Fire Destroys Flying Fortress: The crew of Liberty Belle, a vintage B-17G Flying Fortress operated by the Liberty Foundation of Tulsa, Okla., declared an in-flight emergency after a fire broke out onboard the bomber aircraft shortly after takeoff from Aurora Municipal Airport, Ill. They skillfully executed a forced landing in a field near Oswego, Ill., during Monday's incident, safely offloading the seven volunteers and crew aboard the aircraft. However, after coming to a stop, the fire, which reportedly began in one of the aircraft's engines, spread and burned through the fuselage, destroying the historic aircraft. Officials are investigating the fire's cause, reported the Chicago Tribune. Built in 1944, Liberty Belle flew 64 combat missions over Europe during World War II while assigned to the 390th Bomb Group. It returned to flight in 2004, following 15 years of restoration. (See also Britain's Daily Mailreport.) (Liberty Foundation website)
From the Daily Mail link:
The crash scene
In Former Happy Days
There are more photos at the Daily Mail. It's a wonder the crew and passengers made it out, given the severity of the fire. That's a good thing. The loss of an irreplaceable historic airframe? That's much more than a shame... it's a Crying Shame.
A re-re-run: Creepy Valentines. A couple of illustrations from a site that’s gone belly-up.Which is too bad, because I've linked this site for the past two years...
I don’t mean to imply you’recreepy, Gentle Reader.But, OTOH, I got quite a few hits yesterday for the search term “creepy valentines.”
I know it wasn’t you.
I’m glad this “special day” is here and will be gone with the sunset this evening.Why?So I won’t be exposed to Creepy Valentines Day advertisements on my teevee every 17 minutes.From these guys.You know, the people who tell ya there’s “…only one gift guaranteed to get women to take their clothes off…” with “all that spa stuff that women just love,” the bottom-line being “she’ll think you spent weeks planning it.”Yeah.Right.To say these ads insult male intelligence is only scratching the surface.And were I a woman receiving a V-Day pajamagram, I’d seriously RE-consider the quality of my relationship.That goes for Vermont Teddy Bears, as well… perhaps double.I’ve read both businesses are owned by the same company.Which may or may not be true, but the ads for both products look very similar, so I tend to believe what I hear.About which…
Yet another business to add to my list of places to visit when I begin my post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber.
OTOH (and I never run out of “other hands,” ya know), here’s something good from PostSecret…
That's just the tip o' the iceberg, given there's 13 different bears and a nearly uncountable number of accessories. I suppose I should steel myself... Valentine's Day is exactly a month away and we'll be bombarded with dumb-ass ads for dumb-ass products from now until then. You long-time Gentle Readers know I take issue with this crap, like this:
I only have to put up with this shit for another five days or so:
and this crap, too...
We're economical with our words and don't waste time reinventing the wheel, so in that spirit here's what we've said the last few years on this subject:
I’m
glad this “special day” is here and will be gone with the sunset this
evening. Why? So I won’t be exposed to Creepy Valentines Day advertisements on my teevee every 17 minutes. From these guys.
You know, the people who tell ya there’s “…only one gift guaranteed
to get women to take their clothes off…” with “all that spa stuff that
women just love,” the bottom-line being “she’ll think you spent weeks
planning it.” Yeah. Right. To say these ads insult male intelligence is
only scratching the surface. And were I a woman receiving a V-Day
pajamagram, I’d seriously RE-consider the quality of my relationship.
That goes for Vermont Teddy Bears, as well… perhaps double. I’ve read
both businesses are owned by the same company. Which may or may not be
true, but the ads for both products look very similar, so I tend to
believe what I hear. About which…
Yet another business to add to my list of places to visit when I begin my post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber.
That was YrHmblScrb, ranting on St. Valentine’s Day last year (ed: 2007).
The supremely irritating ads for VTBs and PajamaGrams began last
Monday evening, as best as I can determine, and tend to run in various
late night slots. FNC’s “Red Eye” seems overrun with the ads, just to
cite one example, which presents me with yet another case where my mute
button gets the ultimate work-out. The PajamaGram ads are quite
tolerable with the sound turned off, though. Nice eye-candy. The VTB
ads? Not so much…
At
least the PajamaGram folks came up with something new this year: the
incredibly erotic "hoodie-footie." There's nothing like covering up all
the fun bits... from head to toe... with pink fleece to pique a man's
interest, eh? A hoodie-footie would be very useful in the sort of
weather we've been having of late, but it is NOT suitable boudoir wear.
Ah,
well. Valentine's Day was sorta fun in the third grade, unless you
happened to be one of those kids who didn't get any Valentines or didn't
get enough tacky cards to make the "popular" cut. Ya hadda feel bad
for those kids, but we digress. I submit we should send V-Day back to
school and KEEP it there. A pox on Hallmark Holidays. AND their
associated ads.
A re-re-run: Creepy Valentines. A couple of illustrations from a site that’s gone belly-up. Which is too bad, because I've linked this site for the past two years...
I don’t mean to imply you’recreepy, Gentle Reader. But, OTOH, I get quite a few hits this time o' year for the search term “creepy valentines.”
I know it's not you.
