes. Smoky back room deals and back-stabbing. John O’Sullivan goes into all the what-if scenarios in this article. There are far more than I supposed. Including a Boris-Nigel deal.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/can-anyone-beat-boris/
and a second opinion here
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/463851-brexit-major-boris-johnson/
Meanwhile, the EU Commission President to be confirmed is Ursula von der Leyen. New boss, same as the old boss.
Another media challenge
“Fed up UK viewers raise £33,567 in days for legal challenge about BBC Bias”
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/07/fed-up-uk-viewers-raise-33567-in-days-for-legal-challenge-about-bbc-bias/
And obviously history isn’t taught in US education
“University of Minnesota: Zimbabwe Food Production Declining Because Climate Change”
But deeper reading there in
Re: support for Trump.
And how many of those cowardly lefties called for Clinton’s scalp when he was flying on the lolita express and raping 14 year old girls?
{chirp}{chirp}
And that is why i ignore the idiots. They have never met a rapist they did not love as long as he (or she) was a democrat. Just ask Justin Fairfax.
@Bill in Oz – Re: MacArthur.
Some in the US also feel the way you do. I do not put him in the same league as a Patton (I am cursed with having studied WWII too much). I would put him in the same boat as Monty. He was competent, but not brilliant. Nimitz and Halsey were the masterminds of the Pacific.
MacArthur was a royal pompous ass, good enough for the job at hand, but he had his strengths, where his imperial style was beneficial. His handling of the Japanese occupation was one where his commanding presence and sensitivity to the culture allowed the occupation to work. He (being an imperial sort himself) understood the need to treat the Japanese military and leadership with proper respect and maintain their “face” in the view of the people, not a heavy hand of a brutal occupation.
The Japanese were genuinely surprised at how he treated them, they expected their own style of brutal occupation.
He set the stage for a rapid development of a modern first world country with a working democratic style of government. It could have turned out much different if a different style of leader had been in charge.
His unshakable personal confidence also allowed the retaking of South Korea with the audacious invasion at Inchon which most thought would be impossible.
I also have a soft spot for him in his recognition of the importance of the PT boats (my dad being a PT boat veteran). After leaving the Philippines by PT boat under the command of Lieutenant Bulkeley, MacArthur lobbied for a major push to get PT boats in the war, and understood they would be essential to his plan for island hopping in the complex of islands of the south pacific.
Much like Monty and Patton he was very much full of himself but that seems to come with the territory for most senior flag officers. Eisenhower was very much the exception to that which was one of the reasons he was put in the position of overall allied command in Europe to keep all those egos soothed and in check.
https://adst.org/2015/07/douglas-macarthur-americas-emperor-of-japan/
@Bill In Oz:
I was not praising MacArthur. More pointing out his tendency to piss people off. Yet still do a workman like job of getting things done. (eventually…)
When you need to get a crappy job done, without all the resources it takes, against odds that are “not good”, well, my point is just that a foul mouthed SOB who doesn’t give a damn about your comfort (or “safe spaces” today…) is what works more often than it doesn’t.
Similarly, Churchill was only seen as “gifted” after the fact. During his career he made some spectacular blunders (cough, Turkey, cough, Galipolli…) and IIRC he was sacked a couple of times. I do still like him (bipolar disorder, drinking problem, and all); but I don’t see him as a perfect commander. Just a very competent one (after slaughtering a lot of troops in the learning process or W.W.1…) who got the job done. As much due to his defects as despite them, BTW. He had the good sense to hide in his bunker during depressive boughts and get drunk, then rouse the nation (world?) during the manic phases.
You can write similar biographies of all sorts of Great Men and Great Women. They did great things (compared to anything you or I have ever done) despite having normal human failings. And while I think MacArthur was a Pretty Good General, not great, remember that he WAS a General. How many mediocre privates, corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, etc. would never do 1/10 th as well? Compared to them, he was great. Compared to other Generals? A nice solid middle of the pack, IMHO.
So my point was NOT to venerate MacArthur, but to point at him, and all the others, as having “abrasive personalities” when needed and NOT being someone everybody loved. And to just point out Trump is no different. You want the General, you get the whole package, rough bits and all.
Basically, there comes a point where you need a Bad Cop to go beat the crap out of some street gang and clean up the place; and as long as you are all bureaucratic and sending them nice “cease and desist” letters, nothing is going to change. So don’t be surprised if sometimes the Bad Cop or the Riot Police you send into a swamp of vipers is not exactly speaking like the pastor in church and being as kind and gentile as Mother Theresa… Head Knocking and Butt Kicking is a blood sport, contact sport, and best conducted by a person who can channel the cursing mean SOB as needed.
Trump can be a bull in a china shop; BUT, he is OUR bull in their china shop. That’s why we elected him. Because the milquetoast RHINOs where not up to the job of Butt Kicker In Chief and were too busy kissing Dims Asses to realize they were slowly selling out the nation. Why did Trump win? BECAUSE he insulted folks, took names, and kept a grudge as long as it was useful. We wanted and voted for the Alpha Junk Yard Dog because it eats Poodles for breakfast…
Just like various Generals, Admirals, and Prime Minsters / Lord Of The Admiralty…
20-30″ of rain over the Mississippi river, which is already at flood stage, will not be good for Louisiana. Expect climate dunnit soon from the MSM. T’s & P’s for those in soon to be Barry’s path, in particular on the dirty side. Which is the right side of any Land falling Cane. This will change, but shouldn’t much.
@ EM and Larry:
I’m not ignoring you. And thanks for responding. My job doesn’t really slow down at all during the summer, and it’s about to hit Peak Pressure. Plus, I just received the score for the next community-wide kids’ musical less than a month away. Oh boy.
After that long rant of mine, today my browser received a “push” of an article from a science journal that is about the dollar value of baby parts (a brain is worth more than 3 grand), and POTUS just signed an executive order dealing with kidney health. I haven’t read it closely, but it might open up the option of allowing people to sell a kidney.
Just sayin’…
E M & Larry I sis study in 2016 of MacArthur and wrote it up for History of the Philippines blog : See here : http://filipinogerman.blogsport.eu/?s=MacArthur&submit=Search which lists four separate sections from just before Pear harbour to the end of the war.
I think that what MacArthur did in Manilla in February 1945 was a war crime. Basically the entire old city center of Manila and surrounding barios were levelled in an artillery & aerial bombing & ground fighting campaign that lasted over a month. The Manilenos deaths in the month were over 150,000 civilians. It was far worse than the destruction of Warsaw in 1944 by the Germans.
The weird thing is that the Japanese Commander in Chief had ordered all Japanese troops to evacuate the city and declared it an ‘Open City’. The Japanese army did troops did exactly that. But about 3-4000 Japanese navy & marines refused to acknowledge his orders and ‘seized’ the city for a final stand against the US troops.
MacArthur could have besieged the city center and just waited. The Japs had no supplies or chance of reinforcements. And in lots of places such strong holds were simply bypassed in the latter stages of the war. ( Courtesy of admirals Nimitz and Halsey of the USA Navy which was indeed doing the real strategy work in the Pacific ! And did not get any real recognition for it. )
But in the Philippines, in Manila, MacArthur chose to destroy Manila to wipe out the Japanese.
