Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 6:39:24 AM

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Good morning.

It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. 

lucius septimius 3/31/2022 7:17:54 AM

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vxbush 3/31/2022 7:21:37 AM

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In #2 lucius septimius said: Those potatoes are sort of disappointing,

Whereas I have to keep imagining the coffee is hot chocolate. 

lucius septimius 3/31/2022 7:22:00 AM

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Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 7:37:28 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 4:

Don't even ask me what the bill was the last time I took the OR-mobile in for "scheduled" maintenance... which turned out to have some unscheduled maintenance included.  I still weep to think of it.  

lucius septimius 3/31/2022 7:40:07 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 5:

Once we sell the place in Florida I really think I need to just bite the bullet and get myself something newer.  And that mom hadn't been in a dozen accidents in.

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 7:56:47 AM

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In #6 lucius septimius said: Once we sell the place in Florida I really think I need to just bite the bullet and get myself something newer.  And that mom hadn't been in a dozen accidents in.

Pete Buttigieg (sp?) says you should buy an $80,000 Tesla, peasant.  

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 8:01:26 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 5:

OR---re your self-imposed period of abstinence from strong waters, the story goes that Don Marquis, creator of archy the cockroach, was quite the heavy drinker (common among newsies back in the day, and particularly during Prohibition).

At some point, he went on the wagon, but after a prolonged absence from his usual haunts, one day he reappeared in one, with the announcement, "I've conquered that goddam willpower of mine.  Gimme a drink."

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 8:03:49 AM

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One thing I noticed while doing oppo-research, listening to NPR report about the Shanghai COVID lockdown; the NPR types chirpily referred to the "logistical" difficulties of doing this.

That was the optic. It's logistically hard!

Not, you know... it's an authoritarian nightmare. Nope, the real problem is logistics.

Call it the "Eichmann Perspective".

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 8:06:17 AM

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In #8 buzzsawmonkey said: "I've conquered that goddam willpower of mine.  Gimme a drink."

Heh.  Sounds very Don Marquis.

No, I'm happy to report that, while I'm looking forward to a glass of Pinot Noir tomorrow with my planned steak dinner, I found the alcohol-free month remarkably easy to do.  I had heard of the concept of people becoming dependent on as little as one drink per day.  Fortunately, that does not seem to be my case. 

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 8:12:16 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 10:

Hell, if you're going to be dependent, why limit yourself to one glass?  You might as well be hung for a sheep instead of a lamb.

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 8:33:27 AM

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In #11 buzzsawmonkey said: You might as well be hung for a sheep

I think sheep, by definition, are never "hung"...

/but what do I know, I'm not a biologist

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 8:36:31 AM

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In #12 Occasional Reader said: I think sheep, by definition, are never "hung"... /but what do I know, I'm not a biologist

Be careful not to end up in the gutter swilling Woolite.

vxbush 3/31/2022 8:37:29 AM

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In #12 Occasional Reader said: but what do I know, I'm not a biologist

Why are ewe being difficult? 

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 8:55:22 AM

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An important public service announcement, from Will Smith.

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 9:06:35 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 15: Reply to Occasional Reader in 15:

I guess Will decided there is a first fist time for everything.

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 9:13:12 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 16:

As WriterMom used to say: "irony is so, like, ironic."

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 9:40:01 AM

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Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 9:42:59 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 18:

+++++++

The Palis say "Stop trying to prevent us from being violent or we'll be violent" (article)

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 10:08:17 AM

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Great moments in Progressive Virtue-Signaling.

I passed a bus shelter ad for the fairly-recently-opened Amazon Fresh supermarket in the Friendship Heights neighborhood here in DC.

The sign reads:  "Now Open".  Then, a large photo of an interracial couple, with a mixed-race small child.  Below that, the slogan:  "All Are Welcome". 

And I thought: Finally!   

Finally there's a supermarket in DC at which I can go shopping with my mixed-race son in peace!  One in which the manager won't immediately come running out and yell, "hey!  We don't serve his kind in here!" 

Because, you know, that happens all the time.  

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 10:08:51 AM

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In #18 buzzsawmonkey said: Ramadan is just around the corner! 

It seems Ramadan comes earlier every year...

/hat tip: Mark Steyn

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 10:20:59 AM

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In #21 Occasional Reader said: It seems Ramadan comes earlier every year...

...and they always Ramadan our throats.

vxbush 3/31/2022 10:22:28 AM

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In #19 Kosh's Shadow said: The Palis say "Stop trying to prevent us from being violent or we'll be violent" (article)

They didn't cover anyone from the Israeli government to get their position? Wow. 

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 10:49:00 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 21:

The Islamic calendar is purely lunar, unlike the Hebrew and Chinese lunar calendars which have adjustments to keep in sync with the seasons.

