Category: Politics

I had a few moments of time to get an interview with Fabius Flatulus Maximus. He was looking forward to being appointed to the Trump Administration’s position for Secretary of Defense. Since he retired from the Army of the Roman Imperium several centuries ago, his opinions do have the benefit of time and distance.

His first observation was that we don’t pay the troops nearly enough. Taking into consideration that the Roman Army did not provide housing or food allowances to the troops, but instead gave them bonuses or annonae and quarterly donatives greater than their base pay, they were expected to pay for everything out of their own pockets. Some items he told me about included a modius (8 litres) of salt. At today’s prices, 100 modii of sala (salt) will cost an average price of $620, and 100 modii would last a Roman household about two years. The reason the price of salt was so high back then was the cost of camel caravan transport, never mind fending off thieves and mining the stuff. While Fabius is impressed with our production and transportation methods, which do lower the cost, he still thinks we don’t put enough thought into it.

“No, we don’t pay the troops in salt,” he said. “Even the munifici* get paid in coins. Sala is a bonus, but we mostly use it for trade with native tribes for sex and local beer. They’re glad to have it..” *A munfex is the lowest rank in the Roman Army.

I asked him to give me the lowdown on how the Roman Army paid its troops, at the basic levels, not including the Praetorian Guard, and here’s what he gave me.

Soldiers’ base pay in denarii:
average Roman soldier,annually 1800
annual grain annona (1 bonus per year) 600
quarterly donative (4 per year) 2500
Additionally, every soldier receives a grain allotment as follows:
30 modii of wheat per year that would be worth 3000
Total Annual Pay for an average Roman Soldier 15,400

Converting the denarius and sestertius (4 sesterces 1 denarius) to US dollars, the denarius is worth $6.20 to $9, depending on inflation, and the figures are as follows.

Soldiers’ base pay in USDollars:
average Roman soldier,annually $11,160 to $16,200
annual grain annona (1 bonus per year) $3,720 to $5,400
quarterly donative (4 per year) $15,500 to $22,500 quarterly
(annual total donative total = $62,000 to $90,000 per year)
Additionally, every soldier receives a grain allotment as follows:
30 modii* of wheat per year that would be worth $18,600 to $27,000
*30 modii = 240 liters of wheat

Total Annual Pay for an average Roman Soldier $95,480 to $138,600
I did ask Fabius what he thought of today’s armored vehicles. His response was clear: “You spend too much on that. A good army pack mule will cost about $1500 to $1800. The Humvee alone costs about $220,000. You could buy a thousand mules and feed them for two full years for what you spend on one of those machines, never mind the fuel they use and the maintenance cost. And besides, mules are smart as hell. They can be trained to sniff out explosives a mile away and warn you. If you don’t pay attention, they’ll kick you in the nuts to remind you. Respect the mule! Pay the troops better. And stop hiring jackasses.”

He had other things to add, so we’re getting together over pizza and beer next week..

While the Democrat party would like the American public to believe that the post-election, anti-Trump protests erupting in cities around the country are the spontaneous result of ordinary citizens who are dissatisfied with the election results, the visual evidence indicates otherwise. YouTube has video showing block after block of hired buses used to bus in “demonstrators” to Chicago in this instance:

The Democrats are proving to the world that they are thoroughly dishonest and corrupt to the core. Their leadership refuses to follow American tradition and accept our democratic processes. And if you think Hillary Clinton isn’t complicit in this shameful behavior, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’m willing to sell you.

Running around in my mind is a burning question. It is for the people protesting the outcome of the general election. What sort of government is it that you believe you want? Clearly you do not accept our constitutionally guided Representative Republic. If you did, you would marvel at the peaceful transference of executive power that is a prominent model for Western Civilization and the envy of the un-free. The history of the world is not one of freedom or democracy. The percentage of people who can be called free by the standard of the United States of America is miniscule when compared to the remainder of the globe. Not one nation among them can declare that the basis for their government is individual liberty. That is what makes us the exceptional nation, but I am sure you learned that in elementary school.

