10:00 – Housecleaning continues. Barbara is happy with progress, so I’m happy.
I just read an article on CNN that said about two-thirds of the lower 48 states are covered in snow. We just barely missed out on that over the last few days. We had a couple inches (5 cm) of rain and high temperatures not much above freezing. A few degrees lower, and we might have had half a meter of snow. Or, more likely around here, freezing rain. At the moment, it’s 34F (1C) with a stiff breeze.
We finished watching series six of Army Wives last night on Netflix streaming. It’s a paean to the US military, which is fine as far as it goes. It depicts the real sacrifices made by members of our armed forces and their families. What it never does is question why in the first place our politicians send our young men and women off to risk their lives in places we have no business getting involved in.
I have nothing but the deepest respect for members of our military and what they do. I have nothing but the deepest contempt for the politicians who send them off to do those things. As I’ve suggested before, what we need to do is create a new battalion, with Obama and Biden as CO and XO and all 535 members of congress as the grunts. Give them all M4’s, deploy them to a firebase in Afghanistan, and send them out on patrols to deal with “insurgents” and IEDs. See how long it takes for them to decide that there’s no compelling reason for US forces to be deployed there. Bastards.
We have a stiff breeze here, too, if by “stiff” you mean gusts almost blowing me over as I walked out to toss some scraps to whatever critters might want them. I was barefoot in snow up to my calves, so my footing should have been about as secure as you can get, but the stiff breeze about blew me over. That same stiff breeze almost blew the car Kid#1 was driving sideways into my car. To be clear, he wasn’t driving sideways until the stiff breeze gave a little lateral push. Fortunately, he was backing out of the garage at about half a mile per hour, so he stopped in time.
O’Bummer and Biden are not qualified to be officers/commanders; they should be grunts, too.
I note that over the centuries the Brit royals make sure that at least one or more of their number are in harm’s way during their wars, yea, unto the present day. Of course their last royal to actually become a KIA was King Richard III, a much-maligned ruler.
Are you sure? Richard III was the last reigning English monarch to be KIA, but I would have guessed that more than a few British royals have been KIA since.
Of course Obama and Biden aren’t qualified to lead a platoon let alone a battalion, but can you seriously argue that they’re any worse than what their congressional troops would deserve as commanders?
And, I just realized, Pelosi would make an excellent bomb dog.
We’d have to define “royals,” maybe, but I can’t think of any besides R3. You’d possibly have to include German members of the royal family who were killed in either of the world wars, and some would include Lord Mountbatten by the IRA.
Actually, if we sent the Congress and the WH and the SCOTUS out to the Sandbox, most of them would be wiped out in no time, with or without basic training, probably not a bad thing. But we could put them to work closer to home in the meantime: emptying bedpans at VA hospitals and changing dressings; notifying KIA family members in their home districts; and digging the graves/graves registration details. This could also be done for the braying chickenhawk jackasses in our mainstream media.
We can dream…
Sun is breaking through here suddenly…a winter wonderland!
Honestly, OFD, would you trust the typical national-level politician to empty a bedpan? Operate a backhoe or even a shovel? Even, God forbid, break the news gently to bereaved family members?
No, I suppose not, SteveF; we were just floating a couple of ideas here; probably better to start those tumbrils rolling toward the guillotines…we can set up Ann Coulter or Bay Buchanan as Madame Defarge. I’m pretty sure their encoded enemy lists overlap quite a bit with mine.
Here we are on the verge of taxageddon and congress is working frantically to save milk prices. That’s what you get when you meddle. Maybe the North Koreans will drop a missile on Mordor for New Years.
Yah. Taxageddon. Color me terrified.
I’m sticking with three to five years for the Great Default to hit us. I could be wrong and it may take longer.
For the North Koreans to drop a missile on Mordor would require that they do so from either a balloon or a hijacked aircraft that can somehow penetrate Mordor’s air space and defenses. Crazy as they are, they’re also aware that a retaliatory response would wipe them from existence, totally. More likely is a scenario from the “Jericho” series where some hadji or other group lights off a dirty nuke in one or more cities, and their usual targets are almost always gonna be Babylon and Mordor. I see this happening within five to ten years; who knows how many sleeper cells have come across either of our borders or simply through any of our airports or seaports so far. The beauty of this for them is that our overlords won’t be able to ID a state entity to destroy in retaliation and it will tie up tons of military, law enforcement and medical resources for a real long time. It will also give our masters the justification, assuming they will need any by then, to institute martial law, and remember, military justice is to justice as military music is to music. Fun times will occur.
Before I am blown off here as a ridiculous dystopian fool, let it be known that I called who it would be for the portrait on the silver dollar a few years back, online (Sacajawea) and also that the Patriots would make it to their first Super Bowl (lost badly against the Bears).
I also often know who is calling when the phone rings (Caller ID).
Dirty bombs are about as likely to be effective as nerve gas, which is to say not very. I mean, an Oklahoma City sized dirty bomb would contaminate maybe a few dozen blocks surrounding the explosion and downwind of it.
Now, I can think of at least one and possibly two practical ways to cause widespread death (i.e., > 100,000 deaths per incident), but neither of them is obvious, and statistically the bad guys are extremely unlikely to have anyone who’s as smart as I am.
What if some bad guys paid a guy as smart as you a couple of million dollars? And/or threatened those you love? And what if it’s not just a dirty bomb?
Speaking of high crimes and misdemeanors, here is Fred on our joke of a criminal justice system:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/SquadCar.shtml
SteveF says:
30 December 2012 at 15:39
Yah. Taxageddon. Color me terrified.
Oh, that’s only imaginary terrification. It has actually happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PublicDebtTriade.PNG
I have nothing but the deepest respect for members of our military and what they do.
Unfortunately, that has not always been the case (“Tommy” by Rudyard Kipling):
http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Tommy.htm
BTW, did you know that one of Biden’s sons did one or two tours of duty in Iraq? So he did have some skin in the game. However, it is time for us to leave the middle east. And Japan. And Korea. And Germany. And the other 60+ countries that we have troops in that are not protectorates.
And not all members of the military deserve our automatic and unqualified respect and admiration, either, as I and others know full well.
Yep, I knew Biden’s son was over in the Sandbox or the Suck; there may be one or two others children of Congress who have, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head right now. Less than a handful, in other words, of 535 people. And if somebody is running for Congress now and they happen to be a veteran, well, WOW, it gets a shit-load of media play during the campaigns. Used to be so run-of-the-mill that no one cared or bothered; taken for granted.
Kipling’s only son, by the way, was KIA in the Great War, and some of his jingoism and braying for the Empire got stifled a bit thereafter.
From Jack Kipling’s last letter on the even of the Battle of Loos:
“This will be my last letter most likely for some time as we won’t get any time for writing this next week, but I will try & send Field post cards.”
http://www.webhistoryofengland.com/?p=163
Well, that should be “eve” or “evening” but of course I mangled it so it isn’t either.