I’m glad this “special day” is here and will be gone with the sunset this evening. Why? So I won’t be exposed to Creepy Valentine's Day advertisements on my teevee every 17 minutes. From these guys. You know, the people who tell ya there’s “…only one gift guaranteed to get women to take their clothes off…” with “all that spa stuff that women just love,” the bottom-line being “she’ll think you spent weeks planning it.” Yeah. Right. To say these ads insult male intelligence is only scratching the surface. And were I a woman receiving a V-Day pajamagram, I’d seriously RE-consider the quality of my relationship. That goes for Vermont Teddy Bears, as well… perhaps double. I’ve read both businesses are owned by the same company. Which may or may not be true, but the ads for both products look very similar, so I tend to believe what I hear. About which…
Yet another business to add to my list of places to visit when I begin my post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber.
OTOH (and I never run out of “other hands,” ya know), here’s something good from PostSecret…
I only have to put up with this shit for another five days or so:
and this crap, too...
We're economical with our words and don't waste time reinventing the wheel, so in that spirit here's what we've said the last few years on this subject:
I’m glad this “special day” is here and will be gone with the sunset this evening. Why? So I won’t be exposed to Creepy Valentines Day advertisements on my teevee every 17 minutes. From these guys. You know, the people who tell ya there’s “…only one gift guaranteed to get women to take their clothes off…” with “all that spa stuff that women just love,” the bottom-line being “she’ll think you spent weeks planning it.” Yeah. Right. To say these ads insult male intelligence is only scratching the surface. And were I a woman receiving a V-Day pajamagram, I’d seriously RE-consider the quality of my relationship. That goes for Vermont Teddy Bears, as well… perhaps double. I’ve read both businesses are owned by the same company. Which may or may not be true, but the ads for both products look very similar, so I tend to believe what I hear. About which…
Yet another business to add to my list of places to visit when I begin my post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber.
That was YrHmblScrb, ranting on St. Valentine’s Day last year (ed: 2007). The supremely irritating ads for VTBs and PajamaGrams began last Monday evening, as best as I can determine, and tend to run in various late night slots. FNC’s “Red Eye” seems overrun with the ads, just to cite one example, which presents me with yet another case where my mute button gets the ultimate work-out. The PajamaGram ads are quite tolerable with the sound turned off, though. Nice eye-candy. The VTB ads? Not so much…
At least the PajamaGram folks came up with something new this year: the incredibly erotic "hoodie-footie." There's nothing like covering up all the fun bits... from head to toe... with pink fleece to pique a man's interest, eh? A hoodie-footie would be very useful in the sort of weather we've been having of late, but it is NOT suitable boudoir wear.
Ah, well. Valentine's Day was sorta fun in the third grade, unless you happened to be one of those kids who didn't get any Valentines or didn't get enough tacky cards to make the "popular" cut. Ya hadda feel bad for those kids, but we digress. I submit we should send V-Day back to school and KEEP it there. A pox on Hallmark Holidays. AND their associated ads.
―:☺:―
In other news... It wasn't supposed to get this gotdamned cold last night:
But it did. I took that screen-shot around 2200 hrs last evening; we've warmed up to eight degrees (-13 windchill) since then. We sure are burnin' a lot of propane this year.
There was a time when my greatest want, Firepower Division, was an M1911. But all that's gone by the boards... what I REALLY want is this:
There are just SO many practical uses for an M-32 that I can't begin to describe them. But use your imagination, Gentle Reader, and begin, say, on the freeway or mebbe any given Wal-Mart parking lot. Or think as I do: an M-32 would be VERY useful in my prospective post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber, once I get around to pulling the trigger. Heh.
Alas... I'm afraid the M-32 is only available to uniformed members of the armed services... and I don't think I qualify, even though I DO own a nearly new and barely-worn Class A uniform adorned with all the bells and whistles accorded to me by the United States Air Force during my semi-illustrious career. I don't want to dabble in the black market due to the unsavory nature of vendors in that space (there are hardly ever any warranties and service after the sale? Fuhgeddaboudit!), not to mention the fact prices in said market are beyond the wherewithal of a humble retiree (like me!)... even a retiree with aspirations of a potentially lucrative midnite firebombing career. The 1911, OTOH, is widely available. And my birthday is coming up...
So… Valentine’s Day is still about a week and a half away… which means at least eight more days of being subjected to this crap:
I’m glad this “special day” is here and will be gone with the sunset this evening. Why? So I won’t be exposed to Creepy Valentines Day advertisements on my teevee every 17 minutes. From these guys. (ed: video of the tacky commercial at the link)You know, the people who tell ya there’s “…only one gift guaranteed to get women to take their clothes off…” with “all that spa stuff that women just love,” the bottom-line being “she’ll think you spent weeks planning it.” Yeah. Right. To say these ads insult male intelligence is only scratching the surface. And were I a woman receiving a V-Day pajamagram, I’d seriously RE-consider the quality of my relationship. That goes for Vermont Teddy Bears, as well… perhaps double. I’ve read both businesses are owned by the same company. Which may or may not be true, but the ads for both products look very similar, so I tend to believe what I hear. About which…
Yet another business to add to my list of places to visit when I begin my post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber.
