I’m not sure if it’s enemy action, or just native stupidity, but the push for a break continues, hard. We’re going to look at some of the events today, ones that will, in all probability wind up in some future history textbook, in the chapter “events leading up to the third American Civil War.” (the first one was the revolution)

Steak, and salad for dinner tonight, our partners in Redstone Farms have finally managed to flee Occupied Washington and are finally home. You know where the liquids are, grab something, you’re going to need it. Please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess, and thank you to those that have thrown a few bucks in the jar.

If you’ve managed to live in a complete news blackout, let me give a very quick recap of events in Virginia:

Infuriated that Texas decided to do a redrawing of their districts in a way that would aid Republican efforts to gain seats, and desperate to make sure that the Dems won the midterms, Virginia decided to do a redistricting of their own. Trouble is, their districting is governed by their constitution. Well, they said, lets amend the constitution; after all it’s a document, it can be changed.

Well, the problem there is: the constitution also has requirements on how to amend it. Following those requirements would take longer than the time from now until the national midterms. They went ahead anyway.

They, and I speak of Abigail Spanberger, Mamie Locke, Louise Lucas, (who’s got other troubles, see below) Don Scott, and Scott Surovell among others, were sued over the effort to redraw the districts in such a way as to ensure a nine to one split. This is in a state that is 55/45. Their plan changes the map from 6 democrat districts and 5 republican districts, to ten democrats and one republican.

This new map involved some very creative drawings to produce the planned split. When they were sued, they argued that “no one has standing, because the law hasn’t happened.”

The courts effectively said, “Well, you’re right, but know that what you’re doing is not going to stand scrutiny, if it passes.”

In Virginia, any amendment must go before a public vote, along with several other requirements, not the least of which was a requirement that the amendment be language neutral. The full list includes:

A legislative proposal (they had that)

Consecutive Session Approval with it passing before and after a general election (they did NOT have that)

Submission to the voters not sooner than ninety days after the second passing of the bill (they did NOT have that) and

It must be language neutral in the ballot (this thing was a model of communist propaganda, disguised as a ballot measure.)

They passed the measure, putting it on the ballot, and were again sued because they didn’t do it in accordance with the law. Again, they argued that “No one has any standing, until after the vote, because no one is an injured party yet.”

Again, the courts said, “Well, you’re right, but know that what you are doing won’t stand up in court.”

So it went before the voters during the primary. Living as close as I do to the Virginia border, our radio was filled with propaganda about how passing this was the only way to ensure a fair election, and here’s all these vets and patriots that say you gotta pass this, or Orange Man is going to be dictator for life, and so on…

It passed, barely. It was immediately struck down by the courts, and upon appeal to the VA Supreme was found illegal on the face of it three different ways. Remember, the courts told them when they started this, that the way they were going about it was illegal. They went to it anyway thinking that they can get the courts to accept a fait accompli.

OK, that’s the review. Now that they have lost in court, they’re losing their shit.

First they want to appeal to SCOTUS. (who will refuse to hear it, because they don’t have jurisdiction. I predict either a blank refusal on the day it arrives, or a nine to zero signed refusal due to lack of jurisdiction.)

Since they already know, in their calmer moments, that SCOTUS isn’t going to save them, they’ve cooked up another idea. “Hey, they said, why don’t we make a new bill, lowering the mandatory retirement age on Supreme Court Judges from 75 to 54? Every sitting judge would have to retire, we pack the court with ‘good’ judges that will rubber stamp anything that can hurt Trump, and re try the case?” Even the NYT is reporting this shit.

Now of course the problems with this little plot are many. First, the second this proposal becomes law, the VA Supremes will rule it unconstitutional.

Second this is such a transparent power grab it’s ridiculous. This is the sort of thing that winds up with events like The Battle of Athens Tennessee. Virginia is democrat barely, and that mostly because of Alexandria and Arlington Virginia. (IE the outskirts of the District of Columbia.) Most of the state by land mass, is solidly red.

Third, it invites and in fact begs for the backlash that is already a federal bill, the “Make D.C. Square Again act.”

History lesson time:

At the creation of the Capital, the District of Columbia was square. Virginia and Maryland each coughed up some land, in the middle of a swamp, and made the Capital district. This land included the areas now known as Alexandria, and Arlington. This was all done under the “Residence Act” of 1790.

After the Organic Act of 1801 those folks living in that area lost Virginia state citizenship and voting rights for senators and congressmen.

Well, that was a problem for the people living there, because most of the rich ones were heavily involved in the slave trade, and the loss of those votes weakened the pro slave vote.

As a result, in 1847 those areas were given back to Virginia at the demand of the Pro Slavery party, called… wait for it… The Democratic National Pary. If it feels like that was one of the contributing factors to the Civil War, congratulations, you get a gold star, you’re paying attention.

Yes the people involved included the son of “Light Horse” Henry Lee, cousin of Richard Henry Lee, both famous patriots during the revolution. The man, and the plantation, is of course, Robert E Lee’s plantation, now the site of Arlington National Cemetery.

Well, the case is being made that that takeback by Virginia was illegal and that D.C. should be restored to its original boundaries, and that’s what the “Make it square” act does.

What are the effects? One, Virginia suddenly becomes redder than blood. I mean Tennessee Red. Two, the folks in those two cities suddenly lose the right to vote for senators and congressmen, which changes the eastern seaboard political dynamic massively, as well as disenfranchising about 400,000 people.

The gloves are coming off, and the knives are coming out people. Yes, the Dems started it. Yes, the Dems are willing to do anything to win. AND that Square act, while it has some historical underpinnings, pours nitroglycerine on the fire.

One of the key players in all this stuff, Louse Lucas just got raided by the FBI for her illegal Marijuana store, so that’s still more fun in that area (and yes she and her pot shops are in the area that would be prospectively given back to D.C.)

Then we’ve got California. Look I have long ago written Cali off. They’re the fourth stage drug addict that was once a beautiful person. You can’t save them. They may be able to save themselves, once they hit rock bottom, and wallow in it, if they don’t die; but it’s not the way to bet.

There are some few signs that things are changing there though. Let’s start with a real eye opener, Eileen Wang, (D) Mayor of Arcadia CA (part of the LA Metroplex) just pled guilty to acting as a foreign agent on behalf of West Taiwan. (The PRC) Needless to say, she’s no longer mayor, or city councilman. Not a very long time ago this prosecution would never have happened.

Tom Knighton did a really nice California piece at the-difference-between-helping-and-grifting that’s worth looking at, and the result of all this crookedness becoming more and more obvious is what’s going on in their primary’s. For the first time in a very long time, there’s a Republican with a very strong shot at Mayor of LA, and two Republicans with a good shot at Governor. In fact because of the “jungle primary” that California set up, thinking that it would ensure Democrat rule forever, it’s quite possible that the Governor’s election will be between to Republicans. Now, without a change in the houses as well, it’s not going to mean much, but it’s cracks in the wall.

Chris Bray, over at “Tell me how this Ends” did a piece, exhaustion-theory on the whole California mess, righteously ridiculing some vapid bitch named Robin Abcarian who has been a reporter in LA for forty years and apparently has all of the writing and reporting chops of a “My First Reader” book. The thing is, he’s black pilling over that and “well there’s no candidate signs in the parts of LA that I drive through looking for them!” From this he draws the conclusion that everyone is burned out on everything, and we’re all going to hell.

I think it might just be that the places that he toured are places it’s social suicide to ADMIT you’re voting for the republican… So they just ain’t advertising. The mayor of LA and the Governor of CA have so damaged their brands, between the Palisades fires and their aftermath, the High Speed Rail disaster, the Homelessness and crime and drug addiction problems, the way they’ve bepunked themselves on McArthur Park, and all the rest that even died in the wool leftists may just be seeing the light.

Rush did a song called “Tom Sawyer”. If you don’t know it, go find it. There’s a pertinent line. “He knows changes aren’t permanent.” This is what too many politicians forget. Even in a place as long held by a single party as California, eventually, the worm turns. Give that worm time to turn, it beats the hell out of going kinetic.

There’s a vast number of folks on the right that are black pilling, especially on California. Yes, the left is getting more and more blatant. It’s desperation. That doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous, a wounded and dying animal is always at its most dangerous. That said, the writing is on the wall. We’ve passed through the worst they can do, people are aware now of the games they’re playing.

Here’s a little piece of fun, Remember how “team Biden” was so adamant against allowing President Trump to use executive privilege about anything? Well the shoe is on the other foot and apparently it pinches. There’s about 70 hours of partially redacted audio recordings from his conversations with the ghost writer that wrote his memoirs. They were gathered by Special Counsel Robert Hur, during his investigation on Joey’s handling of classified documents… It seems the Heritage Foundation is “Freedom of Information” lawsuiting these.

Biden’s handlers are losing their minds, saying the tapes were provided to the investigator on the condition that they not be released to the public, and that this demand is “political, rather than a genuine transparency effort.” Sure, because catching a former president doing illegal shit, or proving that he had all the cognitive function of a toadstool is only Genuine Transparency if it comes from the Genuine region of New York City, otherwise it’s just sparkling political activism.

Oh, and speaking of Genuine New York, we have a really great piece by the Bad Cat called suicidal-empathy.

Some silly Bint is now feeling bad, because after some Psyco tried to end her and her girlfriend on the Subway. (Testimony includes: “but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops, we would have had to literally run for our lives. They immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops and we respected that.”)

It seems that after this mutt messed with the two women in question, they refused to press charges because “Maybe a part of me was like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail.”

Well, good for you chickee, because of your racist antiracist bullshit, five days later the dude pushed an old man in front of a train, killing him. Bravo, well done. Now mind you, this guy had racked up six major assault charges THAT WE KNOW OF between February and May, each time being released on no cash bail.

So she shares the responsibility, but here’s the thing: responsibility shared is not divided. If you could have stopped a death, and someone else could also have stopped a death, the fact that they failed too doesn’t make you any less culpable. The rolling shitshow that created this goes on and on. Read the whole thing, just to get a picture of how dysfunctional NYC is.

The Brawl Street Journal did a wonderful piece on all the other things that we do with oil, and why even if we didn’t use gasoline at all, oil would still be vital to our economy, our medical treatments, and so on, and did it without even mentioning plastics… brawlstreetjournal/p/pain-starts-upstream Read this, and then file it away for the next time some vapid twentysomething tells you why we need to quit pulling oil out of the ground, and just make due without cars. It’s good stuff and it’s vital to understand on the “this is how the world works” front.

Before I take my leave, there’s some stuff on the Navy front worth mentioning:

The CNO and SecNav have published the USN’s Shipbuilding plan, and CDR Sal covers it at /we-have-a-shipbuilding-plan Despite Sal’s sudden love of and over use of worn out adages, this is worth looking at. In spite of my long history of hating carriers, and considering them the enemy, second only to the actual enemy’s submarines, I agree with him. The only real problem with the new shipbuilding plan is that we’re not building Carriers fast enough. WE NEED MORE CARRIERS, BADLY. Look we’re going to lose at least one in a war with China, or we’re going to keep them too far away from the battle zone to be effective. That’s just reality. With only 11 carriers in the fleet, we can’t afford to lose even one. That will drive strategy in bad ways.

He also did a piece on the Shahed Drone,

CDR Salamander

Bollocks to the Iranian Engineers: Shahed Drone is German-American

More than once, mostly on the Midrats Podcast, I have said something to the effect, “Bravo Zulu to the Iranian engineering team who developed the Shahed. Everyone is copying them left, right, and sideways. Even the Americans are trying to steal their engineering valor…

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3 days ago · 99 likes · 73 comments · CDR Salamander

he eats some crow, it seems that Iran doesn’t get the credit for inventing that most useful of low tech drone weapon’s technology, they stole it.

From US (and Germany)

Yeah, that’s right we invented the damn thing in the 80s, then filed it away as “Meh, not as useful as we might have hoped.” The Soviet Union collapsed, “we ain’t a gonna study war no more” and the project was filed.

We gave it to Israel, who also went “Meh.”

It’s a fast read, and it tells how we went wrong, and then had to play catch up; go see it.

Well that’s a wrap for today, I’ve got to cook this evening,

QOTD “ What kind of world do we want to live in? A world united by democracies that uphold a certain standard of human rights is incompatible with a weak Navy. That’s because a stable, humane world requires economic prosperity. That, in turn, requires relatively unimpeded intercontinental trade and commerce. And that requires secure waterways.”

Robert D Kaplan, Author, Foreign Correspondent, former instructor at the Naval Accademy.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

A friend of mine just published an article

Cameron M. Bailey

Japanese Zippo

Have you ever heard about Japanese Zippos…

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6 days ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Cameron M. Bailey

That I felt the need to riff on. And being basically lazy, thus wanting to get the maximum use out of anything I do, I felt the comment was worth posting and adding to, here.
Cameron was talking about the good thing (In his oppinion) that was US made items being shipped overseas, embelished, and shipped back, and how that trade made everyone richer. (Cameron, if I took the wrong meaning from this, please feel free to correct me.)

Here’s my response.

Yes. And, that sort of trade is much like government programs. See it helps to think of money as what it used to be, GOLD.

Now, funny thing about gold, it’s a very soft metal. One of the softest in the world. It’s much like the chaulk of our (Masonic) lectures. The least touch of which transfers some to the toucher’s hand.

So, let’s look at the value of an item v the value of gold. The gold comes out of the ground, and in the process of handling it, some rubbs off on the miner’s hands. (his wages) It’s then shipped to the smelter, and on the way, some rubbs off onto the wagon. (the shippers wage.) smelting loses you some, then it’s shipped in blank form to the mint that stamps it. Now it’s “money.” It’s already less than what came out of the ground.

