Flotsam and/or Jetsam

From bad to worse

Posted on February 25, 2025February 25, 2025 by Mike

Stephen Green shares some deeply disturbing news.

I Could Live With the Egg Shortage, but NOT THIS… NOT THIS
We can argue all day and all night over whether the massive poultry cull was necessary or not, but two things are 100% certain. The first is that fewer birds producing fewer eggs gave us yet another massive spike in the price of eggs, typically an affordable and easy-to-prepare protein depended upon by jillions of people. The second is that I just learned of something worse.

Actually, let’s talk about that bird cull for just a moment. I did a little research on that a couple of weeks ago, thinking I might get a column out of it. I gave up on the column because half the reports I read indicated that the bird flu test is subject to false positives and that massive numbers of egg hens were unnecessarily slaughtered. The other half indicated no such problem. So I threw up my hands and abandoned the column.

But on reflection, since the cull was an act of the Biden administration, and since everything it did was either wrongheaded, spiteful, or both, I’m going to ignore half my research and just tell you that it was the wrong call. “I was going to buy eggs, but then escrow fell through” is the fault of the Biden administration, and it didn’t have to be that way.

I feel better now. But we’re both about to feel worse — if, like me, you have a minimum two-cup-a-day coffee habit.

As consumers, we’ve been lucky so far. Coffee, I learned today, is the second-most traded commodity after oil. If you want to know what the planet really runs on, it’s two very different kinds of black liquid, both packed full of energy. What it means for coffee drinkers is that the source and price of the cup you’re sipping right now were locked in months ago, maybe longer. What it also means is that as those futures expire and traders lock the new ones in, higher prices get locked in, too. Maybe much higher. Maybe double.

It’s already happening.

As Stephen goes on to detail, it is indeed—and for some of us, that’s terrifying. Personally, I share our old friend Steve’s view on the matter: eggs I can live without, coffee…ehh, not so much. I never have much enjoyed eggs unless they were scrambled, covered in shredded cheddar, and doused liberally with Tabasco, usually sharing a platter alongside a double order of hash browns scattered, smothered, covered, peppered, and diced at Waffle House during one of those bleary-eyed noontime “breakfast” stops as the band was heading out for the next town.

Denny’s, you ask? Don’t make me laugh.

Ever since eggs went from Source Of All Bad Things Including But Not Limited To Heart Attacks, Climate Change, and Raycissismism to Nature’s Perfect Food practically overnight, I’ve taken to hard-boiling the yucky things (NO runny yolks, not EVER), slicing them in half, and then sprinkling each half with Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning before sending them down the hatch, one per day strictly to keep the doctor away. Go messing around with my beloved Luzianne w/ chicory, though, and me and you gon’ FIGHT.

Just trying to get ahead

Posted on February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by Mike

Only one real reason I’m running this story at all, and if you haven’t figured it out by the second or third paragraph…well, I just don’t really know what to tell ya about that.

Elon Musk’s ultimatum email to federal workers sets up power struggle in DC, among top Trump officials
Elon Musk is finding himself locked in a power struggle with top Trump administration officials over an out-of-the-blue email blast to federal workers Saturday demanding that they list their professional accomplishments last week — or risk being fired.

Multiple Trump-appointed agency and department heads — including the Department of Defense, State Department and FBI — have instructed their employees to ignore the email despite the billionaire’s public warning that “failure to respond” by 11:59 p.m. Monday “will be taken as a resignation.”

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already pushed for sweeping personnel cuts across the government, with the latest move raising concerns that the Tesla CEO intends to make more personnel decisions based on replies to the missive.

“If Elon Musk truly wants to understand what federal workers accomplished over the past week, he should get to know each department and agency, and learn about the jobs he’s trying to cut,” moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) griped on X.

“Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform. The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.”

Uh huh. Poor put-upon souls, with all those difficult, demanding “unheralded jobs” they for some mysterious reason don’t seem able to describe, delineate, or even speak about in any way, shape, or form. And now, the entirely obvious video embed.

Heh.