US troops deaths were around 1200. Japanese marine death were around 4000. Civilian Filipinos in Manila were around 150,000. Most of the city was destroyed by fires from the artillery & bombing. Fires raged for days. Bodies were burned to dust. So no actual accurate body count was possible.
Lots more in the link above.
Not trying to justify MacArthurs efforts to crush the Japanese in Manila February 1945, since none of us know all the constraints and pressures he was under, but what the Japanese did in Corregidor and Bataan were also war crimes, I strongly suspect it was both payback for that, and part of the effort to show the Japanese that if they persisted a no quarter battle would be fought, and to hurry the effort to hit Okinawa. More importantly (to him) he clearly felt a moral obligation to the people of the Philippines to crush the Japanese troops.
I am sure part of it was for public consumption back home, he wanted to close the books on the Philippines. I know there was a lot of friction between him and the Navy leadership, and something of a competition between them and I would bet he wanted to finish the Philippines before the Navy could claim securing Okinawa.
The first atom bomb on Hiroshima was dropped on August 6, 1945, Rear Admiral Sanji was given the assignment to defend the city of Manila to the last man. In essentially house to house fighting American losses were huge. Plus the Japanese were committing atrocities against the civilians.
MacArthur was on a time clock re: the Battle of Okinawa, (April 1–June 21, 1945) so this is just before the final push into the home islands and an anticipated invasion of the Japanese mainland. He had to secure the Philippines prior to the attack on Okinawa and establish the logistics for that final push.
Was it the right tactic – not for me to judge as I don’t know what his supply and logistics situation was, how badly mauled his troops were etc. Depending on those answers he might have been doing the most humane thing that was in his power to actually accomplish. Given the choice, do you sacrifice thousands of civilians in the Philippines, to save tens of thousands of US troops in a main island invasion of Japan? It was that sort of calculus that drove the fire bomb raids and the atomic bomb drops, as the US was nearly bankrupt from the war effort and exhausted, there was enormous pressure to finish the Japanese since European theater was wrapping up.(final collapse and surrender of Germany occurred – April and early May 1945.)
Also how perfect was his intelligence, did he actually know the damage he was doing to the civilians (and how many of their deaths are due directly to the actions of the Japanese occupation troops rather than the actions of the Americans? Did he think he was fighting a far different battle than what was actually occurring? Did he think the Japanese were a far greater military threat than they actually were?
Military leaders seldom fight the actual battle that is taking place, they fight the battle that they think is taking place based on the information they have in hand colored by the biases of all the groups that filtered and passed on that info, plus his own staff’s biases.
@Bill In Oz:
Hindsight is 20-20 and improves dramatically with each passing year…. but is never correct…
In the “Fog Of War” there are a 1001 things that any given commander must balance, that we can know nothing about. For that reason, I refuse to pass judgment on old wars and the judgments made in them.
As an example and a hypothetical one at that:
What was the quality of opposing forces deployments intelligence?
I’m the General In Charge. On the one hand I have intel saying “Japanese issuing orders to leave and army leaving”. On the other hand I have reports of “Japanese Marines, unknown strength, fortifying positions.”
I know that deception is the first, last, and most important tactic in war.
I know that the Japanese have been deceptive, have built lots of tunnel complexes on other islands, generally fight to the death and refuse to surrender or retreat much.
I know that this location is very important to them.
I know that urban warfare is THE most difficult and lethal with highest casualties.
Do I send in a few hundred of my men to “probe the strength”, knowing that I’ll have to sign those letters to wives, mothers, and children back home telling them I had their loved ones killed because I trusted a rumor?
Do I send in the full attack, without preparatory bombardment, and just accept I might have 10,000’s of casualties?
Do I “err on the side of caution” and bomb the hell out of the place before going in to assure minimum loss of my men and material (that IS in short supply, that WILL be needed for ongoing battles, that IS facing a very large, professional, and experienced Army for thousands of kilometers more of fighting)?
I’d not want to make that decision. Then again, I’m no General.
Another question or three:
What were the OTHER forces at play here? Was there another Japanese assault expected soon or near, one where your troops INTACT might swing the war? Was there a weather pressure of an approaching bad weather that required you wrap this up and NOT wait for more reconnaissance to be done? Was there even the recon assets available to DO any better recon? Were “The Locals” suspected (or even shown in some measure) to be working with the Japanese (ala Vichy France)? Was there a large artillery set available, but not many soldiers at that time? Was troop morale or morale back home so bad that it was essential to do something big and showy to boost it? Was there just bad intel in the HQ? Were you waiting for more “beans and bullets” and the only ready to go attack you could do was bombardment?
You can, after the fact, “war game” this to death and you will still never know what all the General knew, that you do not know; or what he thought he knew that present historians believe was otherwise. You will never be able to “make that decision” with the full facts on the ground that they held.
So no, I’ll not condemn him for that. I’ll state it was a horrible loss (but war IS hell). I’ll state that maybe there could have been a better way (but I can never know that…). I’ll question if MacArthur could have done it better (but unless his chain of command reprimanded him for it, I have to assume they accepted it.)
Basically, I refuse to toss mud on folks or talk dirt about them when I was not there, and they had the information and responsibility.
I’ve had to make decisions under uncertainty, about far less complex and difficult things, and while I mostly get things right; I’ve had some decisions that in retrospect were just flat out wrong and errors. (Usually from faulty data, or omitted issues. Sometimes from other things changing. Occasionally because I just got it wrong.) So I KNOW that ‘shit happens” and often you can’t do much about it. AND I know war is far worse and far more complex in that regard.
So no, I’m not going to play the Armchair General second-guessing history. Because all it would be IS a 2nd GUESS. A poorly informed one too.
One Supporting Point:
Many folks want a “Do Over” on the nuclear bombs on Japan. Only recently did it come out that Japan had tested a nuke in what is now North Korea. Had we NOT bombed them first, but instead took a few months to get all the troops in position to invade, it is quite possible our Pacific Fleet might have gotten the first nuke used in war used on them. BTW, my spouse’s Dad had been given his orders to prepare to depart Europe for deployment in the invasion of Japan. Given the expected 100,000’s level casualties on our side, and him being Airborne (101 st at the start of the war but in the 82nd by then) odds are very high he would not have survived. My wife would not exist, nor my kids. It is possible I’d not exist either ( I just don’t now the orders my Dad had then).
So lots and lots of hand wringing goes into the destruction of all those “innocent civilians” in Japan, too. But with 2 bombs we ended the war and likely saved far more Japanese than the bombs killed.
So I don’t lose a moments sleep nor waste a minute of “thought time” on the question of “Was using the nukes justified?”. It absolutely was, near as I can ever know. Yes, it was a horror of horrors thing. Invading Japan would have been far worse with far more killed and wounded. Had we lost the nuke race (and had a certain German submarine made it to Japan) we would possibly be speaking Japanese on the West Coast…
Did I mention that War IS Hell?
It doesn’t get any less hellish by playing Arm Chair General with no idea what the “facts on the ground” really were then. So I don’t play that game.
