Category: Politics

Early in his presidency, Donald Trump threatened to use federal assets to pacify American cities awash in criminal violence. The Washington Post reports that some Republican governors are getting ahead of the issue with state law enforcement assets. Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and South Carolina Republican governors are responding to the scourge;

St. Louis has recorded more than 110 homicides so far this year, which, as of late July, put 2017 on pace to be the city’s deadliest year in more than two decades. The trends have been similar in big cities from Baltimore and Nashville to Tulsa and Little Rock, and in response, governors are reviving a role many had embraced from the 1960s through the early 1990s but pulled back from as homicide rates declined.

Last month, after 25 people were shot in a nightclub not far from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson organized state troopers and FBI agents to respond to “a looming cloud of violence” in that city.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott pledged in spring to use “all lawful means” to snuff out what he called a serious “gang problem” in Houston, the state’s largest city.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster even used warlike language when announcing his plan for more state resources in Myrtle Beach, where homicides in June threatened the city’s reputation as a family-friendly beach destination.

“There will be a lot more boots on the ground,” McMaster said in deploying state troopers.

Missouri state troopers are patrolling St Louis;

“Traffic enforcement is a good tool in finding criminals,” said [Missouri State Trooper Brad] Sevier, who had been assigned to Perry County in Missouri’s southern river delta. “That lady was wanted for expired registration but it just as easily could have been a murder warrant or a robbery warrant.”

During the first 11 days of the state patrols on about 16 miles of interstate highways that had been only lightly patrolled before, troopers issued more than 900 traffic tickets and made 220 arrests, according to Missouri Highway Patrol data.

Missouri Governor Eric Greitens’ wife was robbed in St Louis shortly after he took office. His campaign ads promised to “take back Missouri”.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

DPAA has identified and accounted for the following formerly-missing US personnel.

From World War II

• PFC Lloyd J. Lobdell, Company A, 192nd Tank Battalion, US Army, was apparently lost in the Philippines on 19 November 1942 (see note at end of article). He was accounted for on 26 July 2017.

• LTJG Irvin E. Rink, US Naval Reserve, assigned to VF-27, US Navy, was lost in the Solomon Islands on 4 August 1943. He was accounted for on 25 July 2017.

From Korea

• CPL Dow F. Worden, A Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, US Army, was lost in South Korea on 29 September 1951. He was accounted for on 24 July 2017.

From Southeast Asia

• None

Welcome back, elder brothers-in-arms. Our apologies that your return took so long.

Rest in peace. You’re home now.

. . .

Over 73,000 US personnel remain unaccounted for from World War II; over 7,800 US personnel remain unaccounted for from the Korean War; and over 1,600 remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia (SEA). Comparison of DNA from recovered remains against DNA from some (but not all) blood relatives can assist in making a positive ID for unidentified remains that have already been recovered, or which may be recovered in the future.

On their web site’s “Contact Us” page, DPAA now has FAQs. The answer to one of those FAQs describes who can and cannot submit DNA samples useful in identifying recovered remains. The chart giving the answer can be viewed here. The text associated with the chart is short and can be viewed in DPAA’s FAQs.

If your family lost someone in one of these conflicts and you qualify to submit a DNA sample, please arrange to submit one. By doing that you just might help identify the remains of a US service member who’s been repatriated but not yet been identified – as well as a relative of yours, however distant. Or you may help to identify remains to be recovered in the future.

Everybody deserves a proper burial. That’s especially true for those who gave their all while serving this nation.

(Author’s Note: in their “Recently Accounted For” list, DPAA does not list a date of loss for PFC Lobdell. However, the DPAA News Release concerning Lobdell’s accounting indicates he was taken POW “after the surrender of Corregidor” (Corregidor surrendered on 6 May 1942). He was later moved to the Cabanatuan Prison Camp and is known to have died there of illness while a POW on 19 November 1942. The date of loss noted above is his known date of death, as it is unclear precisely which date PFC Lobdell was taken POW.)

Ara Parseghian died this past Wednesday.  He was 94.

Most remember him for his days as head coach at Notre Dame University.  Others remember him for his post-coaching work supporting medical research aimed at curing multiple sclerosis (his daughter was a sufferer) and Niemann-Pick disease Type C (the genetic disorder that claimed 3 of his grandchildren).  By all accounts, he was a truly fine man.

So, that’s all nice – but why this article?

Like many if not most men of his generation, Parseghian was a vet.  He served in the US Navy during World War II.