In our modern monitary system, that can be seen as inflation, and fees, taxes and all the rest. If you did your work, providing that your work is something that a customer needs, like oh say Electrician, or Mechanic, and you did it “under the table” you would recieve much more for it, than doing it through a shop, with social security, taxes, U/I insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and all the other stuff taken out of it, along with some of the money from the work going to pay the “back office.” Billing clerks, payroll guys, advertising, management, etc...

Is having someone do the stuff of advertising, paperwork of all sorts, taking liability if something goes wrong, and all the other various “services” that you get from working from within a shop, verses working solo, worth the cut in wages? That’s an individual’s call.

That shop also insures that you are making money (wages) even when no one wants their house wired for a week. Again, worth it? That’s for the individual to decide. This is the beauty of the capitalist system. You get to decide the amount of risk you are comfortable with, and govern yourself accordingly. If you’re more of a risk taker, you can open your own shop.

Amount of risk? HIGH. Compensation? Also HIGH.

If you are more comfortable with more of a sure thing, you go to work for someone else. Risk? Relitively low. You can be fired.

The bussiness owner can be ruined, everything he owns taken by the state or the banks due to suits, or not doing the right thing on a piece of paperwork. Compensation? Also lower.

Now the customer. He (we’ll call him farmer Bill) needs his farm truck fixed (for example). It’s not running right, and he has hogs to get to market. He can go to Bubba, under the table, and probably get the work done cheaper, even much cheaper than taking it to Wallace Ford, Chevy, and What-have-you.

But of course, Bubba doesn’t come with a warranty. Bubba might not be able to actually fix it, and might call him up and say, “Yeah, Bill, I can’t fix her and I broke some stuff takin her apart. come get her.” Now Farmer Bill can take Bubba to court, but that’s expensive, and he might not win.

Let’s say Bubba does fix it, does a bangup job, she’s running like brand new. Bubba likes ham, and sausage, likes it a lot. He’ll take one of those pigs in trade! Well let’s say that pig was going for $500 on the hoof to a slaughterhouse. Bubba’s work on that truck would have been $800 parts an labor. Wallace wanted $1500 for the same work. THIS is where all that gold rubbing off onto other people’s hands really shows up.

That pig was the gold you mined yourself, out of the ground. No one has touched it, and taken a little off the top. Bubba’s labor was also mining gold. (we’ll put aside the gold involved in the parts, as way too complex for this explination.)

So, pure barter economy, everything is cheaper, but what if your skills aren’t directly translatable for barter?

I used to wire nuclear submarines, and ran a fiber optics training program. While there might be a consumer demand for being trained to install and fix fiber optics stuff, there are very few people with nuclear submarines that need fixing. Yet, everyone in the United States benifits from my repair work on those submarines in things like keeping the sea lanes clear, keeping an enemy from coming in and taking everything you have or just nuking you, and keeping piracy to a minimum. This is where things get complex, and that gold starts rubbing off on a lot of people’s hands.

The question you must ask yourself, each and individually, is “Is this thing, which cost X, worth the cost of Y because while it was made in the US, it was then shipped overseas, worked on, and shipped back?” Again, this is a value judgement, and there are no wrong answers.

If on the other hand it’s something vital to the national defense, and it’s on the other end of a five thousand mile pipeline, well that adds some really interesting complexities, now doesn’t it?

What if what you need is being sourced from someone who now says they’re at war with you? Or just doesn’t like the way you do bussiness, and so is going to refuse to sell you stuff? (ask the Japanese why they started a war with us in 1941 and they’ll tell you it was because we were economically strangling them by refusing to sell them material they needed for their war machine.)

Or maybe you are still friends with your supplier, but a third party is at war with your supplier and has embargoed them. You can ask China about that, vis-a-vis Iran.

Now let’s look at something I implied at the start of this long ramble. Government programs.

If it’s a state, or even better, local government program, the number of hands that touch that gold between the guy that “mines” it, (whether by working in a real mine, or by producing some other way) and the people that need it*? Minimal. Transfer of value? Maximal, call it three quarters on the dollar give or take.

If it’s a federal program though... Oh son, there’s about eight or ten layers of bureaucrats on the way up that handle that gold, and the same number at least on the way down. Transfer of value? Dimes on the dollar at best.

*Now, this all asumes that the people who were doing the mining agree that the people that “need it” really do need it. That is the other trouble with a government program acting as a charity.

The first trouble is that even in the cleanest situation: local government running the show, you’re still not getting the transfer of funds that you would get out of a real charity. (and even real charities end up eating part of each dollar for “required by law” overhead.)

The second trouble is that by government running the show, especially if it’s federal, they usually don’t ask if we agree that “this” needs charity dollars. They decide (yes, that’s what a republic is, I get that, we appoint people to make these decisions, and we say that we trust them to have our best interests at heart... But DO THEY? DO THEY REALLY?) what “charities” need your gold, and they take it, by force if necessary, up to and including lethal force.

Do you think I exaggerate? Fail to pay your taxes, fail to register, licence and plate your car. Let’s take the car as the easiest and quickest example. A “Natural Citizen” let’s call him Bobby Joe Ray Bob (BJRB) says “fuck that, the government ain’t got no right to tell me whether I can drive, and demand that I pay a premium to put a silly little piece of metal on my car, I do what I want, this is ‘Merica!”

So BJRB drives down the highway with no plates, or with this little made up “soverign citizen” plate. Well, pretty soon, Officer Friendly of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, sees BJRB’s car, with this made up plate, and says “Oh, REALLY?” as he turns on his lights and siren.

BJRB pulls over, because he feels like giving this guy with no athority (The Soverign Citizen movement doesn’t recognize any athority above Sherriff) a piece of his mind.

Officer Friendly walks up and says “Good Morning Sir, may I see your licence, registration, and proof of insurance? And do you know why I stopped you this morning?”

“No, you may NOT. You have no athority over me as a soverign citizen.”

Well, Officer Friendly has played with these idiots before, so the first thing he does is calls for a supervisor and backup. Then he says, something like “well sir, may I at least see your Vehicle Identification Number to make sure it’s not stolen?

That seems like a semi reasonable request today to BJRB, so he says sure. What he doesn’t understand (among many, many things) is that this is a ploy. A way to stall for time, because this is going to get uggly.

While Officer friendly is slowly writing down that long ass VIN, walking back to his car, and pretending to input the number in his computer, the Sargent and another car arrive. The sargent pulls up behind Friendly’s car, and the other car pulls up in front of BJRB’s car. Sargeant Dickhead asks Officer Friendly what he’s got, and upon finding out that it’s an SC says “I’ll take it from here.”

He then walks up to BJRB’s car and introduces himself, saying “Good morning Sir, I’m Sargeant Dickhead of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, can I ask you to step out of the car, for my safety?”

This is when BJRB knows that “the jig is up.” He’s boxed in, and once he’s out of the car, he’s going to be handcuffed and lead off to jail, his car will be impounded, and he’s going to meet a judge. Well, not today, he thinks, as he reaches for the center console to grab the gun therein.

At which point, Sargeant Dickhead puts two rounds center of available mass. The Sargeant is fully justified in this, use of deadly force was justified, and BJRB died of natural causes: he reached for a gun while dealing with a Highway patrol officer, and just naturally got shot. All because he decided that he didn’t approve of having to licence his vehicle. Yes, deadly force is the end result, if all lesser means have failed, of getting you to comply with government demands, including “give me your money so that I may do with it what I think is good.”

This endith the lesson for today.

Yours in Service

William Lehman.

Well, as the regulars know, I added a new career to my resume a while back, in addition to Submarine Sailor, Cop, Shipyard worker/instructor/manager, Author, and of course surly curmudgeon, I’m now a farmer.

Specifically, a Hog farmer, although we also grow other things here at Morrigan’sport Farm, and will be selling various things bye and bye, My main crop is pork. I guess that makes me much like most politicians, who sell other things; like their soul, their constituents (down the river), their honor if they ever had any… but primarily they sell pork.

Well, having now a tiny little bit of experience with pigs, I will tell you that the rumors of their intelligence (most intelligent farm animal, smarter than dogs, and so on, the headlines scream) are overblown. Oh they’re smarter than cows, and much smarter than domestic turkeys for example… (A domestic turkey will literally drown itself in the rain, by looking up in shock at the water falling from the sky.) They do have enough brains that after about the third or fifth time they get zapped by the electric fence wire, they figure out that “white ribbon bites, don’t touch!” After a week they figure out that “two legs bring the really good food, so running away from him means my sisters get more food than I do, and I have to make do with just graze.”

Compared to your average dog though? Well, they just ain’t all that.

Compared to your average Democratic politician on the other hand, they’re fucking stable geniuses. We’re going to look at a few of these rocket surgeons, and their foibles today. Dinner is going to be Fajitas, you know where the liquids are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

Lets take California (Oh gods would someone PLEASE take California?) Now a pig figures out after only a day or two, that this action HURTS, don’t do this action. California? Not so much.

In 2008 (nearly twenty years ago, for you Californians in the group.) Money was first cut to start a High Speed Rail line (HSR) between LA and SF. It was quoted as costing $33 billion, and would take twelve years to complete. (2020 ribbon cutting, for you Californians.) At that time, and at that price, I will admit that it looked like a semi reasonable idea. It would beat flying (barely) because the Tom Foolery at the airports on both ends makes a one hundred and ten mile an hour train faster (home to hotel and back) than a three hundred mile an hour aircraft.

To me, that’s more of an inditement of the Aviation industry than a credit to the Rail industry, but hey… Still, it would probably be more comfortable, as aircraft have to pack ‘em in like sardines, to get a decent profit margin when JP-5 is spendy.

Meanwhile, Rail can use cheaper fuels or even use electricity if it’s cheaper than diesel on a ton per mile basis. And of course since California is notoriously concerned about the environment, even as they wreck it… Well Rail using electricity would be far less polluting, (if you use nukes, solar, wind, and hydro) to move the same weight over the same distance.

Having driven that stretch a couple times, it would be vastly better to ride the train than to drive it, if you are not moving enough crap that you need your car/truck.

OK, so yes, on the face of it, it started as a good idea.

Now let’s look at how it’s gone. Here it is, 2026, how much track has been laid? ZERO!

It took SIX YEARS to build the first Transcontinental Railway in the US. For the Californians in the house, that’s a third of the time that it’s taken these assholes to build… Nothing.

OK that’s not quite fair, they’ve built a couple overpasses, with no track on them, and nothing connecting them to each other. They’ve poured a lot of concrete for no actual progress.

What is the route now? Merced to Bakersfield. (That’s 171 miles, vice the original planned 348 miles.)

Ticket prices? Expected to be at least double the original planned price.

Expected Ridership? Original projections were 95 million by 2030. Now we’re at 36 million by 2060. So a bit over a third as many, and thirty years later.

Of course any of my pigs could figure out that if, instead of going between the second biggest population center in the US, and the 17^th, you chose to go between places that most people have to look up on Google Maps (Bakersfield comes in at 47^th in the nation, Merced doesn’t show up in the top 350…) there’s less folks that might want to use the service, and thus it’s going to cost more per head to recoup the money spent…

And the cherry on the shit sundae; how much is it costing? That’s $231 billion. In a state that can’t afford to pay their employees.

This isn’t news. Even politicians have been screaming that this thing is the ultimate white whale. And yet the whaling vessel ‘Sacramento Statehouse’ keeps chasing the damn thing. Why? Well we’re back to what politicians deal in most. PORK.

Someone is making an obscene profit off of this disaster, a couple construction companies, and a lot of planning types are rolling in dough, and giving some of it back in the form of reelection money to guys like Garry Noose-cum. You remember him, right? The guy that has completely and utterly destroyed California, and wants to be elected to the Presidency so he can bring that flavor of sundae to the rest of the nation?

Seriously, my pigs are fucking PHDs compared to the people that elected that bastard.

Let’s take another example. The partial Government shutdown finally ended this week. Seventy-Five days. Two and a half MONTHS. Oh, yes, and this budget that they passed? It goes through the end of September.

That’s four months! SO all of this pain, all of the drama, a vast number of people quitting because, really, how long can you afford to not get a paycheck? If you’re a government worker, and you’re not a double digit GS or better, probably not very damn long.

As a retired Government worker myself, I can tell you that until my last couple years in the job, a shutdown of that long would have lost me my house, my cars, my every-damn-thing, probably. (well maybe not, because I would have still had my pensions from the military, and I had invested; mostly wisely, with one or two notable exceptions, who know who they are.)

Well, yeah, but the guys that were running the shutdown, at least got what they wanted, Right??? I mean, yeah, they put a whole lot of people in a lot of pain, but they achieved their goals, right?

Uh, NO.

Yes, it’s true, ICE and the Border Patrol are not funded in this budget. They’re going to be funded separately in a “Budget Reconciliation” bill that can be passed without any support from the Democrats, and gets exactly the same result as if it had been part of the original bill. Now the Dems aren’t the only bad guys in this piece, that never to be sufficiently damned idiot Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, could have passed this same plan a month ago. He was holding out for “total victory and humiliating the Dems.” Of course he’s now spinning this as his total victory, and taking his victory lap…

Who actually won? Nobody.

Who lost? The Democrats, the employees of Homeland, the customers of the various branches of Homeland like anyone who flies commercial air, and anyone who relies on the guys that enforce laws like anti-counterfeiting laws, bank fraud laws, and so on… In short, EVERYONE who is NOT independently wealthy, or a congressman.

Lest it seem like I’m just picking on California and Democrats, Let’s go to Texas.