Oh, and in case I’ve not said it yet:
Beth The Serf: Quote Away!
You don’t really need permission to do quotes. It is part of “Fair Use”, but you have my permission anyway ;-)
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Thx, E.M. It was a matter of respect.. ;-)
E M I do not wish to do over the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Nagasaki & Hiroshima. Now that definitely saved many many US forces lives and lead to the war’s ending directly. And also many millions of Japanese as well.
And yes there is the ‘fog of war’ which has a huge impact on what happens. But there is generalship also and skill beyond the ordinary which leads to victory.
But also we are fortunate that Roosevelt had the insight to see this in Dwight Eisenhower and appointed him to command Allied forces for D Day in Europe.
Curiously Eisenhower was MacArthur’s ‘aid de camp’ in Manila for 4 years till a few months before Pear Harbour. MacArthur got rid of him from his command there the person who who would later rise far above him !
The story of MacArthur in Japan or Korea I have not touched on. But it is written up by a wonderful book by a largely unknown US author James Webb in ” The Emperor’s General” in 1999. In a fore note to his ‘factionalised’ book Webb acknowledge’s all the help he got from those who were ‘casualties’ while he was writing, He includes among them his own father and others who left behind an ” insistence that the truth can be a majority of one”.
Those fascinated by the US /Japan conflict will enjoy Tuchman’s _Stillwell in China_.
I had a bit of a grin reading the BBC today. Maybe someone else will too….
Firstly, AOC is being sued for blocking people on Twitter, since Trump has been told it’s unconstitutional:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48948891
Secondly, the stories of London being 5°C warmer by 2050. They say it’s like moving 650 miles south. Funnily enough, I moved around that far south of London because it was warmer….. I really can’t see the problem, since France is known for having a great climate for farming.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-48947573
Lastly, if all this climate angst is getting you down, you’re not alone and it’s a recognised ailment:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/b2e7ee32-ad28-4ec4-89aa-a8b8c98f95a5
Help! I’m melting!
Good news, bad news:
The YSM has been pushing polls that have Biden leading Trump by 20% if the election were held tomorrow. That’s the good news for the Democrats.
The bad news is that I suspect it was a poll of all Democrats.
It would be funny except the stupid – it burns!!!!
If AOC had been whining about a republican, this idiot would be piling on!
@H.R.:
I generally refuse polls. IF somehow, I were cornered into one, my “choice” would be for that Democrat I thought had the least chance of winning. I’d sing the praises of the most ding-batty of the field that I could finger…
Harass me for data, I will pollute the data stream…
President Trump out flanks the Democrats and issues an executive order to pull pre-existing Federal records and use that information to determine the number of illegal Aliens and how many citizens are in the US. for the up coming census.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/11/transcript-of-president-trump-and-ag-bill-barr-citizenship-and-census-announcement/
@Billl in Oz – War is a crime “War Crimes” is an oxymoron. Like “hate crime”.
Sorry, trying to wage war by snowflake rules is a mistake. Period. All it does is get more of your side killed. America did not start that war. But they did try to obey the rules according to the “Geneva Conventions” (which Japan was NOT a signatory of). But killing people is not a civilized endeavor.
Regardless of how the war is fought, the losers are always guilty of “war crimes”. And the behavior of the victors is never questioned. Except by idiots who think war is a game of checkers (Chess is too violent).
I will go along with you that MacArthur was no genius. But he is not guilty of any war crimes, That is merely a lame attempt to interject a non sequitur. And is dishonest. As I said in the first sentence. War is a crime. To start one is a crime, Once started, the childish “all’s fair in love and war” is the only rule of war. History taught us that.
Save your war crimes for the safe spaces and precious little snow flakes.
Short segment showing how bad things are in Germany right now.
https://twitter.com/McguireScotty/status/1149222195547246593
@Phil, Who are you at war with Phil ? Your reply to my comments seems inappropriate here. And it’s always best to check the facts first. My assemblage of the facts about MacArthur is given above if you care to look.
My real concern about war crime comes from the fact that the Filipino people, after being occupied and brutalised by the Japanese for three years, had high expectations that the returning US forces would liberate them. But at Manilla in Feb 1945 150,000 plus Filipinos were killed in an unnecessary nasty brutal battle that was all about the egos of two men : the Japanese admiral commanding the Japanese navy marines and the US army general commanding the US forces.
With the Manilenos as powerless victims between them.
Not a surprise to most of us but nice to see admission of the obvious.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/49417/aocs-chief-staff-admits-green-new-deal-about-ryan-saavedra
Larry
https://starecat.com/santa-claus-before-you-make-fun-of-children-for-believing-in-me-remember-there-are-adults-who-still-believe-in-socialism/
Larry Ledwick: “Short segment showing how bad things are in Germany right now.”
Yeah, file that under “diversity is always good”.
Volvo is making hints about leaving Sweden because of crime on the no-go zone level.
https://www.rt.com/news/437339-cars-burned-fire-sweden-crime/
That’s under “assimilation is evil”
Burning cars doesn’t even make the news in France anymore. Holidays and other special events can result in a thousand cars torched.
Europe doesn’t need Antifa, it already has Anarchists.
BTW, expect torching cars to become a thing in the US too. The movie “Widows” (set in Chicago) is practically an instruction manual.
Summary of President Trumps executive order on access to all Federal Records for determination of citizenship status and numbers in the US.
Bill, all I can say is reread my comment. Your response had nothing to do with the points I made.
No surprise but poll bias by over sampling explained – or – how the media do push polls to affect public perceptions by skewing the sample of their published polls.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-23/new-podesta-email-exposes-dem-playbook-rigging-polls-through-oversamples
Hmmm will Facebook get fined $5 Billion for privacy viiolations?
Or will this be one of those huge fine proposals which get gutted by the courts before it is all said and done?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook-fine-ftc-privacy-violations
@Larry re push polls and over-sampling:
I’m very much aware of that. That was the joke in my “Good news, Bad news” comment. The real portion (Dem good news) was that the YSM is indeed pushing the poll that shows Biden ahead by 20% and a half-dozen others even with Trump. The bad news (largely true joke part) is that even polling all Democrats, it would be 20 or 30 or 40% Democrats voting for Trump.
YSM polls are designed to be the news and influence voters, not to reflect voters’ inclinations. Full stop. The YSM is the propaganda arm of the Democrat party, and Uniparty for that matter.
Be sure to get used to the idea of a Uniparty. The PTB have bought, with very few exceptions in the House and no exceptions in the Senate, the finest Congress money can buy – both sides of the aisle – and just give us deplorable serfs the illusion of choice at the voting booth. That is the truth. It used to include the Presidency until Trump came along.
E.M. you will absolutely love this little item.
Hmmm… E.M. has been quiet today. Ya think he’s been out in the garage sniffing paint thinner today? ;o)
It’s either paint or hydroponics.
Me? I’ve been in carpentry and gardening mode for the last six weeks. I made myself a honking stout special height and shape work bench and I’m in the process of finishing up a potting bench for my wife’s birthday present.