Churmany defeats itself…again

Posted on February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by Mike

In case any of you were laboring under the delusion that Germany will somehow be able to politically right itself and save themselves from—well, themselves, actually, Ace provides this helpful, handy-dandy explainer as to why that simply isn’t so.

The fake “center right” party won the election. They made noises about cracking down on illegal immigration, but, as you can see in the video below the fold, their leader and the next German PM vows that “no one is talking about closing the borders.”

The “far right” party, AfD or Alternative for Germany, came in a strong second at 20%, receiving its highest vote share ever, will have… zero participation in the new government.

That’s because the CDU vowed to not form a government with the “far right” (they’re far right because they oppose unlimited eternal mass migration from the third world) AfD.

The “Center right” party, the Christian Democrat Union or CDU, is the party of Andrea Merkel, whose “Wilkomen” policy of allowing mass migration without even the most basic vetting has plunged Germany into crisis.

Note that they do not have a majority of the seats in Parliament, or the Bund I guess the huns call it, so that means they will have to form an alliance with another party to secure a majority and form a government.

Because the CDU abides by the “cordon sanitaire” or “firewall” policy that all the Euro Regime countries do, refusing to form governments with any party that’s “far right” (again, meaning “against unlimited mass migration from Islamic countries”), that means that this “center right” party will form a coalition government with… either the German Socialist Party and/or the German Green Party, who are themselves big champions of unlimited third-world mass migration.

You might wonder: Why not just start a new party that isn’t “far right” but still opposes open borders?

Well, silly, because any party that opposes open borders is “far right” and subject to the “firewall” policy of excluding closed-border parties.

So the “center right” party will be pursuing a socialist, mass-migration open borders agenda.

But they’ve kept those dirty “far right” voters out of power.

And what happens when the German government collapses again because the “center right” party cannot agree with its socialist and green partners?

Well, we go through the same process again: a government is allowed to govern without a majority, citing an emergency, and they stage another election in which the will of the people will again be thwarted, and the “center-right” party again forms a coalition with the leftwing open borders parties.

How long can this inherently unstable situation persist for?

Right offhand, I’d say it will until all of a sudden…it won’t.

Oversight on purpose

Posted on February 19, 2025 by Mike

Somehow, for some unfathomable reason, the people responsible for the “Official portraits of Presidents and First Ladies since 1965” (no link, because fuck them) made one glaring omission, which (presumably deliberate) omission AoSHQ’s Scampydog helpfully addressed. Ladies and germs, I give you the indisputably loveliest, most stunningly beautiful First Lady not just since 65, but in US history entire.

Melania 2025.

MAN, what a dish! Class, style, looks, brains, breezy self-confidence—whatever Melania doesn’t have we don’t need, and will assuredly never miss. She’s a First Lady all Americans can be proud of, and damned well ought to be. A real headscratcher, innit, how the White House Historical Ass’n couldn’t lay their hands on the above Official Portrait no matter how hard they “tried,” but a lowly blogger-dude somehow managed it.

Pure poetry, plus…ROCKETS!

Posted on February 18, 2025February 18, 2025 by Mike

One of Glenn’s finest, funniest posts EVAR, reproduced below in its entirety (links and all, for once):

HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? NASA says ‘City killer’ asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth.

Flashback:

O it’s Elon this, an’ Elon that, an’ “Chuck ‘im out, the cad!”;

But it’s “Elon, please, a rocket!” when the rocks are lookin’ bad.

When the rocks are lookin’ bad, my boys, the rocks are lookin’ bad,

O it’s “Save us, Mr. Elon!” when the rocks are lookin’ bad.

Heh. Indeed.

1

The “Health” Racket

Posted on February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 by Mike

I must say I was kinda surprised to read Steyn’s take on all this. It wasn’t quite what I would’ve expected from him, although perhaps I should’ve.

I rejoice in the confirmation of RFK Jr as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services (no thanks to longtime Chinese asset Mitch McConnell). “Make America Healthy Again” is the indispensable component of “Make America Great Again” – because the most obvious sign of what’s gone wrong in the country is to take a walk down any main street. No one would bet the future on a country that has debauched its human capital the way the United States has.