You would think that a judge, especially a Criminal Court of Appeals Judge, would know the law, right? I mean if ANYONE would know the law, it ought to be a judge. David Newell is such a judge. He’s on the appellate court, and it seems, he’s not going to run for reelection. So, he decided to donate a lot of his reelection campaign money to other people that ARE running. To the tune of $4,000 to Alison Fox, who is running for a position on the same bench.

He also gave $1,000 to the campaigns of Jo Ann Pierce-Linzer, Paul Still, and Mark Hanna, all of whom are running for various judgeships.

OK, you ask, so what?

Well, it’s against the law for a sitting judge or other office holder to give more than $100 to another candidate. Texas Election Code Section 253.1611. https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._election_code_section_253.1611

A person who violates this section is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed three times the amount of political contributions used in violation of this section. That’s a total of $21,000 in fines, your honor.

Here in Tennessee, we’re finally figuring it out… You all know that I’m not a huge proponent of Solar. Look, it’s got its place, but it’s nothing like the “Save the world” technology that the PRC shills (why PRC shills? Look at who makes over 80% of the solar cells and get back to me.) would have you believe it is.

Still, if you’re going to put solar cells in, let’s do it smart huh? Here in TN, until recently, if you wanted a subsidy for your solar plant, you had to put it on the ground, not on top of your buildings, and that had to be the only thing you were using the land for. Now if that’s not the stupidest policy in the world, it’s at least in the running.

Seriously, the amount of good growing land here (or anywhere for that matter) is limited. Now you’re going to tell a landowner, probably a farmer, that he can either use his land as a solar farm, and get money from the TVA, OR he can raise crops and critters on it, but not both??? Who thought that up, and why were they not run out of town after a good tarring an feathering?

Well, IDK, maybe Kiti and I moving in tipped the scales over to being on average a smart state, vice a dumb one, or maybe it just took this long for someone to figure it out, but in Christiana TN they’re allowing Silicon Ranch to put the cells high enough to graze cattle under them. Seriously, this is a winning idea. There’s a lot of folks that absolutely would not put a solar array on their farm, because “we’re ranchers. We raise cattle. It’s what we do. We don’t raise silicon cells, you can’t eat those, asshole.”

But here’s the thing. Cattle running around mostly in the shade are less prone to heat stress, gain more weight, and drink less water. Pasture that is in partial shade retains more moisture, is more drought resistant, and provides healthier feed.

Other states have been doing this with sheep for a few years (130,000 acres in sheep as of last year.) but doing it with cows has been a problem because of the laws and the costs for the steel to get the cells up high enough for the cattle to hang out underneath, as well as the whole “the cell tracks the sun, so in the early morning and late evening, it’s nearly vertical” piece. They’re fixing that by moving the cattle and reprograming the cells in the area where the cows are to not go as far off of horizontal. The difference in efficiency is present, but minor.

All in all, my pigs would nod, and squeal happily.

I’m a fan of using real data. Not what you think the answer should be, but what the facts on the ground say, to make your decisions. With that in mind, the National Bureau of Economic Research is publishing a study on “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence From Lockable Phones” More at: https://www.engadget.com/2164015/study-shows-that-cellphone-bans-didnt-improve-us-students-test-scores/ now they admit that this is only based on seven years, and only looked at students grades for three years beyond the school banning phones, but still, it seems that what we all thought was a good idea, was irrelevant.

Maybe it’s time to be smarter than California, and give the kids back their phones? If it doesn’t have any positive effects, it’s just another rule for the sake of rules, and I’m NOT a fan of those.

The Bad Cat fired off a beauty at the-summers-of-our-discontent

He’s long winded as hell, (as usual) but it’s all in effort of making his case, while showing the work. The TLDR version is that all the DEI bullshit is going away, and is scientifically provable to be wrong.

The basics of DEI being that: Anyone is just as good as anyone else, and if they’re not, it’s because RACIST/SEXIST!!!! Well the Cat shows the homework on why men are both smarter and dumber than women, which by itself blows the DEI theories out of the water. Then he goes on to explore Hip geometry, fast twitch muscle density, and so on. It’s worth the read, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Gato is talking about DEI as it deals with hiring and advancing people in various fields; making sure that we hire based on race, because anything else is racist! (and my pigs are squealing their annoyance at the idiocy of that concept.)

But it’s more than that. The same data is prima facia evidence that Communism and Socialism (Communism wearing a smiley face button) is idiocy. See the very basis of those systems is that people are interchangeable widgets, that anyone is as good as anyone else, and so central planning can plug them in where they are needed. If we need more brain surgeons, we simply train more brain surgeons, anyone can do it, and therefore a brain surgeon is of no more value to society than a ditch digger.

Well, even my pigs know better than that, but the science behind the Bad Cat’s thesis shows the work long form, so that even someone as stupid as Bernie Sanders or AOC could follow along, if they were honest and not making their living by arguing against reality.

One last little bit before I go, with a tip of the hat to “Not the Bee” who watches things like 60 Minutes, so that I don’t have to.

It seems that this vapid bitch Lesley Stahl, who seems to think she’s the next Woodward or Bernstien, (Gods help us) breathlessly reports that “If you’re the victim of a natural disaster, and the person that comes to help you isn’t wearing a FEMA Jacket, they’re a white supremisist doing this to recruit you.” 60-minutes-warns-white-people-may-be-helping-you-after-natural-disasters-to-advance-their-racist-cause

You know, I don’t envy the Babylon Bee, People are so out-there that coming up with fake headlines that don’t turn out to be true three weeks later has to be a nearly impossible job these days… which is no doubt why they came up with “Not the Bee” to give their reporters a break by allowing them to only write about stuff that just “seems” too far fetched to be real, and not stuff that actually is too far-fetched.

Hey, I’ve got farm work to do, so I’m going to close up here. Stay safe, and watch out for the idiots, they’re everywhere.

QOTD “For many agricultural stakeholders, it is offensive to see high-quality farmland getting graded and piled when that’s a farm family’s legacy,”

Ethan Winter, national smart solar director at American Farmland Trust.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

This is not going to be a friendly discussion. This is more what was known colloquially in the Navy as a “Come to Jesus” session. The fact that I feel like absolute ass, because I ate too much grease last night while taking Ozempic, is not going to make it any more pleasant, so let’s get on with it. You know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

I’m going to start with the Left, in the unlikely event that anyone from that side of the aisle is reading my stuff.

Look, I don’t know, I literally cannot conceive of what you think you’re gaining with repeated attempts at President Trump’s life. Further, I can’t grasp the head space that manages to simultaneously claim that is was all staged, never really happened, in the face of hundreds of hostile witnesses, and live video, while also bemoaning the failure of the attempt.

There seems to be this naive belief that if Trump were to be killed, suddenly things would revert to Obama’s rule and everyone would sing Kumbaya… Yeah, that ain’t the way this would go down.

First off, Trump’s assassination would give us President J. D. Vance. If you didn’t like Trump, you are going to flat out HATE Vance. In addition, it would give him a casus bello against you, with a united Right, and the middle weighing in on the right side, because, well, murdering a sitting president is more than even the average low information voter could tolerate.

If the Feds didn’t get you, your own neighbors would, in any place except the deepest blue areas. It would, without a doubt, bring about a civil war. Now if you want to start a war, the absolute worst way to start one is to take an action so beyond the pale as to unite your opponents. Things like Pearl Harbor or killing a president fall under that category.

The thing is this:

Your media, and your politicians are reciting known, disproved, and well documented to be disproved, lies. They’re using the Goebbels stunt of “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” The problem being that they are so discredited by the population at large, that the only folks who are buying anymore are the “True Believers.”

You don’t have enough true believers to win a civil war, especially since your belief model that “the military will see the rightness of our cause and join us” falls completely apart when you start the game by assassinating the Commander in Chief.

Now: To the Right.

Your press seems to be hard driven to maximize the offence taken. Everything I’ve seen from the Center Right (there’s no real right wing mainstream media any longer, the closest you get is just right of center, veering left on occasion) is maximizing all the little things, like the reporters stealing wine after the shooting, the asshat Kimmel’s stupid “joke” and so on. All driven to just piss you right off.

OK, Reporters stole wine… We know they’re a bunch of classless, amoral, little bitches, or they wouldn’t be mainstream media reporters. Hardly a shock here. Why use so much ink and so much vitrol on what is, frankly a minor Peccadillo?

Kimmel is an asshat, who has all of the comedy chops of Joe Stalin… Yeah, AND? The sudden hard push to cancel him, to make his life hell, well, I can understand it, but I’m against it. Why? Because he, and it, don’t matter. No one watches that no talent hack anyway. Doing the whole Cancel culture thing though, well, it doesn’t sell well, and its energy better spent elsewhere. The answer to speech, whether lies, or just wrong, is, or should be, speech. Not the stifling of the speaker. It was wrong when they did it, and it’s wrong when we do it. Knock it off.

You want to expend some energy? Get the Senate to pass the damn SAVE act. Majority Leader Thune is whining that “we have a lot of things we have to do, including the farm bill, highway bill, permitting reform, Russia sanctions, and housing legislation that cannot be delayed for unlimited debate on the SAVE act.”

Senator, there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, more important than securing our elections from outside influence. If we can’t secure our elections, nothing else you do will last longer than the next election controlled by some other nation, or nation’s interests, you MORON.

You are the Senate leader, LEAD. Or get the fuck out of the way.

Both sides need to examine what’s happening here. Yes, the Left is the side using violence. That may be because there are more True Believers, and more mentally unstable folks on the Left that are easy to manipulate. But the press, and some of the political leaders on the right keep trying to raise the temperature in the room too. What we need to ask is WHY?

Cui Bono? That’s Latin for “who benefits” if you were not aware.

Who gets a bonus by starting a civil war in the United States?

How about every foreign nation who doesn’t want Uncle Sam to get in the way of their political ambitions?

You leftists claim to be supporters of Ukraine. If Uncle Sam wasn’t sending gear to Ukraine, they would have fallen a long time ago. Do you think for a skinny second that we’re going to be shipping weapons to Ukraine, if we’re using them on each other?!

How about, NO?

Hell, if we go into a civil war, all of Europe is on their own, and while the big bad bear ain’t what it used to be, it could still make Europe a hell hole with its last gasps, especially as backed up by the PRC (West Taiwan)

Iran will have relative free reign until Israel puts the boot in. Oh and speaking of Israel, if you leftists are concerned about your precious Palestinian turds, guess what? Israel has been relatively nice to the Palestinians compared to how they could treat them, primarily because the US is looking over their shoulder saying “Don’t, if you ever want any weapons from us again.” If we’re in the middle of a civil war, we won’t be shipping any weapons out of the country. Israel will have no reason left not to go Old Testament on their ass.

What do I mean by “Old Testament”? Go read Psalm 137:9.

Then there’s the 800 lb Gorilla in the room; the PRC, with their little capuchin monkey sidekick North Korea.

They stand to win big.

Look, the SPLC just got caught funding the very people they claim to fight against, including the “unite the right” the Aryan Nation, and the KKK. Paying them to go out and stir up shit, so that they could go to their doners for more money. How much? $3.3 Million that they’ve traced so far. OK, so the SPLC spent $3.3 mil to keep people like the KKK around and stirring up shit. They raised hundreds of millions by that.

See /down-on-the-problem-farm by the Bad Cat for a full exploration. He also covers a lot of the other graft that’s been going down. You want to know why your tax money doesn’t fix your street, go take a look at one of the best investigative blogs around.

If relative pikers like the SPLC can figure out how to fund both sides to make a buck; you can bet that the PRC knows chapter and verse.

Am I saying that the media on both sides is dedicated to starting a civil war, and funded in that mission by the People’s Republic of China? Yes, Yes I am.

Oh most of the people working for the MSM don’t know that’s where the funding comes from… Hell most of the bosses and Seventh floor types probably don’t know. Cut outs, shell corporations, all of the various methods of hiding source money exist for a reason.

The MSM is on the ropes. Their credibility is somewhere south of Gas station sushi, they’re drowning in a sea of red ink, and anything that brings money in is being grabbed like a life ring for a guy going down for the third time. If that money, or that overpayment for advertising comes with “I want you to do more stories on XXX” you can bet the response from the Seventh floor, is “YES SIR!” Especially when it matches their preconceived bias anyway. It’s not hard to push a person further over in the direction they already lean. Then you find their ideological opposite and fund them to lean further in their direction.

Soon you’re pushing a war, and doing it on the cheap, because you just had them further emphasize the beliefs they already held.

Who benefits? THAT’S WHO.

Who loses? WE ALL DO.

The one thing that is sure, is that no matter who wins, and honestly,that’s not really in question: The left can’t manage to kill a single public official after a lot of attempts. From the Baseball practice shooting, to the attempts on Trump’s life, the only “success” they had was killing Charley Kirk, the most nonviolent, peace through talking, motherfucker on the right side of the aisle.

Compare that to the one or two right wing political violence attempts. I don’t like that he was right wing, (for “all government is evil” values of right wing) but he was. Timothy McVeigh. There have been a couple other right wing wackjobs over the last couple years, and one thing stands out. People actually died, other than the shooter.

Right wingers are more likely to be military trained, more likely to have experience with firearms, and more likely to have been hunters. Hunters and most soldiers actually know what it’s like to shoot something and watch it die. It’s not Call of Duty shit. Then there’s the Cops and the active/reserve/NG military, which, if the war starts with the killing of a president will side with the government, IE, Trump’s side.

