Love America?

(just as a personal note, I have been sleeping in my wife’s hospital room for a week, so blogs are scarce..)

The president loves America, or at least he WOULD love America if it would just follow the European model. Unfortunately, the EU is a failed economic model, with an aggregate 4% growth since the Euro was conceived, and the EU has a 12% unemployment rate, no protective army to assist in the Middle East or to protect Poland…the list goes on.

Obama does not love the America we have, but he likes us. Just a bit. He is not a Muslim, or foreign born, he just thinks we are too big, too successful, too powerful, too interventionist, too rich…in effect he does not love us as we are. But he does like us.

He is not the sort who joins the military, let’s just say! Those who really love this nation are willing to die for it. Obama was willing to get a law degree to change this nation, and, in his own words in college he ran with the Socialists and Communists. Afterward he consorted with the Reverend Wright and Bill Ayres…not because he was as crazy as they, but he liked their anti- establishment views. Only a huge kerfuffle kept Reverend Wright from giving the invocation at Obama’s announcement of his candidacy. The invitation was withdrawn the night before the announcement event.

He promised to “fundamentally change America.” No one ever asked what he intended to change it to, but all of those who had grievances , petty and large, were drawn to his rhetoric.

We began to get the drift when almost immediately upon entering office, Obame took his first foreign tour, usually referred to as his Apology Tour. 

Yes, Obama loves an America that he sees in his mind. That is not an America that Obama is president of, nor one that he will ever lead.

Musk Wants Into Your Home!

Tesla Motors, that electric car company that produces superb electric cars, wants into your home!

Right on the heels of producing a “D” model car that goes to 60 MPH in 3.2 seconds, and a successful Space X launch to the Space Station, Elon Musk wants to put a battery in your home.

Just six weeks ago I had Solar electric installed, not because of any environmental concerns but because it finally made economic sense. I don’t know what having Tesla battery backup in my garage will help me, but I will certainly look into it when my bills settle down and I know how my household is doing on Solar during the day, and the electric company at night. Do I bank” enough watts during the day to offset my evening hours? I don’t know.

I have a really big Koi Pond pump that has to pump 24 hours a day against a 20 foot head to power the waterfall into the Koi pond. It is going to take a year to find out what I still owe the utility company, considering my usage, the solar panels production at different times of the year, and what different LED lighting might do for me.

Living in San Diego makes solar electric a no-brainer — we have lots of sun, and very high utility rates for electric — add to that my community has zero natural gas.

Musk’s proposed battery will have about a one-week endurance assuming full need…day and night. Obviously Musk’s idea is to let some homes drop off the electric grid altogether, recharged by solar and still have full electric service, but that would work well where there are power failures.

We don’t have that here. What we have is real sun, and high electric rates. But Musk is a lot smarter than I am, so I’ll hear him out. Anyone who can invent an electric car with Porsche performance, send cargo to dock with the Space Station — all, developed with private money, deserves to be taken seriously.

Very seriously.

 

 

 

 

Waiting for Leadership

Yemen is a mess, but it is Saudi Arabia’s problem — the Saudi’s oil fields are vulnerable and the Saudis and the ISIL oriented fighters in Yemen know it. The Saudis have a decent fence between the two nations, but that was only sufficient if Yemen had a relatively friendly government, and today it decidedly does not. The Yemeni rebels simply don’t have the muscle to take on the Saudis.

Now that the UAE is back in the fray through Jordanian airfields (token, to be sure), and the U.S. is still in the sky, SOMEONE has to field that famous “boots on the ground” — and while that should be Iraq, we have already seen how quickly they can run. It is reported that Delta Force is active on the ground.

ISIL was reputed to have 30,000 fighters when they rolled down that two lane “highway” from Syria, and the number appears to be 50,000 today. The Kurds have held ISIL at bay, and neither the promised German or US guns have arrived, but the armies that exist in the area. The well trained 80,000 man Jordanian Army could do it, and we don’t know if they have either decided or brought up reserves to do it, but they could.

Turkey could, but they won’t. They have a Muslim nation, politically secular but under a Muslim leader who appears to be more in league with ISIL. To be perfectly honest, there is no one until the “”new” Iraqi Army — which is more likely to be similar to the “Old” Iraqi Army — is ready…about 18 months.

We theoretically have a coalition, but it is AWOL. I understand that the president hates to “project American power” — and that is a deeply held American feeling as well, but once in awhile it needs to be done. FDR recognized that before our forced entry into WWII. Of course his interest was European, Washington D. C. being on the East Coast virtually guarantees that we have been and will continue to be Eurocentric, so he was delivering war goods to Britain long before there was a declared war.

But FDR was prepared to take leadership.

Obama is not.

We Have Learned Nothing!

Whatever happened to “Declarations of War?”

We didn’t do it in Korea, or Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan…and look what happened in each case.

When we don’t declare war, there is never “Victory.” And there hasn’t been. There won’t be, because we have found ways to nuance everything, including “Victory.”

I was alive, though not too knowledgeable during WWII, but one thing I recall vividly was the emphasis on “Unconditional Surrender.”

That is a goal that has specificity — it cannot be nuanced. The German High Command tried to discuss “terms” but the West replied, “Unconditional Surrender.”

The president has, once again presented this nation with puffery. Words, and undefined and undefinable words at that. How long is “enduring?” That is just the most obvious.

Every time I hear the president speak about the military, I measure his words his words against Winston Churchill’s famous, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few” when describing the few RAF pilots who turned back the Luftwaffe at the Battle for Britain.