As Bobby Kennedy pointed out on The Mark Steyn Show, Americans are the most medicated people on the planet and are the unhealthiest in the developed world; in particular, as RFK also noted on our show, our children are the world’s most medicated children, and have accelerating rates of childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, childhood heart disease. A grade-school diagnosis of diabetes can take up to two decades off your lifespan.

So what’s the answer? Further enriching Blue Cross-Blue Shield? Americans pay more for health care than anybody else, and have lousier outcomes, starting with the most basic indicator of all – life expectancy: According to the UN, from the Swiss to the Australians, the list of peoples that enjoy an extra half-decade of life over Americans lengthens year on year. In the 2023 UN rankings, the United States comes in at Number Fifty-Five on the life-expectancy Hit Parade; for purposes of comparison, Albania – where the men smoke seventy a day and accessing the health-care system requires swimming to Italy – is at Fifty-Three. By 2022 America’s annual spending on health care was twelve-and-a-half grand per capita; Albania’s was under five hundred bucks – which is less than your co-pay on a Covid anal swab; the word “co-pay” does not exist in Albanian.

Four years ago, we first had RFK Jr on the show mainly because no one else wants to talk about this. If you’re wondering why, it’s because his late friend Roger Ailes, of Fox News, told him that in non-election years three-quarters of Fox’s ad revenue comes from Big Pharma.

Five years ago, the state and the pharmaceutical companies joined forces for an unprecedented experiment on you – to damage almost every aspect of daily life, including even more damage to a generation of children. There has yet to be an accounting for that.

And THAT’s what really stings about this, at least for me. Although admittedly, the only way We The Peepul will ever get an accounting is to r’are up on our hind legs at long, long last and demand one. Not “request” one; not ask politely for one; not hold a referendum and vote on whether or not we’d like to have one at some later, unspecified date; but straight-up remind our “public servants” of their proper place in the grand scheme of things, get ‘em skeered and keep the skeer on ‘em, and inform them in no uncertain terms that there is by God going to be one, or we’re gonna damned well know the reason why not. T’was ever thus, ain’t nothing whatsoever new.

More, and even worserer:

I was also glad to see, in the above clip, RFK trash USAid, which was after all founded by his uncle. As noted earlier this week, it’s now a near parodic example of the racket that the federal government has made of everything it touches. According to the above-mentioned Daily Telegraph, Trump has only been in office for three weeks but he’s already killing grannies:

US aid freeze claims first victims as oxygen supplies cut off

Seventy-one-year-old woman dies after being sent home from USAID funded hospital.

This story is by Sarah Newey, the Telegraph’s “Global Health Security Correspondent” in Bangkok. In my day, the Telegraph didn’t have a “Global Health Security Correspondent” in Bangkok or anywhere else. It’s not funded by USAid, is it?

Oxygen isn’t really that expensive. A member of the Steyn team required it at an event in Colorado a couple of years back. It certainly isn’t that expensive if you’re the “International Rescue Committee” and have revenues of over a billion dollars per annum. Of course, like everyone else on the take from USAid, the International Rescue Committee pisses away a lot of its dough. It pays its president, David Milliband, over a million bucks a year. No, not Ed Milliband, the talentless prat who serves as His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Net Zero. This is his brother, David, the talentless prat who was British Foreign Secretary back in the Gordon Brown era and parlayed that into a seven-figure salary with this IRC racket. As I always say, the “non-profits” are where the big bucks are.

The racket goes on. Uniparty warmonger Victoria Nuland was last heard of on The Mark Steyn Show warning that the zillions of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine could easily fall into Russian hands. Why are American taxpayers outsourcing gain-of-function to Kharkiv and Odessa? Well, they’re world-renowned experts in developing a new strain of monkeypox with fewer homophobic overtones…

The good news is that the all-war-all-the-time queen, who’s even more bloodsoaked than David Milliband, has just been appointed to the board of the “National Endowment for Democracy”. Ms Nuland is an expert in democracy, having ended it in Ukraine. “NED” was founded back in the Eighties, at taxpayer expense, to “export the American way of governance” – so that every nation may enjoy the blessings of paying former foreign parliamentarians a seven-figure salary to kill l’il ol’ ladies.