Rest in peace, Coach P.  Hopefully the Celestial Team has an opening for a coach.

Semper Paratus Coast Guard- 227 years young!

The Navy Times is reporting a Missile Defense Agency (MDA) review of a recent failed ballistic missile intercept test launched form USS John Paul Jones was a result of mistaken input, instead of a failure of the SM-3 Block IIA missile or an issue with the Navy’s Aegis combat system. A tactical data-link controller was programmed to identify the incoming missile as friendly, which caused the SM-3 to self detonate in  flight.

The head of MDA did not comment on the human error, but said in a statement that the ongoing review confirmed it wasn’t an issue with the SM-3 Block IIA missile or the Navy’s Aegis combat system. “Though the review is still in process, the SM-3 IIA interceptor and Aegis Combat System have been eliminated as the potential root cause,” of the failure, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, the director of MDA.

“We are conducting an extensive review as part of our standard engineering and test processes, and it would be inappropriate to comment further until we complete the investigation.”

This is the fourth flight test of the SM-3 Block IIA, and the second time it has been launched from a ship. A successful ship borne launch to intercept was conducted last February. The finding of human error is a relief to the contractors and military advancing Ballistic Missile Defense technology in the face of current threats.

“As unfortunate as this might be, it’s a good thing that this wasn’t a technology issue or some deeper failure that needs to be investigated at great length and time,” Karako said. “There is no reason to believe the basic capability that has already been demonstrated has any new problems.”

USS John Paul Jones has replaced the original missile defense ship, USS Lake Erie, which is currently deployed to the Asia-Pacific area.

Even in the worst days of WWII for Germany, when Allies and Soviets were closing in on Berlin, the men fought desperately to protect their women and children. With the Americans, it was more a matter of preventing hungry frauleins from being lured into casual prostitution with cigarettes, nylons, and Hershey bars. With the Russians, it was a different matter for the Germans – a primal fear of a primal force that was sweeping over them and targeting Germany’s women and girls as sexual victims in the waning days of history’s greatest conflict. Stalin’s armies brought to the middle of the 20th century the same inhumane brutality as that of the terrible Khans who had swept in from the East many centuries before. In the face of that brutality and those overwhelming odds, German males, like their Teutonic forebears, fought to protect their nation’s wives and daughters from the rapacious Russians, frequently in futility and at the cost of their lives.

Today, we should contrast that courage with the complete surrender of physical courage demonstrated to the world by Germany’s supposed warrior-males in Muslim-occupied towns and cities where their wives, daughters, mothers and grandmothers are easy targets for rapacious Muslim outlaws who scoff at silly Western values and morality. If you think I exaggerate, consider this response of a German mayor dealing with angry citizens complaining of verbal sexual assaults and harassment, and fears of worse, against pre-teen girls:

Grandfather: My granddaughter, she’s under ten – and it also happened in a nearby town.

Citizen: That’s right!

Grandfather: The girls have been harassed by the “refugee children” … the asylum seekers … and they get harassed from the windows of the shelter and things like that. How will this be in the summer, when the school girls wear less clothing?

Mayor: That’s easy. Just don’t provoke them and don’t walk in these areas.

No stiff-spined Prussian leader, that mayor. Don’t provoke them? With what? Simply being your natural German selves? Parts of your town are now proclaimed off limits by Mid-Eastern invaders – off limits to you, direct descendants of those who founded it an eon ago? You mean by living within our traditions, by our very presence in a town that was occupied and repeatedly defended by our forebears for more than a thousand years until your government surrendered large swaths to swarming hordes of young Middle Eastern males, who have no logical reason for being here? For the simple reason that your feel-good liberal government picked our town to draw the short straw? Is that what you mean by “don’t provoke them” and “don’t walk there”? That sounds like what an African mother would tell her child about riverbanks and crocodiles. Is that the level of our culture now?

Where the hell are Germany’s men in towns such as this one? Where are the grandsons and great-grandsons of those Wehrmacht soldiers, who fought bravely for a terrible cause and an even worse leader in WWII, but even so with great courage? Has the lemming-cliff liberalism of the European Union so withered the balls of German males that they will meekly surrender their women and daughters to the caliphate? Why on Earth was it a grandfather up front there defending his family? Where was that girl’s father? What neutered you German fathers: Allah, or your own pallid political correctness? Will you Teutonic Tootsies of warrior age simply turn your backs and mince away from these Merkel-motivated Muslims, and ignore the pleas of your daughters?

Until they go silent…like ill-fated lambs?

Crossposted at American Thinker