I’m headed back to the basement now to work on the last two shelves which will leave me a few days to finish it in a nice French blue I selected.
Found this just now
“Slavery Made the US Less Prosperous, Not More So”
http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2019/07/slavery-made-the-us-less-prosperous-not-more-so.html
And a very non-pc around that – a friend is in the oil drilling game. One rig he was on had an Afro-American in the crew who was seconded to a job in West Africa. On return someone asked him how his visit to the Motherland went. The answer was
“Thank God for slavery”
@H.R.:
Friday is a run across town with me as chauffeur for the spousal salon visit… then some grocery shopping and we finish with Friday Sushi. So basically I get s bit of morning, then I’m booked until after dinner…
This morning I did add a bubbler to one of my hydroponics tubs and move some plants around, plant out a few more, but it wasn’t that big a job. More details in a comment on the hydroponics topic “soon”…
FWIW, doing that round the world set of graphs of v3.3 vs v4 kind of burned out my interest in the data stuff for a little while and I’ve been waiting for the interest to return on that Global Warming Data Diddle stuff. There’s only so many times you can say “they screwed up the data” before it gets old…
@Larry L:
That’s a good one! Saw a similar one where they made a sea water distillery out of similar clay build method.
@YMMV:
A guy at the end of my block had an old Chevy Suburban just to tow his boat. He’s retired a few years now, and that’s about the only thing he does for fun. Some fishing.
A couple of months ago, some car turns the corner and stops next to it (another neighbor saw it happen) and hears a POP, then the car speeds off as the interior starts to burn.
It looks like they shot a flare gun through the rear seat window.
The fire didn’t burn all that well, but did pretty much mess up the entire headliner and interior with sooty crap. It looks like there was not enough air from the small hole and it self extinguished once the flare part was gone.
Still, he doesn’t have the money for a new one to replace it, and a full interior isn’t cheap either. So he’s not doing much with his boat this summer…
One hopes this does not catch on. I’m pretty sure the number of cameras watching the street will increase anyway…
Per Polls:
The advent of caller-ID and cell phones pretty much screwed their pooch… then season with cranky folks like me doing the data dirty dance… Trust no poll…
Per Exec Order On Citizenship:
I’m of two minds… I love the bypass and that we might actually get our population correctly counted (and maybe even break the Dimocrats CHEATING with more voters than citizens…) but the reason for forbidding all the data sharing was that it is a great basis for a Police State… Hate to think what the Democrats will do with it if they ever get hands on…
It looks like they shot a flare gun through the rear seat window.
Geeeze that is just mean!
Either he had an issue with someone and they were doing a targeted pay back, or someone was trying out a method.
The ANTIFA gangs in europe do that to torch cars during their street riots, they bust out a tempered glass window like the back window, ignite a road flare and toss it in the car back seat. Car is fully involved in just a couple minutes. By punching out a tempered glass window they get a nice big chimney opening and lots of air to feed the fire.
A team of 2 can fire a couple dozen cars in just 90 seconds or so, one breaks windows and the second follows behind with the flares – I’ve seen them do it in videos.
Yeah his only “affordable” options would be pick up junk yard seats or maybe offer it as a training tool to vocational school and let them do the work as a training project. Still he would be on the hook for the materials.
I think it was someone trying out a method. He’s a really nice guy, doesn’t piss off anyone, and I think it was just his bad luck to be the first car after the turnoff from the feeder road. (Freeway off ramp, major street, feeder road with some traffic into the residential block, first left turn and first car on the “quiet short side street with zero traffic”…
Hopefully they learned it doesn’t work and isn’t much fun…
I think he likely took the $1000 for “Clunkers” as it did still run an bought another old pickup. At least, I’ve seen an old pickup on the “feeder road” that I don’t remember… (He is a corner lot) Probably about a $2000 truck. All it has to do is tow a boat every few weeks. At least, I hope that’s his and that he’s back to fishing ;-)
E M I have been pushing the data fiddle here in Oz as well. Even went & checked out the local BOM temperature gauge 150 meters away from my house. And discovered it was completely b/s.
So I ran a post about it in my Facebook group page “Mayo For Mayo” ( The name of the Federal electorate I live )
https://www.facebook.com/groups/144702239734255/
Almost zip responses to local evidence of BOM misinformation on our weather & climate.
Folks don’t want to know.
Dutchsinse did another earthquake update video late last night.
Interesting one here, he spends some time doing a quickie explanation of how he does his earthquake forecasting.
He still thinks there is another large earthquake due in the California series, but he explains he is a bit outside the normal pattern in this series, as he expected the energy release at the end of his 5 day forecast but is still tentatively expecting it might still have one more big quake in the next day or so.
Dutchsense July 12 update video
His observations seem logical, but I guess only time will tell if he has this sorted out, but by his logic there is excess energy still in the western US waiting to release.
Speaking of “Safeties off”…
https://www.theblaze.com/news/terror-armed-antifa-member-attempts-to-firebomb-ice-facility-in-washington-is-killed-in-confrontation-with-police
So when you observe that your opponent is going violent, you prepare for a higher level of defense required.
Now we’ve seen why. Extreme violence manifested by an ANTIFA acolyte, showing up with a rifle and fire bombs. The solution? Proportional counter force. Result? One dead ANTIFA idiot.
So what are the rest of the Useful Idiots doing? Praising their “martyr”…
I fear there will be many more “martyrs” to the will of Soros before this runs out.
“Forbes Demands a Manhattan Project to Discover a Magic Climate Energy Solution”
Then read “Goat Guy” on the odds of any such happenings
So who in the white house set Trump for a meeting with a bunch of female dimocrat congress women all from minority ethnic groups ?
I can’t see it happening because he wanted it.
Bill in Oz. Trump started out as a non-politician. But he’s been there for a while and he may be infected. :) It will happen over time. At any rate, I don’t see it as such a bad idea to meet with the Dimowit women, just as I didn’t see it as such a bad idea to meet Little Rocket Man. Just because he meets with them does not necessarily imply he will cave. But what if he could negotiate and get a border wall and better border security? At this point, the “dreamers” are a minor component of illegals. Give them a path to citizenship for border security.
Bill from Oz: This is what Trump had to say about Omar, it might be related to your question about the Trump meeting.
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump wrote.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-says-ilhan-omar-should-go-back-to-africa-you-cant-leave-fast-enough/
@Bill in OZ re President Trump and the foreign-born congresswomen:
President Trump is fearless and does not shy away from controversy. He’s a “rip the Band-Aid off quickly” guy when he needs to be and patient when patience is required. A politician spouts bafflegab or deflects and hopes an issue will fade away. A businessman confronts problems and makes a decision (right or wrong) on how to fix the problem, and then moves on.
Look how he handles the Press Corpse. He doesn’t accept their false premise questions and neatly side-steps or calls BS on the ‘Gotcha’ questions.
You may well be right that the meeting wasn’t at his request, but I can see him saying, “Alright, let’s get this issue hashed out.”
But I can also see him requesting the meeting as a way to call out those women; put up or shut up. Their position is anathema to a large swath of American voters and a Whitehouse meeting would be a good way to display their anti-Americanism for all to see. It would be particularly useful as we are approaching an election year; a gift of ugly soundbites. In that respect, it’s a trap and the women may refuse the invite, which would also make them look like they can’t stand up to Trump or stand up for their positions.