That’s the point. Whether you’re a Thai gran’ma, a Ukrainian infantryman or a New Hampshire grade-schooler, Nuland-Milliband-Big Pharma government is killing you. I wish RFK and the other Trump 47-iconoclasts all the best.

As should we all, whether we find Trump’s personal swashbuckling, over the top style grating or not.

Q: Do these people know ANYTHING AT ALL about history?

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Mike

Or do they prefer to just make it all up as they go along, in whatever willy-nilly fashion that suits them?

Never mind, probably best not to answer that one.

Marco Rubio Leaves CBS News’ Margaret Brennan Speechless After She Claimed Nazis ‘Weaponized’ Free Speech
CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan had nothing to say after Secretary of State Marco Rubio brutally countered her weak argument that the Nazis somehow “weaponized” free speech to conduct a genocide.

The “Face the Nation” exchange came Sunday morning during a discussion about Vice President JD Vance’s incredible speech in Munich, Germany on Friday, in which he roasted European leaders to their faces for their horrible positions on unchecked immigration and free speech.

The speech predictably drew howls of protest from Europeans who for the past four years were doubtless unused to being criticized by an American administration. German president Olaf Scholz called Vance’s words “not appropriate,” and German defense minister Boris Pistorius called them “unacceptable.”

Well, bless their hearts.

Bless their hearts, hell. Y’know, for people who in fact are themselves fascists, you’d think shitlib “journalismists” like Brennan would know one when they saw one without too much trouble. And yet.

Brennan interrupted Rubio with the claim that Vance was “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” She then went on to criticize the vice president for meeting with Germany’s “far right” Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, despite the fact that he also met with leaders of other major German political parties. There is also the fact that Europeans consider any party that doesn’t want to invite the entire world “far right.” Even more disturbing, Brennan defended the censorship by claiming it was “specifically about the right.”

Rubio not only vehemently disagreed with the CBS anchor, but countered with facts:

“I have to disagree with you,” he responded. “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities … There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country, and so that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”

Rubio defended Vance’s point about the “erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view” in Europe.

When the secretary of state was finished, Brennan had nothing to say except that they were out of time. How convenient.

Funny how it always seems to work out sooooo conveniently for these morons, innit?

Bitch slap

Posted on February 13, 2025February 13, 2025 by Mike

Lakeside Joe asks the obvious question, then answers it himself.

Why would a TacoBell need a security guard? Oh – it’s in downtown LA. Never mind…

Even absent much if anything in the way of explanation for the guard’s dealing of some righteous Street Justice—what, Offissa Friendly didn’t have a vial of pepper spray on his belt he coulda used to git dat crazy-ass ho under control instead?—I’m gonna just go ahead and summarily pronounce this Your Feel-Good Video Of The Week.

Reminds me of a hilarious episode years and years ago—what was it, late 70s, early 80s, maybe?—when three of us were riding with our old friend Wayne in his VW Rabbit and he spotted a cpl-three young, ghetto-thug Neegrows fiddling about under the raised hood of a broken-down strugglebuggy just up ahead. Wayne quickly cranked his window down, signalling to all of us in the car with him that he meant to vocally heckle the unfortunate Cullud Yoot as he passed. Leaning his head out of the window, it was obvious that Wayne was struggling to come up with something cutting, witty, and demoralizing enough to suit his nefarious purposes.

Finally, just as we pulled alongside the smoking, steaming, beat-up old Loser Cruiser, he settled for an uncertain “It’s…WHATCHYA GET!!!” At which, the rest of us in the VeeDub nearly gave ourselves hernias, we were laughing so hard at our friend’s abject failure to deliver the last-minute goods. We teased and taunted Wayne for his lame, somewhat puzzling ad lib for many years afterwards.

It was a very different time back then; these days, a carload of skylarking white teenagers cruising around the West Side of CLT wouldn’t dream of yelling insults and/or general invective at any Pyrsynzz Of Color, lest an Ingram Mac-10 suddenly appear in every dark-complected hand and commence to spraying the offending vehicle with a rapid-fire hail of 9mm projectiles. Well, until the PoS Mac-10s jammed, at any rate. Which those useless pieces of stamped-out junk will do, especially on full auto. Ask me how I know.