That was YrHmblScrb, ranting on St. Valentine’s Day last year.The supremely irritating ads for VTBs and PajamaGrams began last Monday evening, as best as I can determine, and tend to run in various late night slots.FNC’s “Red Eye” seems overrun with the ads, just to cite one example, which presents me with yet another case where my mute button gets the ultimate work-out.The PajamaGram ads are quite tolerable with the sound turned off, though.Nice eye-candy.The VTB ads?Not so much…
The thing that really gets my goat is the ads are the very same ones the companies have been running for the last two or three years.You’d think they would create some NEW ads… every couple of years or so.But nooooo…
―:☺:―
I mentioned Fox News Channel’s “Red Eye” in passing, above.This show has become my Guilty Pleasure, and I just LOVE it.Mainly for stuff like this. (I tried to embed the video, but Blogger won't display it.)
Andy Levy’s Halftime Report and Game Wrap-Up are arguably the best parts of the show, but the rest of it is pretty danged good… if a lil bit inconsistent.Edgy stuff tends to be that way… like Longfellow’s Lil Girl With the Curl… when it’s good it’s very good indeed; and when it’s bad it’s horrid.
Oh, and about the vid above… Red Eye had the absolute BEST commentary on the recent Michael Phelps incident of any media piece… written or broadcast… that I’ve seen so far.
Watch out, Beyonce--Etta James wants to kick your butt. During a concert Jan. 28, James unleashed her fury at the actress who portrayed James in "Cadillac Records," for daring to perform her signature song--"At Last"--as the first dance for Barack and Michelle Obama at an inaugural ball, the L.A. Times reports. "I tell you, that woman he has singing for him, singing my song, she gonna get her ... whipped. I can't stand Beyonce, she had no business up there singing ... my song that I've been singing forever," James said during her Seattle performance. Ouch.
RedEye
You GO, Etta!I’m right behind you, in your corner, with you all the way, and whatever similar words of encouragement I can muster. I can’t stand Beyonce… what a frickin’ tart!… and her theft of your signature song is just beyond the pale.
So... I should have posted this yesterday but the thought didn't occur to me until I read this:
Just like when we highlighted the show’s ratings in September 2009 (which the FNC advertising department enjoyed as well, taking out full-page ads in the New York Post and others), the ratings for last week show Red Eye beating CNN again. This time, the show had better ratings in the A25-54 demographic than Campbell Brown at 8pmET and Larry King at 9pmET, and tied Anderson Cooper at 10pmET (Monday-Thursday).
Which... is all about Red Eye's third anniversary, celebrated this past Friday. Sooo... Red Eye, which comes on at 0300 hrs Eastern, beat CNN's prime-time ratings? Now ain't that something! Here's Gutfeld's Gregalogue that ran last Friday, in celebration of the third anniversary:
And... AIIIEEE! Not that ad! NO! We're assuming the ads on Fox's embed video are static and further assume what you see is the notorious "PajamaGram" ad... a long-standing object of our irritation and contempt. So herewith the third annual installment of our rant about and against Pajamagrams (from last year - 2/06/2009):
So… Valentine’s Day is still about a week and a half away… which means at least eight more days of being subjected to this crap:
I’m glad this “special day” is here and will be gone with the sunset this evening. Why? So I won’t be exposed to Creepy Valentines Day advertisements on my teevee every 17 minutes. From these guys. (ed: video of the tacky commercial at the link) You know, the people who tell ya there’s “…only one gift guaranteed to get women to take their clothes off…” with “all that spa stuff that women just love,” the bottom-line being “she’ll think you spent weeks planning it.” Yeah. Right. To say these ads insult male intelligence is only scratching the surface. And were I a woman receiving a V-Day pajamagram, I’d seriously RE-consider the quality of my relationship. That goes for Vermont Teddy Bears, as well… perhaps double. I’ve read both businesses are owned by the same company. Which may or may not be true, but the ads for both products look very similar, so I tend to believe what I hear. About which…
Yet another business to add to my list of places to visit when I begin my post-retirement career as a midnite fire-bomber.
That was YrHmblScrb, ranting on St. Valentine’s Day last year. The supremely irritating ads for VTBs and PajamaGrams began last Monday evening as best as I can determine and tend to run in various late night slots. FNC’s Red Eye seems overrun with the ads, just to cite one example, which presents me with yet another case where my mute button gets the ultimate work-out. The PajamaGram ads are quite tolerable with the sound turned off, though. Nice eye-candy. The VTB ads? Not so much…
The thing that really gets my goat is the ads are the very same ones the companies have been running for the last two or three years. You’d think they would create some NEW ads… every couple of years or so. But nooooo…
Well, at least the PajamaGram people popped for a new ad this year. But they're STILL lame. And I still hate 'em, too.