Yes, we know, the left has guns too. We’re reminded every time someone shoots at an ICE officer, or does a mass shooting. Yes, there’s military veterans who are left wing. Hell, there’s one complete idiot who is not only a military vet, but a former astronaut. There aren’t enough to throw the equation. In a real shooting battle, the right wins.

But the keys here are 1) How they win, and 2) What comes after.

The end result of a Civil War like this would be—is ugly. Pogrom type ugly. What comes out the other end might just look a lot more like Franko’s Spain, Marcos’ Philippines, or Pinochet’s Chile than Washington’s United States. This is not a path we want to go down.

Trouble is, there’s someone or a group of someones that really wants that, if it means they get to rule over the wreckage, and there’s others that don’t care how it comes out, as long as it wrecks the US’ ability to exercise international power… And it would. A civil war in the US would keep us occupied for at least twenty years in war and reconstruction. That’s enough time for the world outside the US to be completely redrawn, in a very ugly way.

The bottom line here is that the fall of the US as a world power, and Civil War would do that, would usher in a dark age. An age of dictatorship, and the famous “a boot stomping on a human face forever.”

Let’s just not, huh?

In further discomfort, and trips in that direction, we have Germany just having passed a law making it illegal for Military Age Males (MAM) 17-45 to leave the country for more than three months without government permission. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-works-clarify-new-rules-fighting-age-men-leaving-country-2026-04-06/ Of course “service is still voluntary” but hey don’t go anywhere, because we might change that. Hat tip to MWB Bailey for calling my attention to it at is-east-germany-back.

If you think I’m being alarmist, take a look at brawlstreetjournal.substack.com/p/the-strategic-rear Russia is already making noises about how they consider the factories in the rest of Europe to be legitimate targets if they’re supplying arms or equipment to Ukraine. They’ve put crosshairs on sites in Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the UK, saying that “these locations are true causes of threats to your security” (In other words, lovely factory you have there, it would be a shame if someone blew it up.)

Will they actually strike? Not as long as the US is still a guarantor of European security. But if we are busy with a Civil War? All bets are off.

Is the US willing to not be a guarantor of “what ever Europe wants, it gets?” Well let’s take a look at Argentina, who’s new president and Trump are really tight. Javier Milei recently declaired “The Malvinas were, are, and always will be Argentine” You might know the island chain better by it’s English name, the Falklands. Considering the US request for assisstance with the Straits of Hormuz, and Prime Minister Starmer’s response “Not our war.”

The UK no longer has the navy they had even ten years ago. They couldn’t pull off a Falklands war today. Especially without any help from the USN. Help that is no longer unquestionably guaranteed. That’s without a Civil War. If American is fighting American, the UK is going to lose some land for sure.

QOTD something both sides of the argument should consider: “Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim.”

Thomas Jefferson

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

Well, I’m going to be a day late on the blog this week folks. My mother is in town for a couple days on her way north for the summer… So I’ll be writing on Wednsday and publishing on Thursday, instead of my normal schedule.

Hey, I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to see her, so bear with me.

V/R

William Lehman

I don’t know which I find more absurd. The press personifying Captain Obvious, or the press personifying Inspector Clouseau.

Both of them are massive failures to do the job they’re paid to do, but is it worse to “discover” some fact that anyone with the brains the Gods gave to geese knows without thinking? Or to report as fact things that are completely wrong?

That’s the discussion for today. Pull up a seat, dinner tonight is whatever the VFW is feeding after the business meeting, you know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

The “Getting it massively wrong” side of the coin does more damage of course, to the people (an ever-diminishing pool mind you) that actually believe what these idiots are saying, but the stuff in “well DUH” territory enables the getting it wrong reports.

I’ll explain (probably mansplaining here, sorry):

When the press produces an article that is easily verifiable, that adds credence to their work. Low information voters read the article, and say to themselves “Wow, is that true?” They then check it out, and realize that “Yes, it’s absolutely true.” They stop there, sadly, and think “well if that’s true, then everything they say is probably true.” They don’t take that extra step that is “well why is that true, oh, wait, it’s not the implied cause at all, it’s what in math is called an “Identity.” Of course the folks we’re talking about probably don’t know what a Math “Identity” is, so there’s that.

Case in point: The Visual Capitalist, a place that you would think based on title, would be solidly Austrian school of economics, (sadly, you would be wrong) breathlessly reports, and this is echoed by “The Flyover,” that:

One in three US adults, 18-34 live with their parents, there’s a large geographic divide between the coasts and ‘fly over country,’ and that High-cost coastal and Northeastern States dominate the top of this ranking.

Thank you Captain Obvious. Gosh, Imagine, more people are living in generational housing where unemployment is up and the cost of living is through the roof, with the cost of housing being the biggest chunk of that.

They tell us that Higher costs and tighter supply make renting and buying “significantly less attainable for young adults, increasing the likelihood of living at home.”

Slow clap. Can’t sneak nothing past you mothas can we?

They go on to tell us that this figure is well above “historical norms.”

And there’s where they palm the card, along with their conclusion that “This trend now appears structural rather than temporary.”

So, first card palming “Historical Norms.” Well that depends on where you draw the starting line for the study… They chose 1960. This is the same sort of trick “Climate Scientists” do with their “hockey stick” graph. Pick the point that is farthest away from where we are right now, and draw your starting line there, to maximize the delta.

Housing, and “Living at home” has changed multiple times throughout American history, for a multitude of reasons. If we go back to the early days of American civilization, you lived at home, until you got yourself a wife, or caught yourself a husband, at which time, Dad split off part of the farm, and built you a house on it. There you raised your crops and kine while learning farm management, before inheriting the big place (if you were first born.) Or if you weren’t the primary heir, you got a chunk of the land, or lived at home, which got enlarged with a small wing for you and the missus, and the eventual kids.

If you lived in some parts of the country (like New Orleans) you just tacked on new wings in perpetuity, with several generations living together. Now city mouse had it a little different, but not that much, unless you were a recent immigrant. Then it was tenements and pack as many in as would fit, until either the parents or the kids were making enough to move out. This model lasted more or less intact, until after World War Two. The vast majority of the population never moved further from their parents than five miles, and most never traveled more than twenty-five miles away from where they were born.

Yes, the pioneers, the explorers, the wanderers, all existed, and thank the Gods that they did, but percentage wise, that was practically a rounding error. Further, the ones that did do the Pioneer thing, moved their generations with them, and then set down roots, and followed the aforementioned model.

The long hunter, the fur trapper, the cowboy, and the boom town miner, were small exceptions to the rule, often orphans who had no inheritance, and nothing to hold them in place. A very large portion of the pioneers, cowboys etc, were displaced citizens from the Civil War, or immigrants.

This all changed with the World Wars and their aftermath, which continued until the late fifties. World War One didn’t have nearly as much effect, primarily because the American Experience of that war was very short. The war and post war industrialization didn’t really make us an industrial nation. The interwar years changed things some, but the 800-pound gorilla was WWII. Johnny went to war in 1942, mostly he didn’t come home until 1946 or later and when he did, he was not the same kid that went off to the battlefield. Often, he came home with a wife. And even if he didn’t, he came home as a very different person. After having seen the most violent war in history, putting up with dad’s shit, and momma’s babying wasn’t going to work. If he had a war bride it was even worse, because his attitude about his wife, and the family’s attitude about “that jap” or “that kraut” was just incompatible.

So Johnny wanted OUT. But in the just post war years, there wasn’t an “out” available. It took over ten years to catch up with demand. With the addition of a far more mobile and industrial society, and a far bigger willingness to ‘go to where the work is,’ by 1960 our culture had been completely upended. This was the golden age of “everyone having their own home.”

It carried the seeds of its own destruction. Demand caused corners to be cut, which then drove zoning and building regulation changes that made housing more expensive, to ensure that the slapdash construction didn’t continue. (It only takes a half dozen new homes burning to the ground because of shitty aluminum wiring, or corner cutting on framing, before some politician sees a “Problem” that he can ride to election success.)

It also did away with the one room apartments, and tenements that had been the norm for most city dwellers (by percentage) heretofore. No one wanted to live in those, when you could move out to the suburbs and have a lawn for the kids to play in, a real kitchen with all the modern conveniences…

Trouble is, that sort of boom is not sustainable. There’s a real limit to how far away from your job you can live, and still make the commute realistically possible. We hit that in the eighties. Without some sort of change in the paradigm, that dream was no longer viable. Further, the places hardest hit where the ones that were the earliest adopters of the model. (Hint, that would be the coasts.) Places like North Dakota had never really changed from the old pre–World-War-Two model, so they weren’t as affected. To make it worse, there was less and less demand for unskilled labor, as higher wages made automation cheaper than hiring more people.

This is all stuff that you should have gotten in High-school. If you didn’t it was either because you lived through it, or because you went to school after they quit teaching that sort of thing. (When you go back home, slap your teacher for that.)

Second, What the article doesn’t mention is that there’s a bright side. Unintentional, but a bright side. See Covid forced employers to do the remote work thing. Oh lots of them hated it, and most of the ones that hated it are trying to drive people back to the office now, but in the words of Kosh from Babylon Five “once the avalanche starts, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.”

The genie is out of the bottle, and for those that don’t have to be at a work site, the post covid freedom to live much further away, because daily commutes aren’t required, is going to change this situation. It will change the least in places most adapted to the old model, and in places with the highest number of jobs that legitimately have to be “on site.” Until we come up with good functional waldos controllable from home, if you use physical tools to make your living, you gotta be on site. That’s just the way it is. But for the roughly 40 percent of the workforce that rides a desk: Your life is changing, and will continue to change for the next decade at least. Then there’s the AI factor, which will not “take your job” but will change it in many, some still unimaginable, ways. There are ways to speed this up, or to gum up the works, and government can be a help or a hindrance here.

-Construction codes. Technology has advanced far faster than the codes have evolved. That needs a hard turn, if you want to make houses inexpensive enough to be affordable by the average Joe.

Some places are already working on this, and sadly, some are not.

-High speed internet. Off site work requires it, and the faster, and more capable the system, the more people can take advantage not just of what is now “offsite available” jobs but those which are not now, but will be in the future “offsite available” (remember those waldos I was talking about?)

This stuff should be in the interest of local government to pursue, because the more attractive you make your area, the more your tax base grows, which means the more budget you have to play with… Catnip for any politician.

Contrarywise, the less of this you do, the more of your tax base goes away. If you double down, by spending the taxes you do have on welfare programs, you attract people that do not add wealth to the system, but only place more demands on it. That’s a death spiral.

Looking at you here California.

Raising the minimum wage also just puts more people in the welfare system, because you have to have a job, to get the experience to get a better job. If the employer has to pay a more expensive minimum wage, he is either going to find places to cut labor, or require more experienced people to start. Both of those leave the folks that the higher minimum wage was supposed to help, FUCKED.

The beauty of our national system is that we have fifty different petri dishes to test these theories, and just like petri dishes, the ones that are the healthiest mediums to grow in, get the bigger population, the ones that are most toxic loose population. Now, as an exercise for the audience, look at what states are growing, and what states are losing population…

Ask yourself why.

If you’ve somehow missed it, the big Naval story of the week was the seizing of the MV Touska by USS Spruance. Here we have great examples of the press in full Inspector Clouseau mode. Lets see, I’ve seen them echoing the claims by Iran that this was piracy and a violation of the laws of war, that an embargo is itself an act of war and requires a declaration of war, that it recklessly endangered American sailors’ lives, and oh any number of other claims.

Now CDR Sal, as usual did a nice summation of the events, on the 20^th looks-like-commerce-raiding-is-back-on-the-Menu. For a full evaluation of what was used, and why this matters, please go take a look there.

I want to address some lies and hypocrisy. Let’s start with something Sal decided to let slide with just a snide slap “Who are these ‘some’ people, and who, if anyone, taught them world history?* (this in reference to the QOTD below)

Is JFK still the darling of the Democratic Party? I ask because I legitimately do not know, they change who’s in and who’s out too fast for me to bother trying to keep up. If he is, then someone ought to mention that little thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis to them, because they obviously forgot it.

If the embargo on Cuba was legal without a declaration of war, then so is the embargo of Iran. The only reason we didn’t put rounds through the engine room of a Soviet vessel during that little tete-a-tete was because no Soviet skipper was stupid enough to ignore the orders to either turn around, or heave to and prepare to be boarded.

We warned Touska for SIX HOURS, going through every protocol in maritime law, that if they didn’t turn around or heave to, they were going to be stopped. We told them exactly where we were going to shoot her, once she ignored shots fired across her bow. We used inert shells to disable her engine room, rather than sink her. Now that was actually not just a kindness on our part, it allowed us to board and inspect.

As it turned out, it was also a safety plus, as had we pumped live rounds in this internationally sanctioned vessel, we might have damaged the Spruance. See Touska was loaded to the gunnels with stuff called Ammonium Perchlorate, Sodium Percolate, and some Oxidizers. Now before someone else asks me, NO these are not “dual use” chemicals, they can not be made into fertilizers, or anything like that. These chemicals have two uses. You can make big fireworks (commercial six-inch mortar big) out of them, and you can make big (like Trident Two or Minuteman big) solid fuel rocket motors, out of them. Pardon me if I don’t believe Iran wants to make celebratory fireworks.

Touska was already on everyone’s radar, because we knew, (and NATO knew, and Japan knew, and Gods knows China knew) that she was being used to run weapons and war materials to Iran from the PRC. There were multiple court orders from the various maritime courts, impounding her. Trouble is, Iran isn’t a signatory to any of those treaties.