We’re back, baybeeee!

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Mike

As Stephen says: it’s official, America is great again.

Carl’s Jr. Super Bowl ad brings back bikini-clad burger models after yearslong clampdown https://t.co/O85LRstFhY pic.twitter.com/37y3haRBLC

— New York Post (@nypost)

February 6, 2025

The absolute best fast-food burgers in the business, Hi-C orange, plus TITTIES! I ask you, what’s not to like here?

Stupid Bowl angst

Posted on February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by Mike

Wait, that’s this week? I neither knew, nor gave a sugar-frosted damn.

Donald Trump is going to the Super Bowl – and ruining one of America’s best days | Opinion
Ahhh, the Super Bowl. Where families gather to watch the big game. Eat lots of food. Drink some. Party a little. Get together with friends to laugh, chill, hang out. It’s one of the few moments, the extremely few, few moments, where Americans genuinely come together.

We put aside politics.

Well, some do, I suppose. Not you though, apparently.

We put aside our differences. We take part in a great American tradition. It’s actually pretty cool. Well, it was. Because now President Donald Trump is attending the game.

In my considered opinion, you’re not whining nearly enough, little beeyotch. Please, I beg of you, do whine more. Put a little ooomph in it this time, if you don’t mind.

Trump is believed to be the first sitting president to possibly attend the Super Bowl. There’s a reason sitting presidents don’t normally go. It’s potentially a security nightmare. But also, to me, they want the game to be the center of attention, not them.

Trump wants to go to get attention but also to show dominance over a league that once rejected him. He holds grudges the way Tom Brady holds Super Bowl records.

It doesn’t matter that Trump is a huge sports fan or has attended Super Bowls before. Who cares. What matters is now. Now, Trump stands for the opposite of everything we love about the Super Bowl. Yes, the game has become corporate, but it’s retained a level of coolness in a way the league itself hasn’t.

Yeh, yeh, whatevs. If you say so, whiny bitch.

I’m someone that’s become slightly cynical about the NFL. It’s grown into a league concerned solely with making cash. And yes, the Super Bowl isn’t totally exempt from this. Of course.

Just now realizing this, are ya? You fucking idiot.

But having covered so many Super Bowls, and watched so many others from home or a party or two (or five), it seriously is one of the last remaining American moments of unity. Not perfect. Not totally. But pretty good. Even people who don’t watch football or even like it, watch some element of it.

Wanna bet, moron? A devout fan of Tom Landry’s Dallas Cowboys in the days of my misspent youth who would sooner gargle semen than miss a Cowboys game on the Teewee, I haven’t squandered a single minute of my time watching ANY National Felons’ League games since…what, the 1980’s, I guess? Much less the hyped-to-death Stupid Bowl extravaganza and the interminable months of playoff games leading up to it. Haven’t missed it, either. I have no plans to make this year a departure from that happy norm. And that, friend, is my promise to you.

In all seriousness and sincerity, I do fervently hope that the incessant TV camera zoom-ins on Trump and his entourage as they disport themselves in whatever posh, ultra-luxurious skybox they’ll be occupying absolutely ruins the whole experience for your whiny ass. Hell, if one of the networks set up a remote camera in your living room so as to broadcast your anguished reactions to your Super Sunday ordeal it might constitute sufficient justification for me to tune in my own self, against all odds and established precedent.

A blizzard of Ozz

Posted on February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by Mike

C’mon, man, who DOESN’T love the legendary Ozzy Osbourne? How could anyone NOT love the guy?

Ozzy Osbourne announces final show with Black Sabbath amid health struggles: ‘This is his full stop’
Ozzy’s out.

The British rock star, 76, announced on Wednesday that the original members of Black Sabbath are reuniting for the first time in 20 years for his final show.

The “Back to the Beginning” charity concert will take place July 5 at Villa Park in England. Tickets go on sale on Feb. 14 at LiveNation.