So again, what sort of government is that you believe you want? I really do want to know what better system you have in mind. Tell me, I will listen but have little tolerance for platitudes. You must first convince me you understand anything about our government and our history. I presume many of you are somewhat educated unless you are among the thugs paid to go to what might otherwise be peaceful protests and cause trouble.

I grew up in the hippie generation and collectively we were about as propagandized and ill-informed as I believe you are – by the same media actually and in our day there was no alternative. Many of us were draft dodgers and war protestors. The free love, flowers in your hair, and psychedelic drugs generation. The well-connected among us got draft deferments or choice positions in the military reserve units that were bursting at the seams. Others ran off to Canada. The remainder did what we thought were supposed to do. These were your grandparents. Many of them moved into academia where they shared with your parents and ultimately you a fantasized worldview about a place they wished existed, a utopia, but it does not exist and it is all because evil America will not allow it to.

I raised a son along with parents who were children of the hippie generation. Even growing up in a military community it was difficult to teach him that in real life there are winners and losers. It was also hard to teach him that you gain little in life by sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone to give you something for nothing. We had our share of parents and program directors that believed every child needed a trophy, every child had to play in the game, and everyone was a winner. I think I have a reasonable understanding of your generation. From me to you, life is not a game without consequences, a game where there are only winners.

I lost track of the stories this past week of distraught college students. Crying circles at Ivy league schools. People fearing they are going to be trotted off to internment camps for what they believe. Sorry, but you have us confused with North Korea, the greater Middle East, Communist China, et al. I heard one young lady declare this is a war and there are going to be casualties, “people have to die.” When you do not even comprehend the full meaning of words that are coming out of your mouth, you cannot possibly survive alone in the real world. Some sage advice once given to me, “Before putting your mouth into operation, ensure to first engage your brain.”

Life is not all daisies and rainbows. Beyond the locked doors of your home, there are no safe zones – and not even there if you are connected to the Internet. Unless you were born with the proverbial silver spoon, life is a place where you must earn your way. There is no president that can give you all you want. Your participation trophy is a paycheck for work done. Life does not run on emotion, which differs greatly from passion. Yours may run high or they may be low, but it is reality that drives life. Nothing else does. Most people are respectful of others and their beliefs, but they too have beliefs and no obligation to embrace yours.

So, your candidate lost. Protests and vandalism will not change that. Maybe you should look at why you lost. Many people do not like being called deplorable. People do not like “protestors” destroying property and the businesses that support their communities. Maybe you were led down the primrose pathway by a media that amounted to little more than pure propaganda. One that convinced you there was no way you could lose. Four years from now you will have had time to educate yourselves. Maybe this dose of reality will be good for you.

© 2016 J. D. Pendry

The hindsight heroes have taken to autopsying the failed Clinton campaign. With protesters in the streets demanding that the Congress shred the US Constitution, dingy Harry Reid, the draft dodger, throws fuel on the fire from the comfort of his Capital Hill office on Veterans’ Day;

“White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.

They may be “wracked with fear” but that hasn’t stopped them from being lawless in the streets.

The New York Times reports that Clinton herself, blames F.B.I. director, James B. Comey for her failure to win the election.

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Mrs. Clinton said, according to a donor who relayed the remarks. But, she added, “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum.”

Mrs. Clinton said a second letter from Mr. Comey, clearing her once again, which came two days before Election Day, had been even more damaging.

Odd, that she doesn’t blame the fact that she was using private email to avoid scrutiny of her time in the State Department to begin with. The Clintons have always been more concerned with their legacies than the truth. They sent Sandy Berger into the bowels of the National Archives to alter their record in regards to fighting terrorism virtually guaranteeing the failure of the 9-11 Commission to arrive at accurate conclusions in order to improve our national security. The Hillary Clinton private email server was supposed to rectify the situation for her.