In my miscellaneous ramblings around the ‘net this morning I came upon two essays that are (a) a bit longish and (b) required some substantial thought…at least on my part.I suggest reading them in order, beginning with Robert Kaplan’s “On Forgetting the Obvious” before moving to “"The Emergence of a Separate American Warrior Caste," by Dymphna at The Gates of Vienna. The reason for the order of reading is simple: Dymphna draws heavily upon Kaplan’s essay and extrapolates meaning from the points Kaplan makes.The theme should be obvious from the title of the second essay.The title of Kaplan’s essay is less intuitive but has everything to do with the disappearance of, shall we say, the martial spirit in America and the rest of the West’s liberal democracies, Europe in particular.Here’s an excerpt or two from Kaplan:
Alas, in the unpredictable fog and Clausewitzian “friction” of war, to believe in something is more important than to be blessed by mere logic, or to have the ability for talented argument—even more important than the marvelous gear one carries. “Faith is the great strategic factor that unbelieving faculties and bureaucracies ignore”, retired Army Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters wrote in the Weekly Standard in February 2006. This is not a new idea, of course, just an obvious but too often forgotten one. It suggests particularly that we have forgotten Dostoyevsky, who wrote in The Brothers Karamazov that the signal flaw of the upper classes is that they “want to base justice on reason alone”, not on any deeper belief system absent which everything can be rationalized, so that the will of a society to fight and survive withers away.
Peters fears that Islamic revolutionaries believe in themselves more than we believe in ourselves. Terrorists do not fear the Pentagon’s much touted “network-centric warfare”, he writes, because they have mastered it for a fraction of a cent on the dollar, “achieving greater relative effects with the Internet, cell phones, and cheap airline tickets” than have all of our military technologies. Our trillion-dollar arsenal, he notes, cannot produce an instrument of war as effective as the suicide bomber—“the breakthrough weapon of our time.” If not Dostoyevsky, Kipling would have understood this. In the poem “Arithmetic on the Frontier” Kipling writes that as the hillsides of eastern Afghanistan teem with “home-bred” troops brought from England at “vast expense of time and steam”, the odds remain “on the cheaper man”, the native fighter. The suicide bomber is Kipling’s “cheaper man” incarnate.
[…]
Faith is about struggle, about having confidence precisely when the odds are the worst. Faith is the capacity to believe in what is simultaneously necessary but improbable. That kind of faith is receding in America among a social and economic class increasingly motivated by universal values: caring, for example, about the suffering of famine victims abroad as much as for hurricane victims at home. Universal values are a good in and of themselves, and they are not the opposite of faith. But they should never be confused with it. You may care to the point of tears about suffering humankind without having the will to actually fight (let alone inconvenience yourself) for those concerns. Thus, universal values may pose an existential challenge to national security when accompanied by a loss of faith in one’s own political values and projects.
The loss of a warrior mentality and the rise of universal values seem to be features of all stable, Western-style middle-class democracies. Witness our situation. The Army Reserve is desperate for officers, yet there is little urge among American elites to volunteer. Thus our military takes on more of a regional caste. The British Army may have been drawn from the dregs of society, but its officers were the country’s political elite. Not so ours, which has little to do with the business of soldiering and is socially disconnected from what guards us in our sleep. According to Marine Maj. General Michael Lehnert, nine Princeton graduates in the class of 2006 entered the military, compared to 400 in 1956, when there was a draft. Some Ivy League schools had no one enter the military last year. Only one member of the Stanford graduating class had a parent in the military.
Dymphna picks up where Kaplan leaves off…or rather expounds upon some of the ideas Kaplan introduces, amplifying them with personal experience.
I would venture that the warrior class in this country is diverted somewhat into the police force and fire brigades. These are jobs requiring valor and extremes of courage. But their numbers are not enough to sustain us against our aggressors. Where are the officers to come from? Many elite schools don’t even permit ROTC components on their campuses, though they are more than glad to take federal monies. In a real world, schools which banned the military should not be eligible for federal aid. But then again, except for a few outstanding examples, our Imperial Congress is made up of people who definitely do not belong to Mr. Kaplan’s warrior class. Far from it: even those charged with military affairs are rude and demanding when they call officers from the Pentagon to appear before their courts to be admonished, blamed, and sarcastically ridiculed.
I grew up in a warrior town during the period of national service. It was simply expected: at some point in your late teens or early twenties, you gave two years to your country and then you went home. The warrior class then was distributive and many men remembered their service if not with fondness, at least with a wry understanding of how much they’d learned and grown in those years. It is seldom I have run across men of that generation who complained about the burden. For the most part, they were glad to have done it — to have it behind them.
That world is gone. Now our warrior class must be drawn from a shrinking population of those who believe in this country and share a common faith that it is worth defending. Those who do not share that faith also often don’t respect the motives or character of those who remain proud of their service to their country.
I encountered widespread ignorance of, and contempt for, the military shortly after I retired in 1985 and went into the business world.Not in the organization I joined, I should emphasize. When I retired I went to work for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) when Ross Perot (a Boat and Barge School alumnus) still owned the company and pretty much called all the shots.Perot had an affinity for hiring retired and former (one-hitch) military types. As a matter of fact, during my interview process with EDS in Detroit (before I took the job) I met so many former Air Force Communications Command (AFCC) guys I knew from my past life that I thought AFCC had moved its headquarters to Detroit.We later took to calling the building I worked in “AFCC North.”But I digress…
So EDS was jokingly referred to as “a paramilitary organization,” most often by people who had no frickin’ clue as to why Perot liked military guys. Perot liked us because of those values I mentioned earlier… the values, the discipline, the attitude, the belief in something greater than yourself, which are all part of the territory.All of it.Stuff the Warrior Class takes for granted.Perot understood that, because he himself was a member of that Warrior Class, and he wanted people around him that shared, no, lived those values, as he did.And Perot built a damned successful business on the values of the Warrior Class.So, where am I going with this?