Which brings us to our next thing. It’s not a violation of any laws of warfare, if the fighting parties aren’t signatories to the law. International law requires voluntary participation, and will until someone steps up and says “I’m going to enforce this law on everyone, whether they want me to or not.” Honestly, other than the US, (and I doubt if we could do it, even if we wanted to,) there’s no one big enough to take that task on.

Iran has refused to acknowledge any of the laws of warfare. Which is why they can do things like missile strikes on the Temple of the Mount. To any normal vision, that defines violation of the laws of land warfare. To Iran, it’s Tuesday. Part of those laws, by the way include: “If your enemy is violating the laws, you have the right of reprisal. That being the only enforcement option possible.”

So, rogue nation, not a signatory of any of the laws, that regularly uses terrorist strikes, the killing and raping of women and children, and torture as part of their statecraft? Yeah you can do pretty much whatever you want to them and say it’s reprisal.

What I don’t know is how this is all going to end. Based on what I’m seeing, I don’t even know who’s in charge in Iran any longer, and I don’t think anyone else does either, INCLUDING IRAN. I do know that if they keep saying they’re not going to meet with us, (and as of this writing, the on again, off again talks are off again, but that can change in an hour) It’s probably going to get real kinetic out at a minute after midnight. How long we will have to thump them before either they come to their senses, or they cease to exist, no one can say, but if I was an Iranian national, or for that matter any of Iran’s client terrorists, I would be pushing them to make peace at any price. The only thing keeping Israel from continuing their pogrom against Hez-no-bollah is the ceasefire. By the time you read this, we’ll know.

Of course our house Democrats can’t understand this, and are filing articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Hegseth for the following charges:

Unauthorized war against Iran and reckless endangerment of U.S. service members;

Violations of the law of armed conflict and targeting of civilians;

Negligence and reckless handling of sensitive military information;

Obstruction of congressional oversight;

Abuse of power and politicization of the armed forces;

Conduct bringing disrepute upon the U.S. and its armed forces.

Now this won’t go anywhere, but I almost wish it would, just so I could see their faces when his defense is summed up with “I work for the President, I followed his orders and broke no laws in doing so.”

This whole game was summed up quite nicely by Michael Smith, at the-singularity-of-tyranny and I commend him to your attention.

Well, I suspect I’ve talked enough, so I’m going to get off this silly thing, and get some work done. Until next week take care of yourselves.

QOTD * “Under international law, the legality of the blockade is ‘more ambiguous.’ For a blockade to be legal it must be effective, meaning that it is both enforceable and enforced. Some would argue that a “‘global blockade’ is not permissible in conception” because it is overly broad” said Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank in Washington.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

T&I. Short for “Trends and Intentions.” Look, I’ve talked about this before, but we’re going to chat about it again, because people keep making the same mistakes.

Pull up a seat, dinner tonight is smoked beef roast, you know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

So many people, on both sides of the aisle want to predict the future… Let’s be honest that’s what Trends and Intentions is. It’s predicting the future, it’s mind reading.

Unless you’re Johnny Carson, please, give it up. You cannot know, Trump cannot know, Obama cannot know, no one living on this plane of existence can know what enemies/rivals (if you’re so indoctrinated that you can’t accept that nations like the PRC and Iran are our enemies, we’ll go with rivals) is actually intending.

We can believe what they TELL us, we can assume that they will not do anything suicidal; but even that is a huge assumption, because in the case of Iran, their fundamental belief includes “we need to start the final war, so that the twelfth Iman will come out of hiding to lead the followers of our particular version of Mohamadism (may bees pee on him) to victory and an afterlife full of rape and excess.

We can believe that they think like us, which is the biggest mistake possible, and has gotten more wars started than religion, greed, and racism combined…

OR

We can not worry about “What will they do? What do they mean by that? And what are their goals?” And instead, ask “What are they CAPABLE of? And what will they be capable of if they pursue the work and research we know they are doing, to a successful conclusion?”

This, it seems to me, is the only safe bet.

Now don’t mistake me, this isn’t just an American besetting sin. This is a game that everyone plays. Case in point, Iran seemed to think that “because we have bullied America in the past, and because the West needs oil, we can just threaten to close the straits, say that we’ve mined them, and they’ll let us have at least some of what we want.”

Yeah, that’s not how it worked this time. I don’t think anyone except President Trump, and maybe a couple of his very senior cabinet members saw an AMERICAN blockade of the straits as even remotely possible. After all, the US has always caved to the wants and desires of “their betters” which is to say Europe.

It’s just assumed that the US will do what is best for Europe, will stay in NATO, will pick up any slack that Europe lets dangle, and will in general worry about what is best for other nations at least as much as they worry about what is best for America.

No one ever asked “why?” “Why would America continue to subtend what is best for the American citizen in favor of what is best for their allies.”

It’s just the way it is, was. But there’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s been making clear, repeatedly, that “Homey don’t play that shit.”

I guess that everyone just assumed that was bluster, and that the “Swamp” would yank Trump back into the model of a modern major President.

OOPS.

The truth is, in the long run, this American blockade of the Straits is probably in everyone’s best interests, in spite of the momentary pain in the gas (bill). Iran was solidly on the path to Nukes. They finally admitted this. The last meeting they had prior to the attack consisted of “Look, you didn’t get our enriched Uranium, and we’re just a week or two away from having a dozen bombs, so you better back the fuck off!” There can be no doubt in minds of anyone smart enough to pour piss out of a boot with instructions printed on the sole, that “yes, they were trying to get nukes.”

All their claims to the opposite?

Guess what? THEY LIED!

Now I know that’s a shock, but sometimes nations don’t tell each other the truth!

Then we learned, because they used it, that they had rockets that could cover 4000 miles. That gives them the reach for Diego Garcia… and Berlin, Paris, Rome, and nearly London.

Europe of course, said “well as long as we don’t make them mad, we’re fine. America, QUIT MAKING THEM MAD.” Well, that sort of thing has been tried almost as often as “we’re sure they don’t want to attack us, it wouldn’t be reasonable.”

It’s T&I. We’re sure that as long as we don’t piss on their Wheaties, they won’t attack us. We’ll have “peace in our time.”

Europe, the home of Danegeld, hasn’t learned a thing in a thousand years.

But, if Iran doesn’t have any money, they can’t build things. If we blow up all their factories and they’re broke, they can’t rebuild. If the government runs short enough on money, revolution starts to look viable. And if China can’t get her oil for her industry and her plastics etc… production, she starts getting concerned and starts supporting regime change too.

If Iran can’t ship through the straits, they can’t stay afloat. Not only because this is their major source of income, to the tune of $435 million a day, but because if they shut their wells down for any appreciable time, (measured in days or weeks at the outside) those wells run into something called “water coning.” That’s where ground water forces its way into the well, and the oil gets driven into the pores in the rock. If the pumps stay dead for too long, the wells will be crapped up in ways that require processes that, at this point, only American Engineers know how to fix.

So, why would they have to shut down? Well they only have so much storage capacity. Currently that storage is about 60% full. They have 13 days worth of storage capacity right now. (Roughly.)

Can they spread that out? Yes, a little: slow the pumping without stopping, fill some tankers even if they can’t move them… Eventually it could get to building giant basins in the desert and pumping the oil into those. It’ll help, but it won’t fix it. If they want those wells to continue to work they have to work them, or face hiring someone who knows how to get them running again after a prolonged shut down.

In short, an Iran who’s either poor as church mice, or is operating under new management is less capable of causing megadeaths on their way to achieving whatever their goal in having nukes is. Can we say that a new regime won’t continue to want nukes to strike at the rest of the world?

Of course not, again, we can’t read minds.

What we can say, is that if we remove the capability to restart their program, if we destroy their ability to project power outside their nation, we increase the survivability odds for the rest of humanity. If we do manage a fundamental change in government, well that’s all to the good.

Something that all the ‘the nation of Iran is a thousand years old’ idiots can’t seem to grasp, is that the nation of Iran, as it presently exists, is only forty-six years old. In less than six months, the nation was converted from a relatively enlightened monarchist state, with some problems, into a theocracy. That change was forced. It didn’t change the culture any more than the US changed the culture of Afghanistan by occupying it for ten years or so. It takes at least three generations to change a culture.

So, no, Iran will not necessarily stay a theocracy run by insane zealots. That’s not their culture. Right now, their culture is so messed up, no one knows what will come out of a regime change. There’s that damn T&I again. We CAN’T know how it will turn out. All we can know is that the current regime has stated flat out, that if they can, they will nuke Israel, and every American asset they can reach.

Once again, we have to look at capabilities, not guess at intentions. (although if you want to play the “Guess what they’re thinking” game, what they tell you they want and are going to do, is a good first guess.)

The Bad Cat wrote a really nice but convoluted piece (yeah I know, I don’t have any room to talk) on this subject, at the-iranian-inkblot-part-2. He discusses the “soft power” wants and dreams of the left, and the return of “the great game” international order of Pre World War One, and lays out the case for how Soft Power only works if you have very believable deterrent capability. In short, if they don’t think you’re willing to vaporize them, you don’t have any credibility to use force, your Soft power is also nonexistent. You should read the whole thing, it’s quite good. But, he also drifts into T&I territory a little bit, and I’m a little more of a purist in that aspect. I don’t care what they might do, or what they’re thinking. I only care “What can they do, and is that a threat to US?” If it is, then we need to either make their capability go away, or make them too fearful of OUR capability to take action.

Back in the bad old days when I was punching holes in the ocean, it was called MAD. It may not be a calming method of international diplomacy, but it worked.

Germany, who hasn’t been very wise for the last twenty plus years, is being even more boneheaded than usual. Francis Turner, (worth noting, Not an American (he’s a Brit Expat) and not living in America (he’s living in Japan) had a killer piece on this a-weekend-in-geopolitics-is-a-long-time. It covered a lot of things, but the one I want to call attention to, is this (he’s quoting from the Brawl street Journal)

The Brawl Street Journal

Rocks to Barrels

Germany is about to flood one of the largest energy reserves in Europe. The country’s largest open-pit mine, Hambach, sits on more than one billion tonnes of extractable lignite. Originally permitted to produce coal until 2045, the mine will shut down early under the…

Read more

a month ago · 102 likes · 39 comments · The Brawl Street Journal

“Germany is about to flood one of the largest energy reserves in Europe. The country’s largest open-pit mine, Hambach, sits on more than one billion tonnes of extractable lignite. Originally permitted to produce coal until 2045, the mine will shut down early under the Act to Reduce and End Coal-Fired Power Generation, passed in 2020. Its owner, RWE, received €2.6 billion in compensation for the financial burdens imposed by the law. This sum covers the early closure of coal-fired plants in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the closure of Hambach and other mines.”

Examine this for just a second. It’s not just “we want to close this mine, because we think coal is bad.” Oh no.

“We want to flood this mine, making the second deepest lake in Germany, to make it impossible economically to EVER mine this stuff again, because we are afraid that some future government might think that we were wrong, and might want to reopen the mine. We want to make this decision irreversible!”

Of course the real fun is that a bunch of the greenies are saying, “now hold on a minute, that’s going to contaminate the ground water there, ace!”

Industrialists are saying “Hey, if we can’t get oil from the middle east, and we can’t get oil from Russia, there’s a process called the Fischer-Tropsch process that can make coal into gasoline and diesel fuel.” The Greenies can’t be bothered. China is using this process, as is South Africa. Hell Germany invented the process. But see that’s not the goal, No fuel is the goal. If that completely collapses the economy, and kills half the population, well that’s just an added bonus for the Green Party.

Ask yourself who gains with this behavior.

CDR Sal hit another one out of the park, bring-rainier-and-bridge-out-of-reserve Go take a look. Sal lives on his hobby horse of “we have to do the non-sexy things that make the sexy things work.” Logistics, Logistics, Logistics. You have to have supply ships, or you can’t fight a war. Rainier and Bridge should never have been transferred from the USN to the USNS and disarmed. Yet another one of Obama’s stupidities. They should never have been decommissioned. Yet here we are.

The cure is easy. Recommission them, and rearm them. Having had the dubious pleasure of crewing a “noncombatant” ship for three interminable years, (USS McKee, AS 41) let me say that the idea that “well it’s not a combatant, it’s not supposed to be on the battle line, so we don’t need to arm it, other than a couple machine guns” is the stupidest thing in the military since “we don’t want to give pilots parachutes, because the cowards will bail out rather than try to save the aircraft.”

This is not Nelson’s navy. There’s no such thing as a “line” at sea. Anything wearing a US ensign is a target and will be attacked in a war. (Hell anything floating will be attacked, but that’s a different post.) All that making a ship a “noncombatant” and unarmed does, is make sure that the sailors on it will die, and can’t fight back… Cough, USS Liberty, Cough.

Ran into something fun, There’s a new Shibboleth. If you’re not familiar with the origin of the word; Shibboleth, was the Hebrew word for a sheaf of grain. One of the enemies of the Hebrew nation was planning on attacking them, but there’s a problem. The enemy couldn’t pronounce the word Shibboleth. SO the guards at the river crossings tied a sheaf of grain suspended from a tree limb, and asked those who crossed the river “what is that thing?”

Those that couldn’t say it right were known to be enemies and killed.

Well, our buddies in North Korea have been using the “work from home” policies of the Tech Job Empires to get into Tech companies, and commit sabotage, information theft, and just to earn lots of money for the NK regime.

Someone figured out a test. job-interviewers-come-up-with-the-absolute-best-way-to-filter-out-north-koreans-spies-applying-to-tech-positions? It seems that during the interview process, they ask the candidate to insult Little Rocket Man. See that’s a major felony in the PDRK, and it’s known that big brother is always listening. The candidates will hang up, rather than continue the interview once this question is posed. Gotta love it!