Hard to say if President Trump called the meeting or not, but I see it as a win for him any way it plays out.
AOC has about a 22% approval in the voting public. Omar is about 9%. Yes, 009.0%.
By using his laser pointer of twitter he now has ALL the media shouting about these Congresswomen and how Trump is hated by them.
Think about it.
Trump just got $Billions of Free Advertising to the 78% and 91% that “He’s our guy!”…
While the media cats are running in circles chasing imaginary mice and the supporters of AOC / Omar et. al. are busy Pissing In Public and further bothering the 78% and 91%.
I see no downside for Trump in that…
Ok, who is in? ;-)
https://www.cnet.com/news/lets-raid-area-51-to-see-them-aliens-1-million-people-vow/
We’ll see how this goes
“James Bond fans wanting 007 to be either black or female are in for a double treat — with the movie spy about to be played by a black woman, according to a report on Sunday.”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/07/trendsetters-gough-whitlam-and-sir-les-decades-ahead-of-the-007-james-bond-movie-producers.html
It was interesting to read your thought s here about that incident. I think you are right. Trump will been seen as standing up for normal USA ways of doing & being. And putting the dimocrats in their place again.
But what is wrong with simply putting them all ‘in coventry’ for a a few years..IE : ignore them completely ?
And meanwhile here in Oz and in the UK Trump Derangement Syndrome has manifested strongly in the big left wing media among anglophone journalists… For normal Australians, just something else to completely ignore from the Australian Brainwashing Corporation (= ABC)
Just for future reference from spaceweather.com
Solar wind
speed: 434.3 km/sec
density: 1.9 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0110 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A7 1818 UT Jul15
24-hr: A7 1818 UT Jul15
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2359 UT
Daily Sun: 15 Jul 19
The sun is blank–no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI
Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 15 Jul 2019
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 7 days
2019 total: 125 days (64%) < – – – – – – – – – (highest percentage in past 14 years
2018 total: 221 days (61%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
2008 total: 268 days (73%)
2007 total: 152 days (42%)
2006 total: 70 days (19%)
Updated 15 Jul 2019
Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 2.83×1010 W Cold < – – – – – –
Max: 49.4×1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05×1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data
Updated 15 Jul 2019
The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 67 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 15 Jul 2019
@Larry, I would add there have been a few precursor observations of reversed polarity in some of the recent sun activity the last few month indicative of solar cycle 25 starting to show up.
For the watchers
6-ish quake off Bali about an hour ago
E.M.Smith says:
15 July 2019 at 3:36 pm
What he said!
Hmmmm – Do we add another name to the “friends of Clinton” list?
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/local-obituaries/decorated-detective-remembered-for-work-ethic-making-others-smile/Xn9DqgNZ544V3qx0dSbWpJ/
Just stumbled across and interesting web site that might be useful from time to time.
https://poweroutage.us/
About PowerOutage.US
Part of info from – – – https://poweroutage.us/about
Overview:
PowerOutage.US collects, records, and aggregates live power outage data from utilities all over the United States, with the goal to create the single most reliable and complete source of power outage information available.
Details:
Most states have many electric utilities, many small, some big, and with these large numbers of companies it can be hard to get a true overall status of the power grid in a particular area. This project collects information from over 400 Utilities into one place, with more being added all the time. Making this site the most complete source of power outage information currently available.
Most Utilities put very little resources behind their publicly facing OMSs (Outage Management Systems), they are more focused on getting their customers reconnected, as they should be. However this means that during big events where lots of people want to know the status of the power in a particular area, the Utility’s OMS will tend to be overwhelmed if not completely unresponsive. Meanwhile PowerOutage.us has stood up to huge amounts of traffic without faltering. Allowing people directly affected by an outage event and onlookers to stay informed and up to date. Making this site one of the most reliable sources of power outage information available.
In addition, no utility releases detailed historical power outage information, so we store all of the information we collect. Making this project the only source of detailed historical power outage information. While this data is not available on the site, you can contact us for more information.
You can view information about our bot here: About/Bot
Larry in the spirit of your comment is this website from Tony in Oz. Each day he puts together & charts how much power we here in Oz use And how it is generated ! After almost 20 years olf the public being stubg to pay for high cost, unreliable, ‘renewable’ ( wind & solar ) power, it contributes an average of 7% of the total daily power supply. Coal which the Greenists want to shut down contributes ~73 % each day with hydro, gas and sundries making up the balance.
It is complete & total idiocy to even think that ‘renewable’ can supply Australia’s daily power needs. But then we have more than our loud and active dim witted share of idiots thinking they can save the planet
I forgot the link to Tony In Oz ! Here it is : https://papundits.wordpress.com/author/tonyoz/
Firefox has a new security feature: container tabs. Not sure how well they work, but …
But if you take help of the new container tabs feature, you’ll be able to use different user accounts and identities on same website in same Firefox browser window. It becomes possible because each container tab has its own dedicated local storage (cache) and session manager (cookies). That’s why you can use multiple accounts of same website in different tabs of same Firefox window. Any container tab will not share its user data with other tabs. So it’ll also help in preventing user tracking on websites.
https://www.askvg.com/mozilla-adds-container-tabs-feature-to-firefox-web-browser/
Bill in Oz, RE MacArthur. Your characterization of him is very misleading as you have left out a lot of mitigating facts about the battle. Quotes (numbered):
They fought much of the battle hand to hand.
1. However, Japanese forces dug in and put up a fierce fight in the city, forcing the Americans and their Filipino allies into a challenging urban battle, in which they fought block by block, building by building, and floor by floor, frequently hand-to-hand.
The Japanese dug in in a rather small part of the city.
2. However, Japanese remained within a walled portion of Manila, called Intramuros.
MacArthur didn’t use bombs due to concern about civilian deaths, and the artillery was focused on the wall of the enclave.
3. MacArthur denied the use of air support out of concern for the civilian population, so the Americans used heavy artillery instead, pounding the walls until they were breached and then fighting to clear the area of Japanese.
https://blog.fold3.com/battle-of-manila-begins-february-3-1945/
I note you don’t air any concerns about English civilian deaths of 67,000; along with
Soviet Union: 13,204,000
China: 11,500,000
Poland: 2,400,000
India: 2,000,000.
On the broader question of collateral damage, I think we have gone too far trying to fight a “fair” war. For example, take Iran. I think it would be acceptable to kill by missiles or bombs the top 500 military and/or political supporters of the current regime. This would involve collateral damage as it would kill the families and neighbors of the targets. But if Iran had crossed the line and politicians here had determined it was time to deal with them, we should accept that. Is it horrible? Yes. But war is hell. We should not try to fight it as if it weren’t. That approach only gets the wrong side killed (our side!).
Larry in the spirit of your comment is this website from Tony in Oz. Each day he puts together & charts how much power we here in Oz use And how it is generated !