When agriculture is important, the religious calendar needs to keep in sync with the seasons, No need when the only seasonal activity is EXTRA jihad.

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 11:49:25 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 11:49:25 AM

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lucius septimius 3/31/2022 11:51:37 AM

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In #20 Occasional Reader said: We don't serve his kind in here!"  Because, you know, that happens all the time.  

All I know is that at our Fresh Market they always make my droids wait outside.

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 12:31:35 PM

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Randomized discussion question:

I caught most of the Russian movie Stalingrad  (2013) last night on the teevee, and it got me wondering: Globally speaking, what was the high water mark for the Axis/corresponding low point for the Allies, during the war?  Obviously individual countries would have their own answer for that; but overall? 

Me, I'd put it at somewhere between spring 1942 and late summer of the same year.   But it's hard to say exactly where. 

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 12:48:14 PM

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In #27 lucius septimius said: All I know is that at our Fresh Market they always make my droids wait outside.

Well, you live in a wretched hive of scum and villainy, so that's not surprising.

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 12:48:31 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 28:

I'd put it in the same range = after Midway (June1942) and around Nov 1942 with both Stalingrad and Allies push well into North Africa.

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 12:50:13 PM

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In #28 Occasional Reader said: the Russian movie Stalingrad  (2013) 

By the way; it's not very good.  Not to be confused with the 1993 German movie of the same name, which was quite good.  (Yeah, Russians, sorry, but the Germans made a better movie about Stalingrad than you did.) 

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 12:55:44 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 31:

Reminds me that many years ago, I watched the Russian science fiction movie "Solaris" (based on the novel of the same name by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem).

The movie was incomprehensible. I think it was a Soviet response to "2001" - "Comrades, the Capitalists have a long, hard to understand science fiction movie. We must make one that is longer and harder to understand!"

lucius septimius 3/31/2022 12:57:13 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 28:

Tough one.  Most would say the war was definitively lost by mid-year 1943. The Axis made several unforced errors that crippled them.  Stalingrad was one, Midway was another.  That said, the Germans recovered in the spring and summer of 1943. The invasion of Italy turned out to be a debacle. And the US was bogged down and suffering serious losses in the Pacific (at one point we were down to one aircraft carrier).

By the beginning of 1944 the Axis was doomed by the productive power of the Allies, above all of America.  Even so, as Omar Bradley noted in his memoirs, even as late as the end of 1944 the Allies could still have lost the war - or, more properly, have been convinced to negotiate a peace.

The Germans never thought that Britain would keep fighting.  And with their limited means, Churchill did a good job of "peripheralizing" the war forcing the Germans to move troops into the Balkans and North Africa. Italy didn't help - Mussolini was convinced that unless he made some quick and easy conquests (Greece, Egypt) he wouldn't have a place at the bargaining table.  Had it not been for his invasion of Greece, the Germans would have invaded Russia five weeks earlier; had it not been for the attack on Egypt the North African campaign wouldn't have sucked resources from Germany and ultimately opened the door for the US to invade North Africa and then Italy and Southern France (the "Champagne Offensive" that after D-Day aided the collapse of German forces in France).

Japan likewise expected the US to back down after suffering massive losses.  Pearl Harbor, though, was something of a failure as had been the attack on Port Arthur in 1904.  They injured the fleet but didn't destroy it.  And although American losses were heavy, it did not undermine morale the way they thought it would.

That is key.  Neither Germany nor Japan appreciated just how much they had pissed off the entire world.  They failed to understand the Americans in particular.  Their propaganda had convinced them that America wouldn't fight.  And, to be fair, the America First and Nazi-sympathizer crowd (Lucky Lindy and Co.) had done a reasonably good job.  Pearl Harbor and to a lesser extent the U-Boot campaign united Americans against the Axis. 

The Axis gang never really were much of an alliance.  Don't forget that Japan honored the non-aggression pact with Stalin to the very end. Churchill and Roosevelt made a good team.  And it confused the Nazis that the US and GB would support Russia.  

A long way of saying:  1942 was a year of disasters, but it wasn't the end.  Through 1943 the Axis still had hope of pulling it out, but that would have required the Allies being willing to negotiate, which they weren't.  By the beginning of 1944 the war was effectively lost because the Axis could never hope to win a war of production.

I've been re-reading Paul Clavel's Hitler Moves East.  His view - coming right from the German military - is that Germany could have beaten Russia.  At the beginning of August 1941 they were 200 miles from an undefended Moscow.  Guderien wanted to go for it; Hitler diverted everything south and then doubled-down with the Stalingrad campaign the following year.  Had Moscow been taken out, the transportation hub and nerve center of Russia would have been gone and the European part split in half.  At that point, as in 1918, they might well have provoked a civil war and forced Russia to negotiate a peace.  But it didn't happen.