And when I see this puny piece of paper asking for something more, but not different from the 2001 Declaration on the Use of Force, my mind runs straight to Churchill again,

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Whatever happened to “Unconditional Surrender?”

The Wussification of the West happened!

It isn’t pretty. We have learned nothing, both from our successes and our failures!

 

American Sniper

I watched American Sniper, and found it gripping. Let’s just say that at the end I was glad the credit roll lasted long enough for the tears in my eyes to dry. As we left the theatr, the audience clapped…a muted clap because, of course, the hero died. Moist hands do not clap well.

A tragic end, for certain. Kyle had a rare combination of skill and judgement. He was a true American Hero and one of the few about whom we know, because of the movie.

This was the first movie I attended in an actual theatr for decades, and I found the new sound systems to be the most impressive thing — and the cost of popcorn!

My first takeaway from the film is that the nation continues to breed patriots, particularly from Texas and the Southern states. I was born in Alabama and raised in Texas, and I can attest that in that axis, men — and it is men in particular, men talk of America with tears in their eyes, and it breeds in them a drive to serve. I joined the Junior Yanks of America and drilled with wooden rifles before I was 10 years old, spent more than six years in military school, then two years as an Enlisted Man in the Navy, went to and graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and spent 20 years as an officer — primarily in submarines.

Going into the military was preordained by the culture in which I was raised. The Star Spangled Banner still brings tears to my eyes. Texans from small towns are indeed patriotic.

The second takeaway was the price that families pay for our service. It is often unrecognized by those in the services because the intensity of our work, and our interest in doing it well — because always other depend upon our actions ( in Submarines, one mistake can easily cost the lives of all, because Submarines do not fail in just one compartment), and we live in our own bubble. Our wives tell us that the hot water heater failed the day after we deployed, or of children’s sickness, but it does not register as much as when we are home.

So I got two messages from the film — and neither was any glorification of war. War is not glorious — victory is indeed glorious., but war is endless and victories are followed by long periods of more war.

I am certain that the American Sniper movies’ success galls many liberals. With Obama in the White House for six years and counting, conservatives must appreciate small victories when they can.

Lying By Omission of Facts

The president’s declaration that Christians should get off their high horse should have been placed in historical perspective…but it wasn’t!

Heaven knows, a a Non-Believer it is not up to me to defend Christianity, but I am a Non-Believer, not Anti-Christian, so I’ll take a view more Christian than did the president.

The president surely knows that the Crusades were designed, at least in theory, to re-Conquer Jerusalem, the most sacred of Christian sites which had been seized by the Muslims. Certainly the Crusaders, at least some of them raped and pillaged on the way to recapture the “Holiest of Cities.”

Now exactly why the Crusaders wanted Jerusalem is not clear, since the Romans had reduced it to ruins in the First Century, but I look on the Crusades as sort of a Tulip Craze, and I lump Japan’s Attack on the U.S. IN 1941 in the same boat — sort of mass insanity that becomes even more contagious as it rolls.

Anyway, I put little blame on the Crusaders because they were of their time, and readers of this blog know that I am very much an anti-Presentism, Presentism being the belief that you can place todays morals and ethics upon people who never had those morals and ethics.

History is absolutely filled with wars, plots, poisoning, incest, rape, murder,,,in fact that is the way we study history…the French and Indian Wars, the War of Independence, the War of 1812, the Civil War…

So the Crusades were history by men of their time, as was the Inquisition of the 15th Century, and US slavery, which had a history going back into pre-history.

To the credit of Christians, they have evolved. While they no longer rape and pillage in the name of their faith, no longer support slavery, no longer burn Heretics at the stake, ISIL does. Not only do they do 12th Century atrocities here, more than a Millennium later, they relish in their inability to conform to 21st Century norms.

Yes, Christians once did terrible things. Even our early generations treated Heretics, Witches, and Indians badly, but they too were of their day. The president made no attempt to place his remarks about Christians in their proper historical light. I suspect he did that purposely because he wants to bring his heritage — both his American and his Christian heritage down a peg or two, because he wants to normalize if not equalize everyone and everything.

It is not quite Socialism, but it moves in that direction.

Why I Support the Concept of Common Core

Let me tell you why I support at least the concept of Common Core. I want national standards, because I lived the problem on no standards.

Now I admit that the implementation of those standards has left a lot to be desire.

I graduated from a tiny school in Texas, and I was fairy smart. I went to Trinity University as a Math Major. I went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and found out that I was among men (and they were all men at that time) whose slide rule (if you are old enough to remember those) I was not qualified to carry!

The only way that the academies get geographical representation, is to let Congress Critters appoint four nominations in each academy at any one time — or else every Cadet or Midshipman would come from Massachusetts. No one from MISSISSIPPI, Louisiana, California or Hawaii could ever enter an Academy!

There are certain common pieces of knowledge that all educated people need to know. As a Professor of Computer Science, I was dismayed by the lack of knowledge of my students, so I devised my own “Common Knowledge” test 88 questions) on which my wife and Editor each scored 77 correct.

The test was administered only to those who wished to take it, and one would think that would be those who thought they could do well. The AVERAGE was SEVEN! The HIGHEST, was TWELVE!

I support, not cookie cutters, but everyone knowing the basics. How we get there can be under local control, but Common Core was devised by STATES, not the federal government as some would infer. Yes, the Feds have tried to co-opt those standards, but they did not write them!