It came up on twitter from:
American_Biker Retweeted
MissShe
@PatriotPeach
10 hours ago
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Replying to @gholland04 @kasmouse
Pingback: Interesting Items 07/15 – Interesting Items
Re Apollo 11
Burt Rutan’s recommendation
“Apollo 11: The inside story of the glorious technical mastery, the risks, the leap”
Links to series
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/07/apollo-11-what-we-saw/
More earthquakes
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-15/number-global-earthquakes-3-times-above-normal
On that note side comment there is a partial lunar eclipe today in the Indian Ocean area near where all the earthquake activity has been triggering, so maximum tidal forces will be in play on the south western quadrant of the ring of fire.
@jim2 . Sorry mate, you know NOT of what you write.
1: It was the US Navy Pacific strategy of Nimitz and Halsey which got US forces close to Japan; close enough for the bombing rains on Japan; close enough to destroy Japan at home; close enough destroy Japan’s capacity to fight the war. Close enough to drop the Atom bombs on Japan which ended their war.
2: MacArthur’s role was side show to that strategy. He resented that side show role and wanted something better.
3 : It’s very curious. Manilla was the ONLY major city ‘reqonquered’ from the Japanese before the war ended in July 1945. No other city was ‘reconquered’. Not Hanoi; Not Saigon; Not Bangkok; Not Rangoon; Not Jakarta; Not Surabaya; Not Singapore; Not Penang; Not Phnom Penh; Not Hong Kong; Not Canton; Not Shang Hai; Not Taipeh; Not Seoul; Not Beijing..
None of the big cities of East Asia or South East Asia was reconquered – except Manila. In every other major city of the region the Allied military commanders ( US, British Australian avoided battles to retake those cities from the Japanese. They fought the strategic war of knocking Japan out of the war instead.
MacArthur was the only exception : He decided to fight a major war of reconquest in Manila. That was his decision. I suspect it was motivated by (i) a desire to try and outshine his former ‘aide’ in the Philippines, Dwight Eisenhower who so successfully commanded the Allied Forces in France from D Day.(ii) A desire to regain his former home in the Philippines from the Japanese. He lived in Manila many years from the 1905-6 through to February 1942 when he fled Corrigador on a PT boat.
4 : I have lived in Manila. I have walked it’s streets. If you go walk there you can still see places where the war damaged is still evident sixty four years later. Yes Intra Muros was the heart of the Japanese stand in the battle. But the surrounding barios of Binondo ( the chinese quarter ) Quiappo, Malate, Ermita, San Miguel, the old port area, San Nicolas and Paco, etc were destroyed in the month long campaign. It was only the then outlying barios which survived because they were liberated before the battle. The Japanese marine forces refused to allow Manillenos to evacuate or escape the battle. They used them as human shields and to hamper the US forces advance.
5 The US airforce was used to bomb the Japanese in Manila. It only ceased when the horror of what was happening penetrated into MacArthur’s thick skull in the latter part of February; 2 weeks after the battle started. And of course by then US troops were so closely engaged with the Japanese that the risk of bombing US army forces was high.
I would have to agree with “Bill in OZ”. to the Navy personnel in West Pac, “Dug-Out Dug” MacArthur was not highly thought of. My father was a part of the Naval force that stopped the “Tokyo Express” ( note; the Japanese Destroyer squadron commander executed a perfect Run against a Allied Cruiser squadron, damaged or destroyed them all in the dark without any losses! but lost the battle because he had no idea of his success because of that darkness) This was a part of the Battle for what became Henderson Field, Guadalcanal’ that began that roll back of of the “Japanese Co-prosperity Sphere” through “Island hopping” airfields to deny the use of the sea to move and replenish the Japanese Army before Japan was conquered..
As the Army Commander in the Pacific MacArthur wanted to conduct a WAR of reConquest against the Japanese army, Nimize, rightly wanted to avoid that, he wanted to isolate and starve that Army in place while avoiding the massive casualties of an assault on them. Except for the Philippines the American’s largely avoided full on facing the Japanese Army.
On the other hand MacArthur was an excellent governor over the Japanese Surrender and reconstituting of their government…pg
Offered without comment, for the ‘Beyond Parody’ dep’t:
https://politicaluk.co.uk/2019/07/controversy-as-10000-paid-to-civil-servant-for-being-offended-by-the-queen/
Bill in Oz. You knew neither Nimitz nor MacArthur. Leaders, especially in the military, frequently have oversized egos. Some people despise large egos, and that can cloud their judgment. A large ego in and of itself is neither bad nor good – the context matters.
The decision on how to approach Japan was debated for many months by MANY people who did know both Nimitz and MacArthur. It was the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not MacArthur, who made the decision to take the Philippines. True, MacArthur advocated for that strategy, but he did not act alone, far from it. Every aspect of the upcoming assault on Japan was hashed and rehashed by the top brass and FDR. In the end, MacArthur was ordered to take the Philippines.
Here is a blow by blow description of the arguments. This decision was not made lightly, not at all.
https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_21.htm
From the link:
The Joint Chiefs had not reached their decision to take Luzon, bypass Formosa, and, in effect, substitute Okinawa for Formosa, either lightly or easily. From the beginning of the Luzon versus Formosa debate they had believed the seizure of Formosa and a port on the south China coast-bypassing Luzon-to be the best strategy the Allies could follow in the western Pacific. In the end, however, the Joint Chiefs had had to face the fact that the Allies could not assemble the resources required to execute that strategy, at least until after the end of the war in Europe. They could not seriously consider delaying the progress of the war in the Pacific until Germany collapsed. In the last analysis then, logistical considerations alone would have forced the Joint Chiefs to the decision they reached in favor of Luzon, although other military realities, and possibly political factors as well, had some influence upon the outcome of strategic planning for operations in the western Pacific.
For the Allied forces of the Pacific theaters, the Joint Chiefs’ directive of 3 October 1944 ended months of uncertainty. The die was cast. Luzon would be taken; Formosa would be bypassed. United States forces would recapture the entire Philippines Archipelago in a consecutive series of advances, just as General MacArthur had been planning ever since he had left Corregidor in March 1942.
” just as General MacArthur had been planning ever since he had left Corregidor in March 1942.”
Yes indeedy ! ‘I will return’ is what he said just after he arrived in Australia having fled the Japanese in the Philippines.
Sort of like the MacArthur tail wagging the General Staff dog !
Mind you there was politics involved. Roosevelt did not want a Republican Army general coming back to the USA in 1942-3 when Roosevelt was seeking re-election in 1944. Too big a threat !
And you did not respond to the simple facts that Manila was the only city which the allies chose to make the site of a major battle against the Japanese….
@Steve C : Surely when this crap artist joined the Northern Irish public service, he swore an oath of alliegance to here Majesty Queen Elizabeth ?
Bill in Oz: You continue to ignore the fact that the JCoS made the decision, not MacArthur. The idea that this one man conned the entire military command is nothing short of ludicrous.
WRT your contention that “Manila was the only city which the allies chose to make the site of a major battle against the Japanese” In fact, it was made so by the Japanese. It was the Japanese who occupied Manila, BTW!!