Finally, Raul Hilberg was right to point out that the Holocaust cost Germany the war.  Military advantage was sacrificed for the pursuit of hideous ideological ends that only intensified resistance to Nazi aggression.  From that point of view, the war was lost when the first Einsatzgruppen got on the trucks. 

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 1:04:07 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 33:

Interesting analysis.  Thank you.  

I did not realize that the USN, post-Midway, was ever down to one carrier; when was that?

"The Axis gang never really were much of an alliance.  Don't forget that Japan honored the non-aggression pact with Stalin

Also, IIRC, the Germans found on in early 1942 that the US had cracked the Japanese naval code; but never got around to telling the Japanese.  This, quite likely, led to the Japanese defeat at Midway, and cost them the Pacific War (at least, made them lose a whole lot faster). 

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 1:07:27 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 32:

2001 is perfectly comprehensible... as long as you've read the novel.  If not, I can see it would be rather baffling. 

Occasional Reader 3/31/2022 1:08:01 PM

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In #33 lucius septimius said: Neither Germany nor Japan appreciated just how much they had pissed off the entire world.

Sounds like a certain Russian leader, right now. 

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 1:19:26 PM

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In #35 Occasional Reader said: 2001 is perfectly comprehensible... as long as you've read the novel.  If not, I can see it would be rather baffling. 

Yes. I read the novel after I first saw the movie (in Cinerama!)

Years later, I read the novel Solaris. At least I found out what was going on in the movie, but even then, the movie stunk.

lucius septimius 3/31/2022 2:17:45 PM

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In #34 Occasional Reader said: I did not realize that the USN, post-Midway, was ever down to one carrier; when was that?

After the Battle of Santa Cruz in October 1942.  USS Hornet was sunk; a month earlier Saratoga was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and damaged; a week before that Wasp was sunk by a Japanese submarine. 

The campaign in the Eastern Solomon islands was brutal.  There's a reason that the waters north of Guadalcanal are known as "Ironbottom Sound."

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 2:20:41 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 36:

Your supporting voice over at Insty much appreciated.

lucius septimius 3/31/2022 2:30:02 PM

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Well this is hardly surprising.  Leaked documents show how teachers recruit students, form gay and transgender clubs in schools

    The packet also asks teachers to list supporters and enemies of these clubs. One section is dedicated to listing the names of allies who “would     support this project.” Another section is provided to identify any existential threats to the club and to list those who could be a “barrier to your     success.”

buzzsawmonkey 3/31/2022 3:27:32 PM

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In #40 lucius septimius said: Leaked documents show how teachers recruit students, form gay and transgender clubs in schools

The gay-rights movement is not, and never has been, a civil rights movement. It has always been a "human rights" movement---though it has spent much effort and energy over the last 40-odd years in blurring the distinction between the two. Nevertheless, the difference is profound.

The Constitution exists to establish a government of limited powers. Part of that limitation---augmenting the limitations on the government done by enumerating what powers it has---is the limitation imposed by civil rights, which are rights held by the individual against the government. That is to say, the only legitimate civil rights under the Constitution are the rights which permit the individual to slap the government down when it overreaches, the way you slap a naughty dog on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper.

"Human rights" are special privileges granted by the government to favored groups---and there is no place for "group rights," or "group privileges" under the Constitution.

The gay-rights movement's rhetoric and manifestoes and declarations have usually used the term "human rights"---because there are no civil rights that have ever been denied to homosexuals. They have never been denied the right to trial by jury, or the right against self-incrimination, or the right to vote. They have never been denied, by law---as blacks were, in the past, in some jurisdictions---the right to live where they chose. There is no legitimacy to the gay-rights movement claiming it is a civil rights movement.

During the Dade County civil rights ordinance campaign, which most people know as "the Anita Bryant campaign," the gay-rights activists were constantly using the term "human rights," not "civil rights." Their use of the one term in preference over the other appeared to be merely a form of plaint that "we're human too"---but it was actually a term of art, and very carefully chosen. It is much like the references to Obama in the 2008 campaign as being "post-racial," which was intended to convey to the rubes that he would lead us at last past social obsession with things racial, but which to the Leftist cognoscenti indicated that he would be a race warrior who would seek to oppress the whites whom the Left considers always and irredeemably "racist."

The gay-rights movement in the US was founded by Stalinists in the 1950s, and taken over by Maoists and SDSers following the Stonewall Riots. Once upon a time, such strong and consistent connections to subversive elements might have merited closer looks at their writings and objectives, but our lazy and agenda-driven Leftist media could not be bothered with this, and most of the opponents of same-sex marriage did not think to delve into this history. If they had, they'd have discovered ample writings which stated that the abolition or destruction of marriage was one of the movement's oft-stated and oft-celebrated goals---a goal which the movement has never repudiated, and has not, in the course of the marriage agitation, discussed at all.