Finally, I note the departure of two dirtbags from congress this morning, Tony Gonzales, and Eric Swalwell. Both of these fuckers are serial molesters and serial rapists who have been hiding behind their congressional credentials for years. Frankly I would prefer charges, but at least they’re gone. Of course it sort of does the Democratic party a favor, because Swalwell also dropped out of the Democratic primary for California’s governorship. Make no mistake, I don’t care what letter you have after your name, one of these scumbags is a D, and one is an R. both of them should be sharing a cell with “Bubba.”

That said, I do admit to a little joy at watching the Primary for CA governor, because the Democrats violated one of Lehman’s laws of politics. They created a weapon that they wouldn’t want their opponent to have. Specifically the “jungle primary.” Top two vote getters procced to the final election in the fall.

No one could believe that those two vote getters would not include a Democrat, and most years they expected it to be a democratic run off.

This year, it’s quite possible that it will be a REPUBLICAN run off!

I’m now taking bets, and giving odds on how long before they remove that law, not just in CA but in WA, and every other place that has it, if the Republicans do indeed hold the number one and two seed.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for this week, take care and I will see you next week.

QOTD ““Amongst ourselves, we know, there is a certain code amongst us, we acknowledge among each other what occurs.” former Senate aide, referring to sexual harassers and their behavior.

I want to see people tried for concealing evidence of a crime!

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

In spite of how I may present at times, I don’t have all the answers. Then there’s the questions that can only be answered by each individual personally, because the answers are something that you must decide for yourself, after consulting with your faith, or lack thereof.

Pull up a seat, dinner tonight is yet to be determined, we’ll go through the freezer and see what sounds good. You know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

What started this exploration was something that a brother asked in a blog for Masons, that asks, in somewhat different words, “What do we, as Masons, do if we see one of our brothers losing his grasp on reality?”

Well, I want to expand on that a little. What do we do, as friends, shipmates, brothers, or family, if we see someone “losing the bubble”?

It’s an especially tough question for Masons, because we take an oath not to share things told in confidence, “murder and treason excepted.” Beyond that though, those things shared with you in confidence, even if you and the confident do not share the bond of Masonry are things that are by definition, confidential.

If you have any honor at all, at least as I define that word, you don’t share things that someone said, without permission, or at least you make sure to remove any identifying data, if you’re sharing it with people that were not part of the discussion.

My reply to the brother was:

“That’s an incredibly tough call. On the one hand, many of us are wise enough to recognize that “he’s losing it” or “there’s something not right here” On the other hand, almost none of us are trained professionals at dealing with that sort of thing. I can tell you as a former cop, that I would almost rather deal with a DV (Domestic Violence, every cops least favorite call) than with a “10-28” the name we use, because we aren’t allowed to use “Psycho” or “Nut job” and they even frown on EDP (Emotionally Disturbed Person).

We took vows of secrecy, “Murder and treason excepted.” Does calling a medical professional/ calling a crisis line or such on a brother that we think is going over the deep end violate that vow? If it doesn’t, why not? If it does, and we choose not to call professional help for a brother that we can’t get to find help on his own, what do we say, and what spiritual liability do we have if he then goes out and commits violence on himself or others?

If the brother is an older and respected member, probably a past master, maybe even a grand lodge officer, we’re most likely going to give him a pass on things that would not get a pass if he were a first year or even fifth year MM.

Is that right?

It’s understandable, but is it RIGHT?

I think it comes down to: What duty do we owe to a brother? Does that duty include doing things we think are in that brother’s best interest, even if he does not agree? Who, and by what moral yardstick do we decide?”

Now let’s expand that from the specific to the general. I have a very libertarian (small L) viewpoint. That includes things like as a competent adult, you have the right to go to hell in your own way. This includes self-destructive behavior. Basically, if it doesn’t harm other people, have at it, harming yourself is stupid, but hey, it’s your life. If you harm others, well, we have a problem.

Ah, but there’s a mealymouthed word there: “Competent.”

Who gets to define what “Competent” means? Now for purposes of this discussion, I’m going to ignore those folks with a “duty to report.” You know who you are, and what your requirements under the law are, we’re not talking about those cases. I’m also not talking about anyone reading this with a degree in psychology or psychiatry. Yes, you obviously have a full working definition of “competent” and are qualified to make that call.

What we are talking about is where does “Caring for my fellow man” or “the Community Caretaker” column stop for Joe Citizen, and “Karen, who can’t mind her own damn business” start?

At what point does your opinion of someone’s actions, words, or behavior justify the breach of trust required to report behavior to “the authorities?”

Is it different for different people? Does someone that you’ve known for decades get a pass that you wouldn’t give to someone you’ve only known for a couple months? Why, or why not?

This is an open question; I don’t pretend to have the answers for it. I have MY answer, but it’s frustratingly incomplete, and there are a lot of “well it depends” statements in it. Whether you feel like sharing it here or not, it’s a question you should ask yourself and come up with a good answer, as part of being a mature adult.

On an only slightly related note, it seems that the fact that we originally only had rescued one of the two officers in that F 15 strike eagle was leaked, along with his last known location, by someone in the US Government, to the Iranian Quds Forces.

Well, let’s see: the US constitution Article three, section three defines Treason

Clause 1 Meaning

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Is there any dispute that what we have here fits that definition?

Then we have the Crown of the UK. Now someone correct me, if I’m wrong, but I believe that “Defender of the faith” and titular head of the Church of England is still part of the title for the king or queen of the United Kingdom. Yet King Charles issued a Ramadan message, during that holiday, and refused to issue an Easter message during that holiday… Not my king, and not my faith, but DAMN. I’m pretty sure we could power all of formerly great Britian by hooking generators up to the deceased crowned heads of England.

My old friend who writes under the name of OldNFO came up with an “interesting” observation, THIS... It seems that Homeland Secretary Mullin has thrown on the table the possibility of pulling CPB and Customs Officers out of the airports in Sanctuary Cities, citing lack of cooperation and refusal of funding.

By itself that doesn’t sound that bad… until you consider that no Customs means No international flights in or out from that “Port of Entry.” Consider for just a few seconds, how much of a cluster fuck for the cities, states, and finances involved there would be if no international flights in and out of LAX, Seatac, O’Hare, Kennedy, Laguardia, Boston, Midway, Philly, and SFO was a reality.

CDR Sal put up a nice piece on Trump’s speech last week, -we-had-president-trump-give-a It’s a nice summation of the “Punitive Expedition” fan’s take on the war to date, and where we go from here.

Now in addition, I would like to say that all the folks with international law degrees from Facebook University are stoned. No, bombing bridges, dams, and power generation equipment is not a “War Crime.” Oh someone can charge it as one, but much like civil suits, you can charge anything… Getting it to stick? Well that’s something else. You could charge Trump with war crimes for farting. (Use of Toxic gas on noncombatants is a war crime) Good luck enforcing it though. What does the strike that will fall on Iran, if they miss the deadline to negotiate and open the straits look like?

Well by the time you read this, we’ll probably know. One thing I will bet on, it’s not going to look like what Obama, or Biden or even Bush did. Trump is far less interested in threats and half measures, based on behavior to date. I suspect that by the time this hits your computer, there’s going to be a lot of physical changes to the landscape of Iran.

Artemis II’s urine collection toilet apparently froze up again on the dark side of the moon… this is the third time the thing has had issues. Still, this is why you fly test flights. Nothing can test things like “will my urinal be able to flush in zero G and total shade?” except going out and trying it. I suspect the fix will be as simple as a heating wire, and it’s not as big of an issue as the press is making it. Vessels have failures during sea trials; it’s why you do sea trials.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for this week, take care and I will see you next week.

QOTD “It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

Thomas Jefferson

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

The last several posts have all been about what’s going on in the world. Well I’m going to narrow it down this post to mostly what’s going on here at home, and the state of the author. Of course there will be some mention of the rest of the world, because; hey, it’s me.

I’ve lived my life dealing with TLAs and FLAs (Three Letter Acronyms and Four Letter Acronyms.) and it seems that hasn’t changed, even now. Pull up a seat, dinner tonight is going to be whatever the Masonic District meeting is serving. You know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

It’s well known that a few of the things in my life are actually acronyms. Take BOAT (Break Out Another Thousand) and JEEP (Just Empty Every Pocket.) But until I became deeply involved in the process, I was unaware that FARM is also an acronym: Forfeit All Remaining Money. Yeah, there is some truth to the saying that the way to make a small fortune farming, is to start with a large fortune.

That said, we’re making process here on Morrigan’s-port Farm. We have a little truck patch of row crop in (about a quarter acre) an acre or so plowed up and fertilized for root vegies, I need to plow it again to put the fertilizer and lime into the soil before I seed, but right now, I’ve got the back hoe on the tractor, and that thing is enough of a PITA (there’s those damn acronyms again) that I want to make sure I’m pretty much done with it for a while, before I swap out.

We dropped a big sycamore (well, had it dropped, I know my limitations, and felling a 150 foot tall tree with a 40-inch bole that is hollow and rotten is outside them.) and the two hickory trees that were in the way, and we’ve been cutting that up into lengths for the stuff that will make planks, and the rest into firewood. The backhoe is wonderful for that work, because it has a thumb and I can pick up a piece 15 foot long, and chop that sucker into 16 inch lengths Lickety-split, without bending over. If there’s one thing we’ll be well set on, it will be firewood.

We set up the one-hundred-yard rifle range, and certified it with an inaugural set of rounds. And we’ve got the “Training field” for the pigs established, with a shelter for the hogs, and are working on putting in the watering system, finishing the fencing, and so on. Pigs, it seems, are smart enough to recognize “White ribbon BITES, don’t touch it!” in short order. You have to put a hard fence outside the electric wire, while you’re getting them to understand the concept, because about half the pigs will deal with the shock by trying to charge through it. That’s where the hard fence comes in. Now you’re charging into the wire held by the solid wire and being continuously zapped. Well, Pig headed or no, that doesn’t last very long before Mr. Hog decides “well, this sucks, lets just stay clear of that in future.”

Once they figure that out, you can just move them around, put the portable electric wire posts in the ground, and know that they’ll respect it. I figure we’ll have hogs on the property in about two to three weeks, a month at the outside.

We’ve also been reaching out to the various “Pros from Dover”; we had the county extension boys out here this morning, got a pond expert coming to give a price on fixing the spill way for the dam tomorrow, and the state forestry guy out on Thursday.

The guys are building the foundation for the house today, and will pour concrete tomorrow, while they’re here, they’re ditching for power and water to the bunkhouses.

If you want to truly test your marriage, there are few things (long deployments being one) better for the job than living together with a dog and a cat in a 34 foot RV for nine months or so. At least now that the weather is nice, we can spend most of the time outdoors, but yeah, it’s challenging.

To make life even better, my darling children, (who are out on their own) are having various forms of family drama, and, understandably, are reaching back to the ‘rents for advice, a sounding board, and just to bitch. I love my kids, but it’s an additional strain on the old nerves sometimes.

Publishing! Well, as Declan Finn noted in his blog

Declan’s Newsletter

What Fresh Hell is this?

About a week and change ago, I learned a fun new fact…

Read more

a month ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · Declan Finn

Three Ravens Press (my publisher until now) is retrenching, divesting themselves of all their properties except the ones that the publisher himself writes. That means a lot of orphaned books. Declan is going to self-publish his, and that’s great for him, he’s got the skill set to do it. Me? I’m shilling it to other presses, in the hopes that I can get one to pick up my stuff.

I want to get on with Raconteur Press

https://www.raconteurpress.com/

I know them, I like their people, and we have the same sort of mindset. So I’ve sent Harvest of Evil to them, and as soon as I get the reformatting done, I’ll send the rest of the Fisher series, and the start of the Scout Ship series to them to look at.

Three Ravens Press was good to me, but their editor, while very talented, put a shitload of “artifacts” in my books, that I need to clear out, so that I can send a clean copy to RP. This is the drudgery part of writing. It’s not as bad as marketing, but yeah, it’s not my favorite, by light years.

Under any circumstances, I am completely unsure at this point, how this is going to affect my releases. I know TRP is going to continue to carry what is published, including the audio book, until I find them a new home, but the new stuff??? Well, I just don’t know.

Hey, I needed something to keep me busy and unbored, right?

Right?

Along with all this, the Masonic lodge Calendar keeps getting more populated, but that at least is in the evening.

Our partners in this farming thing are still trying to get their house in WA sold, which is a saga in itself, but not my tale to tell. Suffice it to say that if they get here, and have their new house before the snow flies, it will be a minor miracle.

So that’s the state of the author, right now.

CDR Sal has put out a couple of very good posts that are mandatory reading if you want to understand what is going on in the world of the Navy, and the War in Iran. the-missiles-to-diego-garcia-subtext , base-defense-how-many-more-warnings and you-dont-think-theres-a-plan-really? If you don’t read him habitually, (and you should) at least read those.

Artemis II launches tomorrow afternoon, weather permitting. We have lost a half century in our space program, for no good reason. It’s about time we started sending men to other bodies again! NASA went from Risk Irrelevance Due to Commercial Obligations, under that never to be sufficiently despised Shuttle, to Risk intolerant at the end of the program. The Shuttle was a side show, a waste of money to be honest. There’s nothing that it could do, that couldn’t be done with normal rockets cheaper. To my knowledge, there’s nothing that we learned from that glorified pick up truck with a two foot bed, that couldn’t have been better learned by going in the direction that Musk eventually went.

All that said, at least we’re trying to get back on track now. Manned Flight, to other planets is the next step, a fueling and research station on the moon is a nice side line, and might be needed in the short term in the same way that Coal Stations on remote islands was once needed in the short term. That said, it’s a side hustle, not the main event. Ad Astra!