Ultimately, I don’t know.I want to believe the gap between the general population and the military isn’t as great as all that.But wanting to believe this, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is foolish.Things really aren’t going to change in this country until college professors, doctors, and CEOs tell their sons to enlist, or to sign up for ROTC and accept that commission upon graduation.Until we get back to the point the Greatest Generation was at in 1941.Until people like my father are no longer the exceptions by encouraging their sons to serve, but the rule.Until we give the Warrior Class more than lip service in the form of those goddamned yellow bumper stickers and magnets.Until we believe in ourselves enough to fight.
I was perusing the archives whilst chasing up yet another googler's visit to EIP this evening. I'm fascinated as to why some people come here, and the things they look at, but that's neither here nor there. But I came upon this post I put up in June of last year, and I think it bears a re-run, in light of the choices we have in front of us, vis-a-vis the presidential election.
In my miscellaneous ramblings around the ‘net this morning I came upon two essays that are (a) a bit longish and (b) required some substantial thought…at least on my part.I suggest reading them in order, beginning with Robert Kaplan’s “On Forgetting the Obvious” before moving to “"The Emergence of a Separate American Warrior Caste," by Dymphna at The Gates of Vienna. The reason for the order of reading is simple: Dymphna draws heavily upon Kaplan’s essay and extrapolates meaning from the points Kaplan makes.The theme should be obvious from the title of the second essay.The title of Kaplan’s essay is less intuitive but has everything to do with the disappearance of, shall we say, the martial spirit in America and the rest of the West’s liberal democracies, Europe in particular.Here’s an excerpt or two from Kaplan:
Alas, in the unpredictable fog and Clausewitzian “friction” of war, to believe in something is more important than to be blessed by mere logic, or to have the ability for talented argument—even more important than the marvelous gear one carries. “Faith is the great strategic factor that unbelieving faculties and bureaucracies ignore”, retired Army Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters wrote in the Weekly Standard in February 2006. This is not a new idea, of course, just an obvious but too often forgotten one. It suggests particularly that we have forgotten Dostoyevsky, who wrote in The Brothers Karamazov that the signal flaw of the upper classes is that they “want to base justice on reason alone”, not on any deeper belief system absent which everything can be rationalized, so that the will of a society to fight and survive withers away.
Peters fears that Islamic revolutionaries believe in themselves more than we believe in ourselves. Terrorists do not fear the Pentagon’s much touted “network-centric warfare”, he writes, because they have mastered it for a fraction of a cent on the dollar, “achieving greater relative effects with the Internet, cell phones, and cheap airline tickets” than have all of our military technologies. Our trillion-dollar arsenal, he notes, cannot produce an instrument of war as effective as the suicide bomber—“the breakthrough weapon of our time.” If not Dostoyevsky, Kipling would have understood this. In the poem “Arithmetic on the Frontier” Kipling writes that as the hillsides of eastern Afghanistan teem with “home-bred” troops brought from England at “vast expense of time and steam”, the odds remain “on the cheaper man”, the native fighter. The suicide bomber is Kipling’s “cheaper man” incarnate.
[…]
Faith is about struggle, about having confidence precisely when the odds are the worst. Faith is the capacity to believe in what is simultaneously necessary but improbable. That kind of faith is receding in America among a social and economic class increasingly motivated by universal values: caring, for example, about the suffering of famine victims abroad as much as for hurricane victims at home. Universal values are a good in and of themselves, and they are not the opposite of faith. But they should never be confused with it. You may care to the point of tears about suffering humankind without having the will to actually fight (let alone inconvenience yourself) for those concerns. Thus, universal values may pose an existential challenge to national security when accompanied by a loss of faith in one’s own political values and projects.
The loss of a warrior mentality and the rise of universal values seem to be features of all stable, Western-style middle-class democracies. Witness our situation. The Army Reserve is desperate for officers, yet there is little urge among American elites to volunteer. Thus our military takes on more of a regional caste. The British Army may have been drawn from the dregs of society, but its officers were the country’s political elite. Not so ours, which has little to do with the business of soldiering and is socially disconnected from what guards us in our sleep. According to Marine Maj. General Michael Lehnert, nine Princeton graduates in the class of 2006 entered the military, compared to 400 in 1956, when there was a draft. Some Ivy League schools had no one enter the military last year. Only one member of the Stanford graduating class had a parent in the military.
Dymphna picks up where Kaplan leaves off…or rather expounds upon some of the ideas Kaplan introduces, amplifying them with personal experience.