“The all-star event will celebrate the true creators of heavy metal and will see @OzzyOsbourne play his own short set before joining with Black Sabbath for his final bow,” read the announcement, shared on Osbourne’s X account.

Osbourne himself said, “It’s my time to go Back to the Beginning….time for me to give back to the place where I was born. How blessed am I to do it with the help of people whom I love. Birmingham is the true home of metal. Birmingham Forever.”

The lineup is truly…well, talk about your Who’s Who in the metal/hard rock world.

In addition to the Black Sabbath members (Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward), the performing lineup also includes Metallica, Slayer, Lamb of God, Alice in Chains and Anthrax.

The concert’s music director, Rage Against the Machine alum Tom Morello, was quoted saying, “This will be the greatest heavy metal show ever.”

The advance poster for the show:

Yep, that’s pretty much everybody who’s anybody, I should think. Bet my old friend Brent Hinds from ATL is thrilled all to hell and gone to be on this incredible bill.

Intrepid oddity

Posted on January 29, 2025January 29, 2025 by Mike

For some reason I got to thinking about the USS Intrepid Museum at NYC’s Pier 86 and 46th Street, on the Hudson River. This in turn got me to poking around for the Intrepid Museum’s origin story, in the course of which I found a decidedly curious item, which I’ll put in bold so’s you don’t miss it. To wit:

The museum was proposed in the late 1970s as a way to preserve Intrepid, and it opened on August 3, 1982. The Intrepid Museum Foundation filed for bankruptcy protection in 1985 after struggling to attract visitors. The foundation acquired USS Growler and the destroyer USS Edson in the late 1980s to attract guests and raise money, although it remained unprofitable through the 1990s. The museum received a minor renovation in 1998 after it started turning a profit. Between 2006 and 2008, the Intrepid Museum was completely closed for a $115 million renovation. A new pavilion for the Space Shuttle Enterprise opened in 2012.

The Intrepid Museum spans three of the carrier’s decks; from top to bottom, they are the flight, hangar, and gallery decks. Most of the museum’s collection is composed of aircraft, which are exhibited on the flight deck. Among the museum’s collection are a Concorde SST, a Lockheed A-12 (a/ka the SR71 Blackbird; I’ve seen it, it’s awesome—M) supersonic reconnaissance plane, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise. The hangar and gallery decks contain a variety of attractions such as exhibit halls, a theater, and flight simulators, as well as individual objects like a cockpit and an air turbine. Several craft and other objects have been sold off or removed from the museum’s collection over the years. The museum serves as a space for community and national events, such as Fleet Week and awards ceremonies.

Mayor Ed Koch announced plans for the Intrepid’s conversion in mid-April 1981, and the United States Department of the Navy transferred the Intrepid to Fisher, who led the nonprofit Intrepid Museum Foundation, on April 27, 1981. The conversion of the carrier’s top two decks cost $22 million and was funded by $2.4 million in private donations, as well as $15.2 million of tax-exempt bonds and $4.5 million from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. After the New York City Board of Estimate gave the Intrepid Museum Foundation permission to sell tax-exempt bonds in December 1980, the bonds were sold to the public in July 1981. The federal grant was approved in January 1982, even though the project “had nothing to do with housing”. The renovation involved the addition of a theater, several planes on Intrepid’s deck, and aviation and maritime exhibit halls. The carrier’s navigation and flight bridges were also restored. The city spent around $2.5 million to renovate Pier 86 on the West Side of Manhattan, where Intrepid was to be docked. The museum leased the pier from the city for 33 years at $50,000 per year, making annual payments in lieu of taxes totaling $400,000.

Now, I’ve toured the Intrepid a whole bunch of times over the years, spending hours upon hours prowling the old girl’s flight deck closely inspecting the remarkable variety of air- and/or spacecraft resident thereon, and have thoroughly enjoyed every last one of said visits. So far be it from me to carp overmuch about it, but still: HUD? SRSLY?!? WTAF, man?

