This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Politics

  • What about these Buffalo Soldiers’ statues?

    What about these Buffalo Soldiers’ statues?

    My buddy, Boomer, who lives with a Nork bullseye on him since he’s a retired Air Force master sergeant on Guam, eases his constant worries by sending out daily cartoons, one of which really got me pondering. It’s an image of a mounted U.S. cavalryman, on proud display at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, one of many you can find around the western parts of this country, so really not unusual. What is different about this bronze tribute, however, is that this statue honors those black cavalrymen who served out west in the four black regiments known as the Buffalo Soldiers. Moreover, it is one of many such shrines to these brave black soldiers who played an integral part in reducing the hostile Indian threat so that settlers could move west and tame the wild frontier. The erection of so many of such tributary statues was all part of the drive in recent years to recognize Black contributions to the creation of this nation.

    Above is another equestrian tribute, this one at Fort Bliss in El Paso, to those brave soldiers whose role in militarily dominating Brown Native Americans until those hostiles could be rounded up and herded onto reservations was pivotal. Can you see where I’m going here? Black Americans slaughtered thousands and helped starve even thousands more Brown Native Americans until those Brown Native Americans lost the will to fight and agreed to be subjugated by the White Americans in Washington D.C.

    The question begging to be asked then is, “When is an Antifa unit with its swarming mob of culturally hypersensitive camp-followers going to attempt to topple one of these monuments, erected by White Americans to honor better-armed and equipped Black Americans on superior mounts, for running roughshod over a minority of Brown Americans?” Talk about racism and cultural oppression: Of the thousands of Native Americans killed in the Southwest and on the Great Plains when the Buffalo Soldiers were deployed there, how many were killed by the black units? Don’t you just imagine those Black American soldiers killed thousands more Brown Native Americans than the KKK ever killed blacks?

    So…where’s the outrage?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • A Slap In the Face

    On 9/3/2017, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was requested by he United States, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Korea Request

    Here’s the press release:  https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7952

    This is a link to the transcript of Amb. Nikki Haley’s address at the Emergency UN Security Council Briefing on 9/4/2017:   https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7953

    You must read it before you react.  She is not mincing words in this address at all.  To quote her final sentence: “Twenty-four years of half measures and failed talks is enough. Thank you.”

    Here is a transcript of her additional remarks https://usun.state.gov/remarks/7954

    Ambassador Nikki Haley

    U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations

    U.S. Mission to the United Nations

    New York City

    September 4, 2017

    AS DELIVERED

    Mr. President, due to the urgency of the situation with the nuclear test, as well as the announcement by North Korea that they are planning for another ICBM test, we want to urge the Council to move very quickly on this.

    I think that North Korea basically has slapped everyone in the face in the international community that has asked them to stop, so the United States will be circulating a resolution that we want to negotiate this week and vote on on Monday. So just wanted to let the members know.

    I know that some are going to Addis, but we wanted to make sure that we will do that on Monday when we can get those negotiations finished. Thank you.

    ” slapped everyone in the face” is not mincing words at all.

    Fatty Kim da T’ird is itching for a fight. As Amb. Haley says, he wants a war. That much is as clear as a bell.  Anyone who thinks that, because I point and snicker at him, I don’t take him seriously, is badly mistaken.

    I grew up under the constant implied threat of nuclear war with Red China and the Soviet Union. Our house was barely 10 miles from ground zero in a target city, with a heavy equipment factory, a grain processing plant, an electronics factory, a tire factory and a sizable railyard.  Those are still in place today, as well as an additional grain processing plant. Both of these companies process corn and soybeans for the fuels industry. In addition to these, the  hospital where my mother worked is now a major medical teaching hospital, and the university that I graduated from has expanded its curriculum exponentially into current events, as well as adding two new master’s degree programs some time back.

    Any large city was a target city, whether it was New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, or Washington, DC, and whether or not it was near a military base. Pensacola, FL, was and still is home to Navy tech schools and ships, and a naval aviation training command.  It was a target city then and still is today.