I would venture that the warrior class in this country is diverted somewhat into the police force and fire brigades. These are jobs requiring valor and extremes of courage. But their numbers are not enough to sustain us against our aggressors. Where are the officers to come from? Many elite schools don’t even permit ROTC components on their campuses, though they are more than glad to take federal monies. In a real world, schools which banned the military should not be eligible for federal aid. But then again, except for a few outstanding examples, our Imperial Congress is made up of people who definitely do not belong to Mr. Kaplan’s warrior class. Far from it: even those charged with military affairs are rude and demanding when they call officers from the Pentagon to appear before their courts to be admonished, blamed, and sarcastically ridiculed.
I grew up in a warrior town during the period of national service. It was simply expected: at some point in your late teens or early twenties, you gave two years to your country and then you went home. The warrior class then was distributive and many men remembered their service if not with fondness, at least with a wry understanding of how much they’d learned and grown in those years. It is seldom I have run across men of that generation who complained about the burden. For the most part, they were glad to have done it — to have it behind them.
That world is gone. Now our warrior class must be drawn from a shrinking population of those who believe in this country and share a common faith that it is worth defending. Those who do not share that faith also often don’t respect the motives or character of those who remain proud of their service to their country.
I encountered widespread ignorance of, and contempt for, the military shortly after I retired in 1985 and went into the business world.Not in the organization I joined, I should emphasize. When I retired I went to work for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) when Ross Perot (a Boat and Barge School alumnus) still owned the company and pretty much called all the shots.Perot had an affinity for hiring retired and former (one-hitch) military types. As a matter of fact, during my interview process with EDS in Detroit (before I took the job) I met so many former Air Force Communications Command (AFCC) guys I knew from my past life that I thought AFCC had moved its headquarters to Detroit.We later took to calling the building I worked in “AFCC North.”But I digress…
So EDS was jokingly referred to as “a paramilitary organization,” most often by people who had no frickin’ clue as to why Perot liked military guys. Perot liked us because of those values I mentioned earlier… the values, the discipline, the attitude, the belief in something greater than yourself, which are all part of the territory.All of it.Stuff the Warrior Class takes for granted.Perot understood that, because he himself was a member of that Warrior Class, and he wanted people around him that shared, no, lived those values, as he did.And Perot built a damned successful business on the values of the Warrior Class.So, where am I going with this?
Ultimately, I don’t know.I want to believe the gap between the general population and the military isn’t as great as all that.But wanting to believe this, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is foolish.Things really aren’t going to change in this country until college professors, doctors, and CEOs tell their sons to enlist, or to sign up for ROTC and accept that commission upon graduation.Until we get back to the point the Greatest Generation was at in 1941.Until people like my father are no longer the exceptions by encouraging their sons to serve, but the rule.Until we give the Warrior Class more than lip service in the form of those goddamned yellow bumper stickers and magnets.Until we believe in ourselves enough to fight.
John McCain, and his father, and HIS father before him, were members of the warrior class. Barack Obama tells us he thought about joining the military, once upon a time. But...umm... he didn't. Now you may think The One's thoughts are a substitute and might even be morally equivalent to McCain's deeds. I don't. But... I encourage you to read the two essays I linked in last year's post. You may gain some insight into why I believe... ardently... that McCain's background and heritage matters. So does Obama's... but in an entirely different way.
Update: I added emphases to those bits in my original post that I feel are germane to the political arguments being made by the opposing camps in this campaign. And I neglected to mention that while Senator McCain, his father and grandfather are members of the warrior class, McCain's sons also serve. And that point should NOT be overlooked, in light of the issue I made about our political elites' attitude towards military service. McCain... and his youngest sons... walk the walk, even though Senator McCain... ever in character with the military ethos... chooses to downplay that fact. As opposed to his opponent who has written not one, but two, self-aggrandizing memoirs at the tender age of 47. Substance versus form, ya know. It matters.
Well.I went to sleep right after eating dinner this evening... around 1900 hrs, with all-too-predictable results.Like:here it is, 0230 hrs. and I’m wide-a-frickin’-wake.Might as well put the time to good bad use.
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Roadmap to Third World Status…
… beginning on January 20, 2009 at a Superpower near you.If, of course, that guy in the video means what he says.I know he’s a politician, and politicians will emphatically assert the sun rises in the West if it suits their objectives.But I’m just naïve enough to take people at their word from time to time…and I believe the good senator from Illinois will actually try and accomplish everything he said in that video.I dunno about you, Gentle Reader, but that scares the Holy Hell out of me.
h/t:Bookworm, who is just as strident about the dangers of The Messiah as I am… perhaps more so.We’re kindred spirits in our shared low opinion of The Obamanon, at any rate.Check out her post about Senator Obama’s anti-American upbringing.And no, I’m NOT being hyperbolic.Not in the least.Do you remember what Mom used to say?That thing about the acorn not falling far from the tree?Think about it…
The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream."
Until recently, each major command of the Air Force had some control over what sites their troops could visit, the Air Force Times reports. Then the Air Force Network Operations Center, under the service's new "Cyber Command," took over.
{…}
"A couple of years back, I fought this issue concerning the Counterterrorism Blog," one Air Force officer tells Danger Room. "An AF [Air Force] professional education course website recommended it as a great source for daily worldwide CT [counterterrorism] news. However it had been banned, because it called itself a blog. And as we all know, all blogs are bad!"
He's joking, of course. … Now there's the Air Force's argument, that blogs aren't legitimate media outlets -- and therefore, shouldn't be read at work.