So..."marriage" has gone from the movement's must-destroy to the movement's absolutely-must-have---this, despite the increasing, accelerating acceptance of civil-union protection. Indeed, California had a civil-union law that was "marriage" in all but name---yet look at the acrimonious fight (and aftermath) that attended the Prop 8 vote, which was to decree same-sex marriage in the state despite the already-extant civil-union law.

Why was that word "marriage" sufficiently important to cause this upheaval? Because "marriage" was the key to giving the gay-rights movement a toehold in equal-protection law, i.e., giving the movement a sheep's pelt of "civil rights" claims to cover the human-rights wolf beneath. The movement had tried for years to equate itself to the black Civil Rights Movement (much to the annoyance of many blacks, until recently)---and the false equivalence which the movement made (and the judges bought) between same-sex marriage (the invention of a new kind of marriage) and the anti-miscegenation law rulings of the 1960s, gave the movement its chance. The anti-miscegenation rulings struck down laws that voided otherwise-valid traditional marriages on the basis of the extraneous element of race. That is not the same thing as refusing to legalize an entirely new form of marriage, which is what same-sex marriage is.

Now that it has gained its toehold in "equal protection law," the gay-rights movement has a siege platform from which to attack other people's freedom of speech, freedom of association, and free exercise of religion, on "equal protection" grounds. That is the entire reason for the push for same-sex marriage.

Was the passage of laws pre-emptively banning legalization of same-sex marriage ill-advised? Probably. Conservatives, as usual, allowed themselves to be suckered by the Left; passing a pre-emptive ban on same-sex marriage---something that at the time did not exist—set conservatives up to appear, spuriously, to be in the position of those racists who had supported banning interracial unions. By banning something that did not exist, conservatives called that thing into being, and set themselves up for the Left's knockout punch.

Same-sex marriage should have been opposed from the beginning---not based on appeals to Biblical strictures, nor on appeals to the highly-malleable and transitory utterances of the psychiatric pseudosciences, but on the basis that

a) a movement founded upon opposition to marriage, and dedicated to its destruction, has no standing to demand it, and

b) "Civil union" laws meet whatever legal needs the community might have, the more so since the movement has, for decades, insisted on the difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples, and therefore, if the homosexual community needs legal protections for its relationships, those protections should be different from those for heterosexual relationships.

c) If the gay-rights movement is now arguing that there is no difference between marrying a person of the same sex or a person of the opposite sex, it has tacitly admitted that same-sex desire is a personal choice, and consequently wholly undeserving of any "rights."

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 3:31:40 PM

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Lock the bunch of child molesters up for the rest of their lives, and let them mutilate themselves with butter knives.

I don't have a problem with consenting adults, and someone old enough to know who has determined that he/she is gay should not be condemned, but accepted as a person. But I consider sexual orientation to be fluid - I've heard teenagers experiment, and people can change their orientation, not their physicality.

And if a guy wants to wear a dress, OK; he's a guy in a dress, but not a woman.

But kids? They should never be allowed near any children except family, and then only with a shock device that a strict family member controls. 

JCM 3/31/2022 3:41:19 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 34:

But by the end of '44 we had 23 active Essex Class Fleet carriers. Hornet and Essex were under construction in '41, and Independence and been laid down.

In two years we built 20 Fleet carriers.

Kosh's Shadow 3/31/2022 3:55:32 PM

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In #43 JCM said: In two years we built 20 Fleet carriers.

Plus large numbers of smaller ships 

The latest carrier, the Ford, was laid down in 2005 and delivered in 2017. One carrier, 12 years.

To be somewhat fair, it does include several new technologies, such as electromagnetic catapults and arresting gear, that took significant development time.

But in WWII, cranking out good enough equipment was better than a few more advanced ships, tanks, aircraft, etc. 

Anyone deciding what to build needs to read this short story and pass a test.

Yes, we do need to improve our equipment over time, but carefully. If an asset is too valuable to be lost, it cannot be risked.

This somewhat applies to the F-35, but Israel has been using it operationally. However, they aren't using it against Russia or China.

JCM 3/31/2022 4:19:26 PM

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In #44 Kosh's Shadow said: This somewhat applies to the F-35

The Fighter Mafia led by Col. Boyd finally beat out McNamara's insane insistence on Joint Projects. Out of that win by the Fighter Mafia we got the F-15, F-16, F-18 and A-10. The F-22 followed along as a air dominance fighter. But we regressed to the Joint Project madness with the F-35.

Good pilots with good training. The US and IAF are the best at that will make the F-35 work. Just like they made the F-4 work.