    I think it’s far past time we got (Vlad Putin) Russia and (Xi Jinping) China, along with Japan, France, Israel and South Korea, into the White House for another kitchen table conference. And maybe it’s time someone put the screws to Iran, once and for all.  Vlad Putin (smooches) has stated that sanctions do not work on North Korea.  http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/850109/north-korea-news-latest-war-usa-trump-nuclear-bomb-missile-test-launch-south

    I miss the Cold War more than I thought I would.

  • MDMA Deemed “Breakthrough Therapy” for PTSD

    ptsd

    The Washington Post is reporting MDMA, known by its street name as Ecstasy or Molly, is emerging as a promising medication for the treatment of PTSD, and has been named by the Food and Drug Administration as “breakthrough therapy” putting it on a fast track for review and a possible approval.

    Government and military leadership are both hesitant to accept psychedelics due to the stigma associated with the drug, and its classification by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

    “We’re in this odd situation where one of the most promising therapies also happens to be a Schedule 1 substance banned by the [Drug Enforcement Administration],” said retired Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, who until 2010 was the highest-ranking psychiatrist in the U.S. Army.

    Due to recent and ongoing wars, PTSD in the military has become epidemic, with estimates between 11 and 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffering from the disorder. It is typically triggered by experiencing violence, and can leave its victims with audio hallucinations, inability to sleep, and sudden panic episodes. Only Zoloft and Paxil are currently approved for treating PTSD. Both have been largely ineffective.

    “If you’re a combat veteran with multiple tours of duty, the chance of a good response to these drugs is 1 in 3, maybe lower,” said John Krystal, chairman of psychiatry at Yale University and a director at the VA’s National Center for PTSD. “That’s why there’s so much frustration and interest in finding something that works better.”

    MDMA is a favorite because of its effect on users of intense feelings of euphoria. A side effect of the drug includes reduced fear and a sense of love of themselves and others- exactly the therapy needed to counter PTSD symptoms. By giving controlled doses of MDMA during three, eight-hour therapy sessions, chronic PTSD patients have processed and moved past their traumas. In clinical trials conducted by the FDA, 61 percent had major reductions in their symptoms to the point where they no longer fit PTSD criteria; follow up studies a year later increased that number to 67 percent.

    “If you were to design the perfect drug to treat PTSD, MDMA would be it,” said Rick Doblin, who three decades ago founded the California nonprofit behind the clinical trials. It is no accident that the group — the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) — chose PTSD as its argument for ending the government’s ban on psychedelics. “We wanted to help a population that would automatically win public sympathy,” he said. “No one’s going to argue against the need to help them.”

    Large scale trials, “Phase 3” involving 200-300 patients will be conducted next year at 14 locations. If those trials produce like results, the FDA could approve MDMA as a treatment for PTSD as soon as 2021.

    I hope for a successful Phase 3 trial and speedy approval by the FDA.

  • Townsend; “we don’t get second-guessed a lot” by Trump administration

    Chief Tango sends us a link to an interview with Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander of coalition forces in Iraq when asked how the Trump Administration’s decentralization of command has affected the way troops are battling ISIS;

    Townsend replied:

    I will say that the current administration has pushed decision-making down into the military chain of command. And I don’t know of a commander in our armed forces that doesn’t appreciate that. I’ll — I’ll prefer not to go into specific examples.

    I will say that probably a key result of that is that we don’t get second-guessed a lot. Our judgment here on the battlefield in the forward areas is trusted. And we don’t get 20 questions with every action that happens on the battlefield and every action that we take.

    And again, I think every commander that I know of appreciates being given the authority and responsibility, and then the trust and backing to implement that. So, that’s what I’ll say.

    In response to another similar question, Townsend said he believes both the Obama and Trump administrations are “all in” on defeating ISIS, but he said the Trump administration has “empowered the chain of command to make more decisions on their own, and has then given top cover to the chain of command, I think, for the decisions that are being made. And I think that’s important.

    The article reminds us that Robert Gates and Leon Panetta complained that the Obama Administration interfered with their ability to wage war. From Military.com;

    “It was micromanagement that drove me crazy,” Gates said at the Reagan National Defense Forum at President Ronald Reagan’s library in California over the weekend.