{…}
But this view isn't universally held in the military. Many believe blogs to be a valuable source of information -- and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, at home and abroad. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the U.S. effort in Iraq, has commended military bloggers. Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who replaced Petraeus as the head of the Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, recently wrote (in a blog post, no less) that soldiers should be encouraged to "get onto blogs and [s]end their YouTube videos to their friends and family."
Within the Air Force, there's also a strong contingent that wants to see open access to the sites -- and is mortified by the AFNOC's restrictions."When I hear stuff this utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.... Piles of torn out hair are accumulating around my desk as we speak," one senior Air Force official writes in an e-mail. "I'm certain that by blocking blogs for official use, our airmen will never, ever be able to read them on their own home computers, so we have indeed saved them from a contaminating influence. Sorry, didn't mean to drip sarcasm on your rug."
Well… if those airmen happen to live in the barracks they won’t be able to read blogs from “home” now, will they?This policy is incredibly short-sighted and I think…personally…that it will be reversed in the very near future.OTOH, the Air Force seems to be doing an incredible amount of “less than inspired” things of late.And for me, personally, this means neither of my adult sons will be able to read EIP during an idle moment at work.SN2, even though he’s Navy, is stationed at USSTRATCOM… located on Offut AFB.
Generals LeMay, Twining, Doolittle and Vandenberg are rolling in their graves.The service they built would be unrecognizable to them today.
(Pssst:“less than inspired” is code for frickin’ dumb.Stupid.Twisted.Boop-shooby.)
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I’ve been meaning to rant about this subject for at least two weeks now, or since the first time I saw the incredulous claims made for this product on my teevee.I finally went to their web site to gather fodder for this post and was amazed and mystified, as I’m sure you will be, too.Sample:
Why use Kinoki Detox Foot Pads?
Formulated in Japan using all-natural tree extracts and powerful negative ions Kinoki Foot Pads help capture toxins your body eliminates. Kinoki Foot Pads cleanse and detoxify, safely and effectively.
How Kinoki Detox Foot Pads® Work
Your body naturally eliminates metabolic waste and toxins through your skin. Using the natural cleansing power of double distilled bamboo vinegar, Kinoki captures toxins eliminated by your body, cleansing and detoxifying your skin’s outer layers. You’ll see results right away!
Kinoki is a natural way to assist your body in the removal of:
• Heavy metals • Metabolic wastes • Chemicals • Toxins AND MUCH MORE!!!
Now let me get this straight…and I might need your help, Gentle Reader.If your body “naturally eliminates metabolic wastes and toxins” why would you want to capture them?Isn’t that what the sewer system or your septic tank is for?And really… my kidneys, bladder, large intestine, other organs and the associated plumbing for removing “metabolic wastes” function just fine.No assistance required, actually.
But back to capturing those toxins.I suppose the accumulated toxins might be useful for poisoning small animals or maybe your mother-in-law, if you have a problem of sorts with her.Maybe you could brew a toxic tea with old used Kinoki pads.But if you save the old pads for the purpose of poisoning pests (of any sort), do you have to notify the EPA?Do you need a license to accumulate and store heavy metals and toxins?And if you just throw ‘em in the trash, are you adding heavy metals and metabolic wastes to our landfills, thereby “becoming part of the problem,” which none of us want to do?Come to think on it, are the used pads safe to handle without a hazmat suit?The list of undesirable things the used pads contain is quite scary when you think about it.I mean…chemicals!Dang!
Another question comes to mind… is double distilled bamboo vinegar (?) twice as powerful as bamboo vinegar that’s distilled just once?Why don’t I see bamboo vinegar on the shelves with the rest of the quack herbal remedies at my local health emporium?
What about these “powerful negative ions?”How do I know these ions are really negative?Isn’t negativity generally bad?Are they Democrat ions?Why not good ol’ positive Republican ions?If I lay out good money for ions, I want ‘em to be in general agreement with my basic philosophy, yanno?Coz I’m generally a positive kinda guy.(This rant aside, of course.)
Judging from the ads I’ve seen on my teevee, you should just wash your feet before retiring at night and save yourself $19.95.That will also keep your sheets a lot cleaner, too.
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And finally…
NOTHING…not even Kinoki… makes me dive for the remote faster than this frickin’ ad, and all the others like ‘em.Yet another business I plan to visit when I become a midnight fire-bomber.
They’ve got it coming.
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Was it good for you, Gentle Reader?It sure was for me.Let’s have a smoke and then take a short nap…Oh, wait.I said I couldn’t sleep now, didn’t I?Clean the bathroom?Re-alphabetize the CDs?What?