“Yamashita ordered the commander of Shimbu Group, Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama, to destroy all bridges and other vital installations and then evacuate the city as soon as any large American forces made their appearance. However, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 31st Naval Special Base Force, was determined to fight a last-ditch battle in Manila, and, though nominally part of the Shimbu Army Group, repeatedly ignored Army orders to withdraw from the city. The naval staff in Japan agreed to Iwabuchi’s scheme, eroding a frustrated Yamashita’s attempts at confronting the Americans with a concerted, unified defense.[6][1]:72–73 Iwabuchi had 12,500 men under his command, designated the Manila Naval Defence Force,[1]:73 augmented by 4,500 army personnel under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi and Capt. Saburo Abe.[1]:73 They built defensive positions in the city, including Intramuros, cut down the palm trees on Dewey Blvd. to form a runway, and set up barricades across major streets.[1]:73 Iwabuchi formed the Northern Force under Noguchi, and the Southern Force under Capt. Takusue Furuse.[1]:74”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manila_(1945)
I don’t really care to be an Armchair General (as I said before) so mostly sitting out this discussion.
I’ll just point out in passing that there is a HUGE difference between leaving a few hundred enemy cut off on a dinky desert island and leaving a significant force in place in a nation spread over many very large islands with plenty of local production to keep them supplied.
Season that with the need for a major forward base, and with the fact that the Philippines was, then, functionally an American Territory… I’d not expect a “bypass” strategy to be applied. Just like we’d not “bypass” Hawaii for the same reasons. An essential base / port. LARGE size and strategic location on shipping lanes. Our territory captured and subjugated.
Basically, you can’t stage a Million Man Army and 700 ships out of some dinky island like Guadalcanal.
Also remember the need to cut off Japan from access to rubber plantations and all the resources of south east Asia.
Considering all that, the Philippines is strategically located, big enough, and with enough support ability to act as a forward staging area for a major army / sea / air buildup to invade Japan. While leaving it occupied with a stubborn and aggressive enemy in your rear is very bad strategy. The Joint Chiefs seem to have seen it that way too.
So that leaves it down to “strategy to take it back”. Which puts you back in all the “Uknowns Of The Time”. What was the invasion schedule? What were the manpower estimates of needed forces to invade Japan? What were the projected losses? Would a “PC & Gentle” approach exceed schedule for a successful invasion? Would delay by a year as you do that result in MORE innocent civilian deaths in all the OTHER places occupied by Japanese Forces as they had another year to abuse and enslave the locals? From better preparations to make the invasion take MORE lives?
So no, I’m not going to 2nd Guess with far less information nor condemn a General (ANY General) for taking those actions he thinks best to preserve his forces and destroy the enemy. That is, after all, the PURPOSE of war.
Could it have been done “better”? None of us knows, or can know. We just don’t have the necessary information about the state of battle preparations, plans, and material available nor accurate information on what was going to happen in the alternative cases.
Cement / concrete science:
Further on the concrete
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/why-modern-mortar-crumbles-roman-concrete-lasts-millennia
I previously commented on my garage door remote being in a zip lock bag making it a balloon (CR2032 Li battery) . I did the 30 day test and everyday, regardless of weather, it was a balloon over and over. Things that make you go, Hummmm. I will spare you the C+C music factory video.
As I type, I am being invaded by dozens of Mole Crickets in my garage during heavy rain near SRQ. Never a dull moment in Florida! The dog is not happy with the invaders, even though they are all harmless. ;-)
The question is – will anyone take action on this testimony?
Google has been manipulating elections since at least 2015, in a way which is very subliminal and impossible to track (leaves no paper trail) only statistical evaluation shows it is very powerful and more importantly essentially invisible to the users affected by it.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1151671204861886464.html
Whatever Google does, it did not work here in Oz in May.. And for that I’m grateful…But all power to you folks in the US for pursuing the issue. If left alone they will only keep on doing it and improving their methodology.
@Ossqss – It’s not the battery expanding the baggie. It’s all those microbe farts locked up in the bag. Try putting a pinch of Beano in the baggie ;o)
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Of course the mole crickets upset your Chief of Security. Not a single dang one of those mole crickets had an appointment… and they are so short, they walked right in under the metal detector.
Mass killing …
TOKYO (AP) — A man screaming “You die!” burst into an animation studio in Kyoto, doused it with a flammable liquid and set it on fire Thursday, killing 33 people in an attack that shocked anime fans across Japan and beyond.
https://www.apnews.com/b10907eaf37945889d9ee4339df92aaa
@jim2 – I know anime fans are particularly passionate about the genre, but that incident is shockingly overboard. Wow!
Over the past year or so, we’ve discussed Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and others; our likes, dislikes and prices.
I ran across this today about Netflix subscription woes. We cancelled Netflix because they pissed off the T.V. watcher of the household, Mrs. H.R. Netflix stepped to the left a step too far for her.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-stock-drops-more-than-10-as-earnings-show-huge-drop-in-new-subscribers-2019-07-17
The comments were useful. I loaded all comments and found the string wasn’t all that long; 30-40 and about a 3-5 minute read. Someone noted that Disney was trading at P/E of 16 while Netflix was trading at P/E 129. Several mentions of their step-to-the-left that were pooh-poohed, but that is exactly why they lost Mrs. H.R., not the price increase.
HR – we dropped Netflix for the same reason. Also, they hired the Obamas to “guide” content. That did it for me. One, they are helping Dimowits monetarily by doing that and two, they guarantee more movement to the left. Why the hell should I pay for such a thing? Besides all that, many movies are so formulaic these days as to be worthless.
I am hooked on Nando’s PERi-PERi sauce. Here’s what I’m talking about.
https://www.nandosperiperi.com/eat/sauces
I’m a scavenger for markdowns in the grocery store because I’m
cheapfrugal and I find it’s a great way to try new foods and seasonings that I would otherwise pass by due to price.I’m a hot sauce aficionado and I had heard of the African Bird’s Eye pepper as I had read about it being used in the generic piri-piri hot sauce. I did not know about Nando’s PERi-PERi Chicken restaurants (worldwide, apparently) or their sauce.
My local grocery had the 50 gram bottle of PERi-PERi Medium sauce marked down to 99¢ from $4.19 so I snagged a bottle. It was wonderful! I went back and bought the remaining 4 bottles that hadn’t yet been snagged from the markdown shelf, and I would have bought more if they had them.
While looking online for a link to post here, the Amazon ads popped up first, naturally, and I was shocked to see prices of $15-$17 for the 50 gram bottle! That $4.19 is looking real good to me now, though the product obviously failed to catch on at my grocery so I won’t see the sauce there again.
Anyhow, if you like a
hot sauce with a complex buy lovely flavorlovely sauce with some heat, give it a shot if you run across a bottle for a few bucks. There are also recipes online to make your own piri-piri sauce (same-same) if you run across some African Birds Eye peppers.Meanwhile I’m going to hit the link and find out about their PERi-PERi Chicken restaurants. I don’t think there is one near me but there may one of the restaurants on my migration routes.
@jim2 – Oh yeah… the HWSRN (He Who Shall Remain Nameless) deal was definitely the nail that sealed the Netflix coffin at our house. We might consider watching something on Netflix if their subscription rate goes to $0.00, but I won’t commit to even that.