    Gates said he had to deal with members of the NSC staff who directly called four-star generals on matters of strategy and tactics. The White House also attempted to make direct contact with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Gates said.

    “I told JSOC if they got a call from the White House you tell them to go to hell and call me,” Gates said to a round of applause from the audience.

    Gates said the Obama White House too often let politics influence the policy when it came to the Defense Department.

    “I think when a President wants highly centralized control at the White House, that’s not bureaucratic, that’s political,” said Gates, a Republican.

    At the same forum, Panetta, a Democrat, had similar criticisms of Obama and his staff on military matters, and singled out the current campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in which Obama has ruled out the use ground combat troops.

  • US Conducts Successful Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Test

    DDG 53
    Fox News is reporting that the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced today that a ballistic missile was successfully shot down over the Pacific Ocean in a new test of its at-sea missile defense system, installed on USS John Paul Jones, DDG-53.

    The test vessel fired an SM-6 interceptor missile to shoot down the target, and comes after a previous test last June, that failed.

    Link

    “We are working closely with the fleet to develop this important new capability, and this was a key milestone in giving our Aegis BMD ships an enhanced capability to defeat ballistic missiles in their terminal phase,” MDA Director Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves said in a statement. “We will continue developing ballistic missile defense technologies to stay ahead of the threat as it evolves.”

    The target missile was launched from Kauai, was detected and tracked with Jones’ AN/SPY-1 Aegis radar, and was successfully engaged with on-board SM-6 missiles.

    This test follows North Korea’s Tuesday ballistic missile test. That missile was fired from North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, overflew the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and terminated in the Pacific Ocean. The missile flew around 1677 miles and reached an altitude of 341 miles. The overflight of a close US ally resulted in President Trump’s written statement repeating that all US options are being considered, and called for a UN Security Council meeting.

    “Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world,” Trump said.

    Perhaps next time NDtBF will be kind enough to provide the test target in a real-world Capabilities Test of the system.

  • Nagasaki nuked by Annie’s advantage?

    Nagasaki nuked by Annie’s advantage?

    Many of us have been following the usually comedic efforts of North Korea to successfully test a ballistic missile that their apparently deranged leader can get down range far enough to make good on his threats to nuke America or her allies. Most of their test missiles keep destructing on the launch pad or shortly after launch which leads many of us to suspect sabotage in the manner of how Israel and America cyber sabotaged Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Whether by incompetence or insidiousness, the constant failures have many around the world laughing at the No-Go Norks although they did just have a semi-success in lofting a missile over Japan only to have it fall apart over the Pacific. At this moment, Japan is not laughing at their Keystone Kops neighbor.

    However, it may not be the misfiring missiles that Japan should be watching. The Daily Mail is reporting that some Nork watchers fear that Kim Jong Un, despairing of missile delivery of nuclear warheads could turn to an almost ancient aviation technology for his delivery vehicles, his fleet of Antonov AN-2, bi-wing, transport aircraft of which he reportedly has several hundred. The Annie as this aircraft is known by the thousands who have flown it and continue to do so all around the world, looks like something from WW1, having been designed by the Soviets and first flown in the late 1940’s.

    Annie is a true work horse and the go-to aircraft in many remote areas of the world because of its ability to carry heavy payloads in and out of primitive areas with minimal landing and take-off amenities. It has a limited range of about 500 miles but that is enough to reach much of Japan and all of South Korea. “How could some old airplane do that in the face of all our modern air defenses?” you ask. And therein reposes Annie’s advantage. She flies too low and slow to be detected by radar systems and with an earth/sky camouflage paint scheme, is almost impossible to be spotted from above by faster, higher flying aircraft.

    Annie can fly low and slow, so much so that our modern air defense systems are actually programmed to ignore such radar returns to sift out civilian distractions. And when I say slow, I mean an aircraft that could possibly fly forty miles an hour at treetop level without stalling all the way from Wonsan to Nagasaki and Hiroshima carrying a two-ton nuclear bomb. How ironic would it be for the only two cities in world history that have suffered nuclear devastation might do so again to satisfy the mad political strategizing of a fat little man, full of himself and his total power over small nation, yet completely ignorant of the world he shuns. BUT, he does indeed possess a weapon that just might be capable of delivering that destruction upon those two cities and others, an aircraft that was ironically being designed and first built when Allied forces delivered the first nuclear destruction upon them in 1945.