More on the B-2 Crash: While the lessons learned from the crash of a B-2 bomber in February aren't applicable to the Air Force's other stealth platforms, the F-22 and F-35 fighters, there are "other systems being deployed" that will benefit from the insights, Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, vice commander of 8th Air Force, who led the B-2 accident investigation board, told reporters June 5. However, Carpenter declined to elaborate on what the other platforms might be, although a best guess would be next-generation long-range strike prototypes. Whatever the case, the AIB found that distorted data introduced into the B-2's flight control computers during takeoff from Anderson AFB, Guam on Feb. 23 caused "an uncommanded, 30 degrees nose-high pitch-up" resulting in a stall and subsequent crash. Both pilots ejected. Moisture in port transducer units--which are essentially air data sensors also called pitots--during air data calibration led to faulty readings for which the flight control computers then tried to correct, leading to the pitch and stall. Carpenter said the aircraft lost, named Spirit of Kansas, was one of the best-performing and least problem-prone of the B-2 fleet, now down to just 20 aircraft. It had accumulated about 5,200 hours of flying time. Carpenter said the AIB doesn't assign culpability and any disciplinary measures will be up to unit commanders to determine. (Click here for Air Combat Command's Web page on the accident investigation, which includes the AIB documentation and videos of the actual mishap.)
I took the liberty of uploading the AIB’s animations of the crash to YouTube. And here they are:
There are also security camera videos and an amateur video of the crash at the “Click here” link above, but they’re not all that good. I suppose it takes skill to remain calm when viewing a catastrophe, and the person that shot the amateur vid didn’t have the “right stuff.” The security camera videos are a lot better. A fully-fueled B-2 creates a helluva fire when it goes down…
In case you hadn’t heard, both pilots ejected safely and had only minor injuries.
·Actual quote: "Play it Sam, for old times' sake, play 'As Time Goes By'." - Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca)
·Actual quote: "You played it for her, you can play it for me. ... If she can stand it, I can! Play it!" - Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca)
·Note: Woody Allen paid homage to Casablanca under the title Play It Again, Sam, which is likely the source of much such misquotation.
·The line first occurred in the Marx Brothers' film A Night in Casablanca (1946), another possible source of the misquotation.
There’s lotsa stuff there that I’ve misused for years and years now. Which, I suppose, all goes to prove “common knowledge” isn’t common. And it’s wrong sometimes, too.
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Some hockey notes… First, from Tony Gallagher of Canwest News Service… a critical view of the officiating in the Stanley Cup Final. Excerpt:
VANCOUVER -- Now that the Stanley Cup has been awarded to the Detroit Red Wings and any emotion from any one particular game has faded, we would be remiss if we didn't seriously ask some questions about what actually took place in that final series with respect to the officiating.
Having been around the NHL pretty much since the dawn of man, I have watched a lot of games and have seen a lot of good and bad calls by good and bad referees, and I rarely address this topic.
By and large the NHL officials are outstanding individuals whom any corporation would be thrilled to have represent them in almost any situation.
[…]
And when the most important games were played, the most experienced, senior officials were front and centre.
And even though the referees of the day would frequently call virtually nothing once the third period began and the game moved into overtime, there was never any sense of anything fishy.
The breaks involved in officials' judgments always seen to balance out over a series of games. There was no such feeling at this year's final.
While nobody really wanted to say so, how could you have possibly watched the calls in that series and not had the feeling that somehow, consciously or more likely unconsciously, there was a slant toward favouring the Pittsburgh Penguins?
Read the rest here. SN1 and I definitely thought the officials were biased, and not only in the Finals. The NHL needs to seriously re-evaluate the “goalie interference” rule. Bad calls by the officials waved off at least two Detroit goals due to goalie interference, one of which occurred during Game Five of the final…and Fleury was clearly NOT interfered with. There might not have been three overtimes had that goal been allowed, as it should have been.
That said… there’s another POV here. Sorta. The implications of the photographic evidence provided at the link aren’t suitable for a PG-13 blog, but it IS work-safe. And funny.
On a day that began on one knee and ended with arms -- and a Cup -- raised, Detroit boasted over and over: Regardless what anyone else says, this is Hockeytown.
That was rarely more evident than Friday, when an entire region turned out to honor the Stanley Cup champion Red Wings with a parade and rally on a stunning 92-degree day.
The team estimated 1.4 million fans came downtown for the event, while the Detroit Police Department simply sized up the crowd at more than a million. Fans started gathering on Woodward Avenue early in the morning, with lines extending north of the I-75 bridge. The parade ended with thousands spilling into HartPlaza for a 1:15 p.m. rally that lasted a half-hour.
The human mass stood seven or eight deep in most spots, with not a chunk of sidewalk to be seen along the route. Fans young and old flooded the avenue's sidewalks with red and white.
They came from across Michigan, Ontario and the surrounding states, skipping work, missing school and just spending a day thanking their heroes for the enjoyment of the past season, and the two-month playoff run, in particular.
Over a million people turned out on a sweltering day to celebrate their team! Hockey may be a minor sport in the great grand scheme of things, but I don’t recall reading about a million people turning out for the winners of any frickin’ Sooper-Dooper Bowl… I could be wrong, of course.
Last… Wings goalie Dominik Hasek, two-time winner of the Hart Trophy (League MVP), winner of the Conn Smythe (SCF MVP), and God-Only-Knows how many Vezina trophies (six, actually…Best Goalie) announced his retirement today. Hasek shared goal-tending responsibilities equally with Chris Osgood during the regular season and played four games against Nashville before Osgood replaced him for the remainder of the playoffs. Hasek’s name appears on the Stanley Cup twice…once for 2002 and again this year, both times as a Red Wing.