Ah well, whatevs. I’m just happy to know that the Intrepid Museum—having somehow survived years of sparse attendance, financial woes, and even one (1) filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1985 (!)—is still afloat and open for public viewing by cake-eating civilians, military aviation buffs, veterans both retired and active-duty, and assorted looky-loos with some free time on their hands alike. If you’ve never been and find yourself at loose ends in NYC some fine day, I can think of a great many worse ways to kill an idle afternoon (weather permitting, natch) than a trip to Midtown West to stroll the Intrepid’s decks. Two snaps enthusiastically Up, and highly, highly recommended.

Having likewise toured the USS North Carolina and the USS Yorktown many times*, I can assure you that, good as they were—and they were—neither of those thankfully-preserved pieces of real, true American history can so much as hold a candle to the USS Intrepid, and that’s a fact.

* As well as the Brit destroyer HMS Bristol once, when she made a Wilmington port call on her way back from the Falklands dustup, a few Jack Tar swabbies took in a show the BPs did there, and graciously invited us out to the boat the next day, even going so far as to bring us below decks to drink piss-warm English beer, smoke a few fags, and share a few laughs with ‘em; great guys all, those lads were

Intro to history

Posted on January 28, 2025January 28, 2025 by Mike

Just clearing an old open tab here, no big thang. I promise you, though, you’re almost certainly gonna enjoy it.

Common JoJo L 😏 pic.twitter.com/OiToNssaEV

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs)

January 22, 2025

OUCH! I felt that stinging slap from all the way over here.

1

On moving forward, looking back, and standing still

Posted on January 28, 2025 by Mike

Any article that opens with Cromwell’s most well-remembered quote is bound to catch my eye, and this too-brief piece is some seriously heady stuff.

“Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say? I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”–Oliver Cromwell, letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland (3 August 1650)

Five years ago, I wrote a book about evolution and human cognition. This was a stretch for me, as I am a three-time English major, so I did a lot of research. It was fascinating research, which taught me a lot of important things about knowledge, human nature, cognition, and storytelling. It also taught me the single most depressing thing that I know, which is this: human reason did not evolve to help us find the truth; it evolved to help us defend positions arrived at in largely unreasonable ways.

The reasons for this lie deep in the reptilian corners of our brains. Natural selection selects for what is useful, which may or may not be what is true. Decisiveness is useful. Appearing confident is useful. Defending one’s turf is useful. And winning fights is always useful. But knowing the truth about abstract universal propositions involving beauty, truth, and God? Not so much. It turns out that appearing to know the truth about these things is much more valuable, evolutionarily speaking, than actually being right.

Culture reinforces these evolutionary dynamics in different ways. Mormon culture, for example, places an enormous premium on appearing to know the truth, especially in religious matters. Few people ever stand up in testimony meeting to proclaim that they think the Church is true, or even that they hope or believe the Church is true. From the time we can talk, we announce from the pulpit that we know the Church is true. We know it from the bottom of our hearts, with every fiber of our beings, absolutely, certainly, completely, just like Moroni promised.

But here’s the deal: you are wrong about stuff. I am wrong about stuff. We are all wrong about stuff. This is just math. Given the number of things that all of us believe (or do not believe) to be facts, the number of things that we consider (or do not consider) valuable, and the number of policies that we think (or do not think) will work, there is no possible way that we are going to be right about everything. We understand this retroactively. We can all remember times that we were wrong in the past. But such is the nature of human cognition that we can barely even fathom what we might be wrong about today.

And this is why Cromwell’s challenge–“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be mistaken”–is so important to us (and yes, I do realize how ironic it is to quote Oliver Cromwell on the possibility of being wrong). Another word for this is “humility.” This is important because it actually is part of our religion, and because it makes us people that other people can stand to be around. But it is also important because, as a matter of near-mathematical certainty, we actually are wrong about some religious things–and probably quite a few.

Yeah, well, with so many Leftards all around us nowadays, humility has necessarily become a quite scarce commodity.

Suicide solution

Posted on January 12, 2025January 12, 2025 by Mike

I’vre had this one sitting in the hopper waiting for me to get around to it for over a week now. It was worth the wait, I promise.

Great and sobering read.

From a published SF brother!