I see where the South Carolina former Governor, Mark Sanford, who walked off his post in 2009, claiming that he was going to hike the Appalachian Trial, while in fact hiking up his mistress’s skirts down in Argentina… is running to get his old Congressional seat back… SC if you elect this weasel, you have no one to blame but yourselves. It’s going to be like Virginia’s gubernatorial race, and you’ll deserve everything you get.

QOTD “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war” Pope Leo XIV.

Oh really? So all those crusades, all the holy wars preached by all the popes through out history, as well as all the wars demanded by Yahweh over the millennia… Those never happened, or did your God just not approve of them, even though he demanded them?

The verse the Pope quoted actually deals with sacrifices, and talks about how the hypocrisy of the church of the Israelites had become too much for their God, and he was tired of their shit, saying in Isaia:

13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.

14 Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals

I hate with all my being.

They have become a burden to me;

I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers,

I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

16 Wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;

stop doing wrong.

17 Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.[a]

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

plead the case of the widow.

Now it seems to me that this has nothing to do with going to war… but obviously I’m wrong, because the Pope is supposed to be infallible on the subject, right?

Right?

Humm, I’ll stick with Odin, thanks.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

The number of people whose beliefs and values I disagree with, are legion. That said, I can usually respect a person, even though I disagree with their beliefs, as long as they’re true to those beliefs. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule, if your beliefs are “Everyone must believe as I do, or be killed,” for example… (looking at much of the Muslim leadership here) yeah, you’re best service to humanity would be as pig food. Still, there’s a number of people whose beliefs I just can not get behind, yet I respect them for their beliefs and their honesty, whether they share that respect or not.

What I have real problems with is hypocrites. I’m not talking about the guy who had a “Road to Damascus” moment, stands up and says “Look, I was wrong. I believed X, and I’ve seen enough evidence that X is, frankly, fucked up, that I now believe Y, and let me tell you why.” I’m talking about the guy who says things like “All Q are evil, and need to be run out of town on a rail” until someone they dislike says “we’re going to do something about Q,” and then change their tune to “Q are great, why is that dickhead ranting against Q? We need MORE Q.”

Today I’m going to hold my little spotlight on a few of these folks.

Pull up a seat, dinner tonight is going to be a beef barley stew, because we have a butt ton of beef stock from last night’s dinner. You know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

The first group to get lit up is going to be The Atlantic. I’ll give a hat tip to fellow author Richard D. Cartwright for calling my attention to this, as I avoid that rag like the plague, but he called it to my attention.

Before I get to their latest lunacy, I’m going to pick on their ad agency for a second. Why? Because of their latest add, that they run about five times during each 45 minute episode of one of the very few things that I watch on TV. Specifically, the latest cinematic version of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small. I’ve loved these tales since I first found the books, and this version follows the stories faithfully (as far as I can remember) with great acting, and true characterization. The cast is great, and if the stories have a little more meaning to me, now that I’m trying to start a small farm, instead of just growing up in a farming area… well…

ANYWAY, their ad, “A is for” misses a few “A”s like Assholes, Awful, and Arrogant. It finishes with the claim “Atlantic, Explaining America to the world.” Mothafucka, you all need someone to explain America to YOU. America is NOT Downtown Manhattan for fifteen blocks, The Water Street District of D.C. and ‘The Vineyard in the season.” It’s not Foggy Bottom, and “all the right people, who go to all the right parties.”

That said, what drew Richard to bring that birdcage liner to my attention was their article on donald-trump-nothing-like-robert-mueller

Now their dragging up a bunch of stuff that never happened, and reports since discredited; things like Trump calling American war dead “losers and suckers” and stating that Trump once complained to the JCS chairman that “no one wants to see that, the wounded” both claims made by their rag, and denied by everyone who was there, is just par for the course.

They’re mainstream media whores, if they can quote themselves and get a few more eyes dragged across their article, well that might stave off the bankruptcy court for another few days, and when they’re advertising on PBS five times in a forty-five-minute TV show, they’re desperately trying to stave that off. The only other advertisement I remember seeing on that venue was the “famous” Jaguar commercial, and we know how that went, right?

But the thing that really gets me is how they’re hugging up to Mueller for his service in the Vietnam war. These fuckers are the same folks that called the guys coming home from the war ‘war criminals’ and ‘baby killers.’

Understand a few things; I’m not Christian, my faith embraces the idea that there are enemies and bad people in the world, and that some of them just need killin. I don’t believe in “turn the other cheek.” I’m rather more a fan of execute that murderer, and for treason, well the “blood eagle” is a fine old tradition.

Mueller was not an honorable human being, and I refuse to pretend he was. Before you say “well Trump!” I’m not saying he’s honorable either. He’s a flawed, okay, very flawed, man.

If we want to list his flaws, Maybe I’ll devote a column to that one day. That said, he has done more to restore power to the US in international affairs than any president since R.R. And that alone gets him a pass on some things, in my eyes. If you don’t agree, and if you think that his domestic policies are a shit show, well, I don’t care. The president frankly should not have anywhere near the power that a current president does, to influence internal policies.

So if that’s your complaint, FIX IT, get congress to reclaim some of the power they have ceded to the various agencies that work for the Executive Branch, and make them functional again, because they sure as fuck are not functional right now. SCOTUS has made it clear on several occasions that there’s more power being wielded by administrative agencies (all of which work for the Executive, if you don’t understand that, go back to school and relearn how the three branches of government work.) We’re going to hit on this more later.

Mueller was a perfect example of excess power in appointed positions. He was the most corrupt and partisan director of the FBI since J Edger himself. I’ve covered some of the stuff that has come out about “secret documents hidden even from most directors” before, so I’m not going to belabor that here, but I will say that Mueller did his very best to reform the FBI from the rather partisan agency that it has been since birth, to the US version of the Stasi, or the Gestapo, and the fact that he didn’t quite make it, had more to do with his inability and his running out of time, than his desires.

I don’t care that he was a combat vet, SO AM I, so what? That entitles you to membership in the VFW, and maybe to a slightly higher pension. It does not, now or ever, make you infallible, or even necessarily a good person. Guess what, Herman Goring was a combat vet too. So was Khrushchev, and not even the Russians like him! (our tour guide called him “that fat stupid peasant farmer from Ukraine.”) Combat may make you a hero, it may be necessary, it does not grant you infallibility.

Then there’s Rachel Mad Cow, who screamed last year that “Trump is going to ignore Iran until they have a nuclear warhead pointed at us, and then it will be too late.” Only to change her tune to “Trump has no right to strike Iran” now. Along with Chucky Schumer, who was very supportive of requiring in person voter registration, and removal of illegal aliens from the voting rolls in the late 90s; and is now frothing at the mouth now about how “that’s racist hate speech”.

In fact I find it hilarious, (loathsome, but hilarious) how many people reverse their views just because Trump comes down on the side they used to be on.

I’ll put the entire leadership of the BATFE on the list too. (we’re back to Executive branch agencies acting badly) Now there may be, somewhere in the ATF’s rank and file, a man of honor and integrity, but I’ve never met one.

If you look up “deep state” or colloquially, “the swamp” you find pictures of everyone from second level supervisors on up to the director of the ATF.

First, they were for “Stabilizing Braces” for handguns. They said that “absolutely those are legal” in formal findings and letters to several manufacturers. Then under President Auto-pen, They said “These convert a pistol to a SBR (short barreled rifle) and by putting one on a pistol, you are committing a felony. Then one of the people who were charged, took the whole thing to court, and the entire ruling by the ATF was vacated. And the ATF agreed that it was vacated.

Then they said that “well, we reserve the right to continue bringing felony prosecutions on this.” So Texas sued in Texas v ATF. Now the ATF is moving to throw the suit out, because the rule is “formally nullified and revoked[.]”

To which Texas answers, uh, if they’re still “reserving the right to…” then there’s still live issues, your honor, and dismissing the case as moot is justice denied.

Well, the response to that, as quoted by the NRA-ILA is the most ridiculous piece of doublespeak and circular logic I’ve seen in a while, and I’ll quote it here in it’s entirety in the hope that someone can make sense of this bullshit:

Plaintiffs also make much of the fact that defendants [i.e., the ATF] continue to enforce the NFA’s and the GCA’s regulation of short barreled rifles against some brace-equipped pistols, even though the Rule has been universally vacated. But that should come as no surprise, as that is consistent with how [ATF] have always explained how things work if a court vacated the Rule or enjoined its enforcement. … At any rate, that [ATF] continue to enforce certain statutory requirements and prohibitions that they have been delegated the authority and responsibility to administer is irrelevant to whether plaintiffs’ APA challenge to the now defunct rule is moot.

The best translation I can get from this is “well, that’s the way we’ve always done business, we were delegated the power to do what we want, and how dare you question it.”

ATF Delinda Est. Put any needful (damn little) regulatory power remaining under the USDA for alcohol, and tobacco, and the Department of Commerce for Firearms. For Explosives, give it to the Secret Service.

The NRA suggests this is just a couple career lawyers trying to keep as much flexibility for the department they work for, as they can. I think it’s a bunch of Swamp denizens conducting a holding action, in hopes that once Trump goes away, they can go back to their old shit.

Also on the “back to their old shit” files, we have Iran, who is continuing to attack (mostly ineffectively, though they did get a couple missiles or drones through) Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, because the US and Israel are blowing up everything that they can find of the Iranian government, the Iranian Military and the IRGC. Along with hanging their international sports stars while complaining that the US can’t guarantee their (Iranian) sports stars safety, if they come to the international Soccer championships. All the while US press is crying about how America is losing the war on Iran because we can’t find enough shit to blow up, and Iran keeps taking out our missiles with government leaders and ammo dumps.

If none of that makes sense to you, it’s because you can’t understand the mind sets of the players involved. It’s quite simple: Iran believes that the “twelfth Iman” which is their flavor of “the return of the savior” or the arrival of the savior, if you’re Jewish, or Ragnarok… can be forced, by the creation of World War Three. (or four, depending on how you look at it.)

See, the theory looks like this. God (Allah) promised that he will send a final leader, then come down and lead the hosts himself against the army of nonbelievers in the final war. After which we’ll have peace on earth under gods will, everyone gets their seventy-two virgins, and we call it a wrap. (of course the happiness of the seventy-two virgins is irrelevant, because to the Muslims, especially the ones of this flavor, women ain’t people, they’re just possessions and sperm receptacles.) They believe they can force their God’s hand, and create that final war. Since Allah promised that in the end we win, they lose, well the worse we’re losing, the more likely it is that Allah will come and finish this. Yes, I know it’s loony-tunes, but it’s what they believe.

As for the press, they’re trying everything they can, to make those people and their beliefs successful, because anything is preferable to Trump winning, ever, at anything. And yes, I know that’s loony-toons too, but that’s why people say TDS is a mental illness. People would rather give global power to someone that stones women to death for showing their hair, than to Trump. If you’re looking for sanity, you are looking in the wrong isle.

Some company in Chattanooga called Lodestar Technology, has marketed a pistol that is supposed to be locked and inert until it receives a registered fingerprint, a four-digit passcode, or authorization from a mobile app. chattanooga-company-launches-smart-gun- “with a one second fingerprint scan the gun becomes operational.” Stop me if you’ve heard this before…

So, how many of us have smart phones? How often has your smart phone refused to recognize your fingerprint, because your hand is wet, or dirty, or the phone is having that time of the month?

Now, imagine, instead of wanting to call someone, or look up who the guy they named that bridge after was, you were trying to get your gun to work because some motherfucker was shooting at you… Oh but it’ll work with an App… That’s great, as long as your phone is with you, you have service, it’s charged up, and your phone isn’t being pissy today… AND you have enough time to get to the app, and tell it to unlock your gun, so you can shoot the bad guy, who’s pumping bullets into you while you fiddle around on your phone.

Wait, you can enter a four-digit code. Just a second mister thug, I have to type this in here. Okay, now I am ready to resist you. That only works if you’re the three musketeers.

Well, what if we gave it to cops? Sure, Officer down, back up officer is out of rounds, picks up downed officers’ gun to continue the battle: Gun, “Oy, what you doing? you’re not the boss of me!”

“Piss off machine, your boss is bleeding out, and I’m going to be too if you don’t put lead into the bad guys!”

“Right, lets see your fingerprint then. No you wanker, I can’t see it through all the blood on your finger, clean it off!”

“Never mind, Machine, I just took a round between the eyes.”

Texas is experiencing the joys of a legislature more interested in being a group of “mean girls” than a governing body. Seems there’s a bill in the house that would challenge a SCOTUS ruling from 1982 demanding that the states educate illegal immigrant kids for free. Most of the Republicans (which is enough to get it made into law) agree that this would be a good idea…

Ah, but it seems the guy that wrote it, is someone that’s “on the outs” with the Republican Party. https://texasscorecard.com/state/author-problem-white-house-summit-exposes-rift-over-texas-bill-to-end-free-education-for-illegals/ see “in the culture of the Texas House, that (an author problem) is when legislation is authored by someone whom the lobby or the chamber’s leadership simply does not like.” Yeah, apparently for the mean girls in Austin, who you kiss is more important than whether you have a good idea or not.

QOTD CSU Professor O’Quinn: “As a lesbian, I got plenty of girlfriends with PENlSES, okay?” (so, she’s straight with extra steps???)

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

On Quora this morning, I was asked “With more than 100 Iranian ships destroyed so far in Operation Epic Fury, is there practically no way Iran can sustain naval attacks?”