The Netflix deal was a political payoff to HWSRN (aka the previous occupant of the Whitehouse) just like the book deals for $millions in advance for books no one will buy. Money laundering.
I’d be willing to bet viewership on any of the HWSRN Netflix projects will be abysmal.
PERi-PERi Chicken restaurants only in Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia so far, but the menu looks great, reasonable prices, and lot’s of locations in each of those three States, so I think people like their chicken when they try it.
Looks like the shadow banning process has now been patented by Facebook
https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-shadowbanning-patent/
Patent listing
Oh good… so can we now force everyone else to stop shadow banning based on patent infringement?
Hummmmmm ? I read somewhere that even one of the founders of facebook thinks it is too powerful and says it should be broken up..
I guess this is just yet another reason for that happening.
Now this is interesting….and a trend to expect.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-18/a-former-science-minister-wants-to-fund-the-nhs-by-selling-patient-data
Two things are weirding me out:
1. The Face app. Created by Russians, but I’ve read their servers are in the US. Some people are insanely charmed by it. Others wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. Their fine print says they own the stuff you use their app to do. They may create derivative works from it. That creates the opportunity for too much mischief for my taste. A similar thing (donating one’s voice to be used for creating voices for handicapped individuals who could not speak) that a Facebook friend touted as being an altruistic opportunity struck me (after I read their fine print) as also creating the opportunity for too much mischief. I know there is software in the wild that one can use to take a small sample of a person’s voice and create new speeches that they never said. Same thing with video simulating software.
2. A large organization near and dear to my heart is abandoning running its own WIFI in favor of a “global” product. It appears the global product is from GB.
Both those things sound like ways to get around the laws that prohibit surveillance of American citizens by American entities. Reminds me of Dossier-Gate (have they coined that phrase yet?) where they used non-Americans to do the dirty work.
Hmmm This movie might be fun.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1151938648062824448
Perhaps Trump has found a way to put some pressure on the high tech folks.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-17/trump-expressed-concerns-about-pentagon-cloud-computing-contract
One more thing to throw onto the heaping pile of idiocy known as “climate change,” now they go after toilet paper.
“Most Americans probably do not know that the toilet paper they flush away comes from ancient forests, but clear-cutting those forests is costing the planet a great deal,” Anthony Swift, director of the NRDC’s Canada Project, said in a news release. “Maintaining the Canadian boreal forest is vital to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.”
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Costco-toilet-paper-boreal-forest-sustainability-14079814.php
Jim, Don’t worry mate we’ll sell you some of our planation pine tree ( pinus radiata ) toilet rolls.
Then your ancient tall boreal forests can stand tall forever – or until hey burn in a huge forest fire like in California last year !
;-)
Just put here as a point of (maybe) interest. The BBC says that NOAA says that June 2019 is the hottest ever recorded. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49040058
I wonder if they are taking into account the changes at the temperature-measuring stations, with changes in both method of measuring and the local environment? Or in fact the downward adjustments of the historic measured temperatures? Meantime a friend in Oz just told me that the current drought is the worst ever recorded, and that’s something I somewhat doubt having recently seen floods in some parts. I suspect when there were fewer people there and there was a drought they didn’t spend time recording it but instead dealt with it one way or another, and of course with fewer people and less agriculture needed then the boreholes would not have run out. I’m told it’s a four-year drought, but from another friend elsewhere in Oz a while back he was getting anxious after 5 years of drought and I think it was another year or two when it broke. Worst ever at 4 years? Maybe not…. Just more water being needed and the supply has the same limits it had before.
Paper in the USA is mostly made from poles a few inches in diameter grown in plantations in the South. That’s how Georgua Pacific and Weyerhauser can advertize planting millions of trees a year. They do, then mow them down a few later when growth slows.
Old growth is too valuable as timber products, though the slash and trim / kerf dust can be used for other stuff like cardboard and pressboard.
Tree growth is dramatic and fast the firt 2 or 3 years, so you maximize pulp production by short cycle harvesting.
Well, get the popcorn. Looks like Iran just seized a UK ship.
Interesting item on volcanoes that are “inactive”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/07/magma-found-simmering-under-extinct-volcano-what-that-means/
Hey, hey, hey, Larry. You’ve linked to an article with a new SI unit, the GPG. I’ll give the excerpt so nobody has to go back and hunt for it.
(bold mine)
“A study recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters suggests that the system [Ciomadul volcano] likely harbors between five and 14 cubic miles of magma, a maximum volume more than that of 20,000 Great Pyramids of Giza“
Now, what’s the conversion factor from OSPs (Olympic-sized Swimming Pools) to GPGs (Great Pyramids of Giza)?
Dang! It’s no wonder people in the U.S, didn’t take to SI units ;o)
Meanwhile we have Make Ukraine Great Again as they partner with the US to retain their space technology legacy.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/07/19/the-spirit-of-apollo-inspires-a-new-generation-of-ukrainian-spaceflight-pioneers/
I’m sure someone somewhere on the web has a GPG calculator that converts to OSP’s
HR
You forgot the intermediate unit – SHC’s (Sydney Harbour Capacities)
Bugger E M ! You just spoiled a new Australian export industry growth opportunity…
But let folks here in Oz know
If ever there is a looming loo paper emergency.
:-)
There’s 1033 OSPs per GPGs, just so you know.
But as the Pyramid is not an SI unit, it isn’t exact. The OSP has no required depth, so a nominal depth of 2 m is typically used. That gives 2500 m^3 while the GPG is 2,583,283 m^3 giving an actual ratio of 1033.3132; however, since there is some ambiguity about actual depth of the pool and actual outer bounds of the pyramid cladding (now mostly gone), this is usually rounded to 1033 : 1 as the rest is probably just False Precision.
As Sydney Harbor volume varies with the tides, various quantities have been used from 500,000 to 562,000 megalitres. As there are 1000 L in a m^3 that means there are about 500,000,000 m^3 in the Sydney Harbor unit. (Assuming a slack tide standard). In that case, the SHC is exactly 200,000 OSPs and approximately 193.6 GPGs; so I’m sorry Another Ian, but it is the GPG that is the “intermediate unit”.
Hopefully that helps to clarify things…
Meanwhile the governmental carbon units in Berkeley are busy outlawing the most cost effective method of cooking and heating in their community.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-becomes-first-U-S-city-to-ban-natural-14102242.php
It is hard to be this stupid by accident they must be working at it!
Well apparently El Chapo has checked into the hotel supermax – the hotel you can check into but can never leave.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1152286477784506368
@Another Ian – Oh dearie me. Another one of the newfangled SI units I have to learn; SHCs.
As Vinnie Barbarino would say on Welcome Back Cotter, “I’m so confused.”
RE: SI units. Don’t forget CESB – Cubic Empire State Building.
…and around 1300 Earths in Jupiter.
The SI unit of length is the Dollar Bill, either the long axis or the thickness.
e.g. “If you laid X dollar bills end-to-end, it would reach from New York to ….”
and
“It would be the height of a stack of 6-trillion One Dollar bills.”
test
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