First stop calling it a swamp to be drained! It’s a septic tank, that needs a giant flush and DOJ- FBI-CIA-DIA-ETC need a giant enema, DOGE. Let’s say 30% from top day one POTUS45-47!

Please call me back to help Sec Def, slash Special Forces, and sea pigs (squeals). Just saying….old school PT for unit selection and 10 mile run in kit, first five with everything, you need for week prior in winter desert, at five mile dump, to LBE and weapons. Bottom 30 percent of team guys gone, all chicks and chicks with dicks (gender confused).

“ I am quite sure the event in Las Vegas has shaken us all, if for no other reason that none of it appears to make any sense. The principle of Occam’s razor is that when searching for an answer to an event or circumstance, the simplest explanation is more likely over any complex set of possibilities. Bearing that in mind, the thing in Vegas is either a conspiracy so weird and convoluted it makes every crazy Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory look completely sane and plausible, or . . . the guy was bonkers . . . I’m going with bonkers.

It was inevitable that people would start repeating the “22-a-day” mantra, especially considering its looking more and more like a deliberate suicide. I hate suicide – it is so destructive and unnecessary; a permanent solution to a temporary problem that permanently affects everyone around it.

Regarding the “22-a-day” thing – can we ever put that to rest? It has never been 22 a day, it never was – not even after the worst wars we had: Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam. The 22-a-day number is a completely flawed statistic derived from the VA taking a sample of numbers (from an incomplete and inaccurate sample set) and extrapolating it out, then the Left-Leaning Lamestream Media taking that number and running with it to prove that all us veterans are a pack of crazy Rambos – an extension of the old “Vietnam Flashback” myth (which they also made up) which validates their view that America is bad because America makes wars that turn all veterans into ticking time bombs.

Where “22-a-day” came from: The statistics come from the VA’s 2012 Suicide Data Report. The VA analyzed death certificates from 21 states from 1999-2011. Looking at the certificates, they identified which individuals were veterans and came up with 22% of all suicides were by veterans within those 21 states. They then extrapolated that number to the national number of suicides (~38,000), divided by 365.25 for days in a year, and voila: “22-a-day”!

Issues with this:

• The statistical sample did not include California or Texas, the two states with the largest veteran populations

• Does not account that the majority of veterans (67.7%) are over the age of 55

• Not all deaths are correctly identified as suicides

• Hunting accidents and/or accidental shootings (cleaning weapons etc) may be listed as suicide but are not the same thing as an intentional suicide

Not all veterans are the same – here are some numbers:

• 18.2 million veterans, 5.5% of the US population, 7.25% of US population aged 18+

• 3.5 million post-9/11 veterans, 19.4% of veteran population

• 1.6 million veterans aged 18-34, 8.9% of veteran population

But not all veterans are the same, and not all suicides are the same:

A WWII vet who served 3 years and went through the horrors of the D-Day landings, Battle of the Bulge etc, is not the same thing as a guy who served in admin or support and never saw a shot fired in anger, who is not the same as a post-Vietnam/GWOT guy who did 20 years in combat arms with multiple combat tours, who is not the same as a guy who did less than 2 years and got kicked out as a private E-1 for being a substandard soldier, dope smoker whatever – but statistically they are all veterans.

A suicide by a WWII or Korean War vet in his 90s suffering from cancer who just wants to end the pain is not the same thing as a young vet in his 20s or 30s distraught from any number of life events (divorce, alcoholism, etc) plus the effects of PTSD and/or clinical depression, and not at all the same thing as the substandard individual who barely served and ended his life for whatever reason that had absolutely nothing to do with his minimal time in service.

Any suicide is a tragic thing – even one is too many. However, taking all of the above into consideration, the real number of veteran suicides among the post-Vietnam/GWOT generation is closer to 2 a week.

Unlike the last email I ran, I actually did get permission from the sender to run this one. Thanks for that, Doc, I do appreciate ya. Been having some problems of late with the Brave browser running slow as molasses in the Alaskan tundra in January, which caused me to hold off on posting this until I got a chance to look into the matter. Thankfully, I believe I have that pettifogging little issue resolved now.

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