Well, since I’ve been asked that sort of thing in several places, I felt the need to respond, and to also post that response here:

That depends on what you define as a “Naval attack.” As another poster mentioned, Ukraine has been successful at attacking naval shipping without a navy, so there’s that.

Not that those attacks would be very successful against a USN Warship, but then Iran’s history isn’t exactly replete with successful attacks against warships to begin with, that’s not their style. They lean towards attacks on merchant shipping that’s undefended, like any other cowardly pirate.

When they do attack a warship, it’s generally with a mine, or several frigates v some patrol boats who are under orders not to fight. (that was a great game when president Autopen was pretending to be in charge, but this is a new game.)

There are mines that can literally be tossed over the sides of rowboats. Italy makes them, and exports them to anyone with the cash. Like this one

https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/naval-devices/manta-mn-103-seamine

and others that are even harder to sweep.
As long as Iran has a coast, they can make attacks. Infantry with an anti tank missile can make an attack.

Successful attacks? Well, again, depends on your meaning of success. If hitting the enemy, and getting a bunch of press coverage from western newspapers that are looking for a way to make President Trump look bad, is your definition of success, Iran will always be able to be successful. again, an infantryman with a missile, a ROV, or a fucking mortar can make a “successful” attack that meets that criteria.

The other extreme, is if you define success as “I put enemy ships, or even better, enemy warships on the bottom of the ocean.” Well, I’m not sure the Iranian navy was EVER capable of that. Even the merchants they have attacked to great hand wringing, and Delphic chorus levels of “Oh we’re doomed, we’ve lost the war” screeching from the morons in the MSM never actually sank anything. They put a few on fire, they did some damage to a few more, and scratched the paint on several, but sank? Not so much.

The only ways to stop them from achieving that first type of success, is to either declare a five mile or so belt on their coast and major rivers that open to the Gulf as “no go zones” and completely destroy anything bigger than a chicken coop or outhouse that is in that swath, then patrol it constantly killing anything bigger than a goat that moves on it. Or regime change. Western press will always play up any attack with that afore mentioned chorus, because they frankly hate Trump, America, and anything that affects their bosses control of the world.

Iran is betting the press will be there for them, like the press was there for North Vietnam. It’s a good bet, and a safe one, for the afore mentioned reasons.

The only ways I see to beat that strategy is to either make this the Punitive Expedition that it started as, with:

“I’m going to destroy your means to threaten me and mine, and destroy your means of governing, then wash my hands and walk away whistling, while shouting over my shoulder “It’s in your hands now People of Iran, chose a government that suits you, and become a civilized nation, OR, put more people in charge like those we just killed, and keep going as you were. But know that if you chose the second option, and they start threatening me and my friends again, we’ll be back, and we’ll pave this place.”

Or,

Make it an actual war, declared, and go in, attack, occupy, and stay there, occupying the former nation of Iran while we help them write a constitution, manage their affairs, and generally act as their daddy for decades, while they change their culture. This involves war trials, occupation forces, and the willingness to stay there for decades, like we did Japan.

That second option will be damn unpalatable to the American people. It will also be unpopular with Europe, and most of the rest of the world, but I don’t give a fuck about that. Europe has proven that they lack the will to fight even to save themselves, so their approval is neither required or desired. The American people, however… you can’t do this without them. Short of lining a bunch of “News men” up, trying them for treason after the war is declared: (Treason against the United States is defined as levying war against the country or adhering to its enemies by giving them aid and comfort. Giving them aid and comfort is solidly something that the press did in Vietnam, and has been doing in the GWOT, the trick will be not putting the case in front of the same sort of judge that has ordered the release of murderers of baby rapiers because they are illegal immigrants…) I don’t see another way to get the people to support a prolonged operation. As soon as our citizens are bored, and the press continues to shrilly scream that “One death, one attack, is too many, OMG those poor Iranians never did anything!” you lose the support needed to make “nation building” Work.

No, I’m going to stick with “break their shit, kill the leaders who made bad decisions, and walk away.” I will support going so far as to make “US AID drops of food, weapons, ammunition, and manuals on how to take over a government through revolution, and how to write a good constitution so as to maximize the potential for freedom… and maybe a few covert advisors, like the Greenie Beanies.”

Yours in service
William Lehman

The elephant in the room is still the Iranian war. It’s not just the war though, but the reactions to the war, how the rest of the politics both nationally and internationally is affected.

Pull up a seat, dinner tonight is whatever the VFW is feeding after the business meeting, You know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

First, let’s talk about what’s going on in the naval front of the war. Iran is still shooting at anything that moves through the Straits of Hormuz, except for Indian and PRC ships. Now I can understand why they aren’t messing with those two, The PRC is their sugar daddy, and you just don’t want to piss daddy off, when he’s the only thing keeping you in robes and beans. I also understand why they aren’t shooting at India… Hell, India has a better navy than the PRC, maybe not in numbers, but in quality and ships local to the battle. When you already have the USN pounding down your door, and you’ve pissed in the Wheaties of the rest of your neighbors, as well as most of Europe, keeping India’s ships out of the battle field is just good sense.

What I don’t understand, (I mean, I do, but I think we’re fucking up) is that we are giving the Iranian flagged Tankers a free pass. Yes, you read that right, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/us-is-allowing-iranian-tankers-through-strait-of-hormuz-says-bessent.html The US Treasury Secretary has said, that in the interest of allowing the rest of the world to keep their oil supplies in good shape, we’re not going to stop Iran from shipping oil.

Personally, I think this is a mistake. This is the same sort of stuff that we saw in Vietnam, were we would only attack the enemy if they were on the correct side of some imaginary line on a map. Yes it keeps some of our “allies” happy. What have those allies done for us lately? It’s so bad that when the USS Charlotte lined up the IRIS Dena in her sights, all the Australian sailors on board were sent to bed.

Yeah, you read that right, they were told to “go to your racks.” Even the Australian press is shamed by this,

Tony Abbott

Submarine Tourists

Australian forces have long been fastidious about “rules of engagement”. But sending personnel to their bunks while their US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate takes this combat caution to new levels. What kind of an ally puts its sailors on warships as tourists, should action beckon? How can Australians learn how to operate nuclear-powered submarines, if they go missing when the pressure is on…

Read more

2 months ago · 41 likes · 1 comment · Tony Abbott

and asking “Being allies like this, why would the US sell five Virginia class submarines to us, if they can’t trust us to use them at need?” Read the whole thing, he calls a lot of people out on the carpet, including all of NATO.

Most of my day today was spent dealing with doctors, it seems my Diverticulitis has decided to rear it’s ugly head, which is why my stomach has been kicking my ass for the last four days… So this is going to be very truncated, as I need to get it on the boards, and get to the VFW for the evening meeting.

Julie Kelly hit it out of the park on

Declassified with Julie Kelly

Denial of Executive Privilege is the Latest Karmic Episode for Democrats

It bears repeating—over and over and over—that the events of January 6, 2021 were intended not only to result in the imprisonment of Donald Trump but also to deliver a fatal blow to the entire MAGA movement. No other day in American history, not even 9/11, has produced more media coverage, more investigations, more arrests (that is certain), more indict…

Read more

2 months ago · 423 likes · 34 comments · Julie Kelly

you should go read it, but first, remove anything breakable from your desk.

I have to say this, Now understand that I served for a full career. I lost brothers while I was in the service, and since. Loosing a single American soldier is a tragedy. That said:

First, the shear hypocrisy of ass-wipes like politico sobbing about the loss of six troops, in the whole war, (yes, I know we also lost the crew of a tanker, but no matter what bullshit MAD Magazine intelligence on Facebook tells you, that was not a combat loss, that was some sort of equipment or pilot error. No one shot at them.) is just too much for me, where were they when the guys got blown to shit during the Afghanistan abandonment?

Second, dude, honestly if we get out of this with a butchers bill with only three digits, that’s a military miracle equaled only by the second coming of Patton. Now one thing that the aforementioned ass-wipes have right is that Ukraine has offered us their counter drone tech, and we’re idiots if we don’t take them up on it. They’ve developed drone on drone warfare on the cheep to a fine art, and the biggest question I have, is WHY THE FUCK ARE WE NOT ALLREADY BUILDING THESE BY THE MILLIONS?

Ukraine’s “Octopus” Changes the Air Defense Fight

Ukraine is fielding a new interceptor drone called Octopus, and it could be a major shift in how modern wars deal with swarms of cheap attack UAVs. Instead of burning through expensive missile systems to shoot down Iranian-designed Shahed / Geran one-way attack drones, Octopus offers a faster, cheaper, and more scalable solution.

Built as a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) interceptor, Octopus can launch from dispersed locations without needing a runway. Once airborne, it can accelerate past 300 km/h and use autonomous terminal guidance with image recognition to hunt slow, low-flying drones — even at night, at low altitude, and in heavy electronic jamming, which are exactly the conditions Shahed-type systems are designed to exploit.

The “some asshole” that shot up the Old Dominion University ROTC classroom, before being knifed to death by the students turns out to the brother of a commander in Hezbollah. He was a nationalized American Citizen, who came in on Obama’s watch. Seriously? I’m not saying Obama was a Muslim mole, I’m asking, “If he was one, what would he have done differently?”

Oh, and we’re told that the shooting at ODU, and the failed car bomber/failed mass shooter that attacked the West Bloomfield synagogue the same day were “unrelated.” This by the same people that claim both of these attacks “Motives are unknown!” Further, the Fearless Band of Idiots tells us that the class in ODU “unalived” or “made unable to continue” the assailant.

Oh my fucking Christ on a Crutch. When the FBI is afraid to use “Killed” and “Dead” it’s time to just throw the whole agency in the trash bin. As much as I hate J.E. Hover, I bet he’s rolling in his grave over this shit.

Term limits: Rep Jim Clyburn D-S.C. is seeking an eighteenth Term in office at age 85!!! Motherfucker has been in office since 1992. Come on, people, Term limits now, Term limits for ever.

I think I mentioned last week that Iran’s female soccer team was trying to defect, well it seems they’re all withdrawing their requests now. Now that all their families have been locked up and threatened with firing squads that is.

I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for their chance of surviving a week once they get back home. Those girls will be raped then hung. (Raped to ensure that they can’t get in to paradise according to the fucked up faith that Iran follows.)

Mike Smith hit it out of the park with moral-clarity-is-not-optional go read it, you can thank me later.

In other news, it seems that even the wild life of the UK are aware that it’s time to Di-di-mou. A red fox, and no not the dead comedian, sneaked aboard a US bound cargo ship, to claim asylum in the US. Now the fact that he wound up in NYC (in the Bronx zoo) well, I did say he was RED, right?

Also from the UK, it seems that the UK has decided to replace Sir Winston, Will Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale, and Jane Austen, with badgers, ferrets, and insects. Humans are being removed from the pound notes, and replaced with wildlife. Yeah, the story is that “well they’re harder to counterfeit.” Uh huh. Hey, we still love ya Winney.

Look folks I gotta go, hope to have more to say next week.

QOTD From the “It’s not your money, it’s just money we haven’t figured out how to steal yet” files: “My view is that there is a huge amount of wealth ... that currently is going untaxed that can be put to important uses for the rest of the country.” —Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

Welcome to a special edition of the Scuttlebutt. A man I respect, Cameron M. Bailey posted a blog this morning on the war in Iran, at

Cameron M. Bailey

The War In Iran

I’m not a fan of foreign wars. Particularly those wars fought for nebulous reasons, without clear objectives, and lacking widespread support. We must never waste American treasure, or much more importantly, brave young American lives…

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2 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Cameron M. Bailey

And I felt called to comment on it. What started as a comment, has become enough of an essay that I felt the need to share it.

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I hadn’t planned on doing two back-to-back articles on the elimination of Iran’s theocracy, but obviously there’s stuff here that is so in my wheelhouse, it’s running the helm and talking on the One MC. There will of course be other things discussed in this post, but number one with a bullet is the war on Iran.

Oh, and Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) What it…

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My adult life has been filled with dealing with the mad Mullahs. I enlisted under the Delayed Entry Program just before the fall of the Shah. I was placed on “don’t leave town or get out of touch because we may call you up early” after Khomeini pulled his shit. I knew a guy (he had been one of the ‘adult’ leadership while I was part of the YCC) who lost…

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Pull up a seat, Dinner tonight is spaghetti and meat sauce, You know where the drinks are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess. Lately this blog has been mostly about national and international politics, and Yes, we’re going to talk about that too today, but first I would like to blow my own horn for a secon…

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We know more, and understand less, are provided more information, should we chose to seek it, with less work, than any time in history; but with information does not come wisdom. Contrarywise, it is probably some of the “least informed” individuals that may be the wisest. Let’s explore that today.

Dinner tonight is whatever the VFW is serving, it’s a bus…

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One of the most ancient forms of trap in history is the “Funnel Trap.” If you look on the internet, you mostly find references to funnel fish traps, bug traps, and the “Fatal Funnel” so well known to anyone in Law Enforcement or trained in CQB. (For those of you that are neither, it refers to doorways and hallways, where you’re forced into a narrow poin…

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Apparently night cafe’s AI can’t figure out what a green eyeshade is... Sigh

The things that don’t add up are legion, but I’m going to just talk about a few of them today. Dinner tonight is Chicken Alfredo, You know where the drinks are, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess. Let’s begin!

Among the many things that don’t add up…

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In an old black and white John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart movie called “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” a newspaper man tells the hero of the piece “When Legend becomes Fact, print the Legend.” Meaning; tell the people what you want them to know, even if it’s not true. We’re going to talk about that today; but first, Get in out of the cold damn it! Seven d…

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