    Another version of this is posted at American Thinker

  • What “Free Speech” Really Means to the Far Left

    For your answer . . . look no further than Berkeley, California, this past Sunday.

    Now IMO, it’s kinda hard to get much farther left than the self-styled “Antifa” without joining the CPUSA.  So I’ll take what they do as indicative of the true agenda of the far left.

    In Berkeley on Sunday, a peaceful protest by a group of conservatives was assaulted by a group of hooded, masked leftist thugs from the self-styled “Antifa” group.  Five were injured.

    Here’s a link to video of the event.

    During the melee, some of those masked leftist thugs were heard to shout:  “Take his camera, take his phone” on seeing a journalist in the crowd.  Decide for yourself why a bunch of masked leftist hoodlums might not want anyone taking photos or videos of what they were doing – and why they were wearing masks in the first place.

    So where were the police, you might ask?  Well, it seems that the police stood down instead of confronting those leftist hooligans – again.  Berkeley’s police chief claimed that was a “strategic decision” made to “avoid more violence”.  He said that there was “no need for a confrontation over a grass patch.”

    Hmm.  Sounds more to me like a police department that is simply afraid to do its damn job of keeping the peace – or was perhaps ordered not to.   In either case, IMO it amounted to de facto local government support for Antifa’s unlawful mob violence.

    But that’s just me.  YMMV.

    Oh, did I mention that San Francisco’s mayor has publicly sided with those leftist “Antifa” goons?  Well, that’s what I’d call it.  He’s been reported to have called this  example of blatant intimidation through violent action a “victory” over a group “inviting hate” – the latter referring to the peaceful conservative group protesting, not the leftist “Antifa” hoodlums that violently assaulted them.

    Apparently for SF Mayor Ed Lee, free speech means “acts of mob violence committed against political enemies by those he supports, while local government stands by and does little or nothing to stop it”.  You know, exactly the same thing some Jim Crow governments in the Deep South did during the Civil Rights Era.

    Ain’t that just ever so nostalgic and lovely?

    Fox News has an article with more details.  It’s definitely worth a read.

    For some reason, when I hear about stuff like this – violence against a group the local authorities don’t like, designed to intimidate, while those same local authorities turn a blind eye to that violence and tacitly assist same –  another term also comes to mind.  So does a name.

    Now, what was that term, and that name?  Wait a minute, maybe they’ll come to me . . . .

    Oh, yeah – right.  I believe I remember the word and name now.

    The word I was trying to remember was “Kristallnacht”.  The name?  “Medgar Evers.”

    “Antifa” is so named because they claim to be “anti-fascist”.

    “Anti-fascist”?  What a crock.

    “Antifa’s” tactics (violent intimidation of political enemies) are no different than those used decades ago by the SA or the Klan.  And in some places, they seem to have the same kind of political “top cover”.

    They just haven’t gone as far as either the SA or the Klan.  Yet.

    “Anti-fascist” my ass. “SSDD” is more like it.

     

    For the record:  the Klan and other far-right idiots are no better than Antifa; historically, some of those moronic groups have been even worse.  But it wasn’t a bunch of far-right thugs that attempted to silence peaceful protest at Berkeley two days ago.

  • Old Glory vs. Hurricane Harvey: Down but still waving

    Old Glory vs. Hurricane Harvey: Down but still waving

    Having lived almost half my life in hurricane country, both in South Texas and the Florida Gulf Coast, and experienced firsthand the devastation and loss caused by these great storms, I have been following Hurricane Harvey with keen interest. One of the first large batches of professional images just released contained this photo, which made me pause and just stare at it for a while:

    Like photos that have come out of wars to become the iconic images of that event, I thought this photo could well become such an iconic image for this great unfolding disaster that is Hurricane Harvey, symbolizing perhaps that while the citizens of South Texas may have been knocked to their knees by Mother Nature, they are a long way from being down, what with the rest of a great nation standing by to help them back to their feet.

    Crossposted at American Thinker