For their part, the New York Times blames their own prejudices in the election for those results, according to the Times competitor, the New York Post;

Bad or sloppy journalism doesn’t fully capture the Times sins. Not after it announced that it was breaking it rules of coverage because Trump didn’t deserve fairness.

As media columnist Jim Rutenberg put it in August, most Times reporters saw Trump “as an abnormal and potentially dangerous candidate” and thus couldn’t be even-handed.

That wasn’t one reporter talking — it was policy. The standards, developed over decades to force reporters and editors to be fair and to build public trust, were effectively eliminated as too restrictive for the Trump phenomenon.

The man responsible for that rash decision, top editor Dean Baquet, later said the Rutenberg piece “nailed” his thinking, and went on to insist that Trump “challenged our language” and that, “He will have changed journalism.”

Baquet also said of the struggle for fairness, “I think that Trump has ended that struggle,” adding: “we now say stuff. We fact-check him. We write it more powerfully that it’s false.”

Baquet was wrong. Trump indeed was challenging, but it was Baquet who changed journalism.

Now, the Times is begging it’s subscribers to come back and promising to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor.”

Yeah, well, the media gave us Trump – they gave him all of the attention through the primaries virtually ignoring the other dozen or so candidates thinking that he couldn’t win the popular election.

The Democrats, for their part, ignored some candidates, namely Jim Webb, who could have brought it home for them. Instead, they stuck to identity politics thinking that no one could vote against the first woman, despite the fact that she brought more baggage to the campaign than most Presidents leave the White House with after eight years.

More importantly, maybe Republicans learned to stop nominating people who they think the Democrats voters will elect.

Sadness reigns in progressives’ America – a grief so profound as to provoke outbreaks of acute liberal insanity. But the grief, anxiety, and outright fear affecting progressive America for the moment must surely pale against those same emotions within Clinton, Incorporated, whose future fortunes have done a disastrous one-eighty since early Wednesday morning.

Think about it for a moment: with no more promise of future access to the presidential inner circle, what third-world government or major global enterprise truly wants to pay a cool half-mil to a now not so cool Bill for his special insights? Do you suppose that all those Wall Street swells are breathlessly waiting to hear the unique perspectives of a now not the first female president at a tidy 250 grand a pop? Sure they are.

But of course, the influence-peddling speeches were just chump change, mere walking around money for high rollers like Hill and Bill. The real cash, the huge multi-million-dollar payoffs that even bought pre-presidential secretary of state access, has until now come in the form of donations to the various non-profit entities the Clintons created to funnel their filthy lucre into – huge amounts of cash that could be washed, rinsed, dried, possibly even nationally dyed before being made available to maintain their one-percent lifestyle. It occurs to me that perhaps there is no longer a waiting list of sheiks and Middle Eastern potentates eager to pony up petro-dollars to ensure that a Clinton presidency maintains a firm grip on the now closed tap of federal petroleum resources, as the current occupant of the Oval Office long has.

In six months or so, when the new U.S. attorney general appoints a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton Foundation and all its related entities, does any of us really believe that Fortune 500 companies are going to be as keen as they once were to have themselves listed as donors to anything that has the Clinton brand on it? Without the family-White House link, will billionaires feel so warmly inclined toward neophyte investor and Clinton son-in-law Mark Mezvinsky, whose now defunct Greek hedge fund apparently “lost” huge sums of its investments? Ever wonder just where “lost” investments end up?

What could be even more disastrous for the Clintons would be if many of the major donors to their charities should decide they’ve been sold a bill of goods and demand refunds of very substantial quids, for which there will not now, nor ever, be the much anticipated quos. With reports that very little of the Clinton charitable donations have actually been applied to charitable deeds, such donors would seem to have a reasonably credible motive for demanding that their donations be returned. Just a few demands could trigger a financial run on the charity itself and multiple lawsuits against other associated Clinton business enterprises, for profit or not. How could the Clintons defend against such claims, with the response that the donations were actually made to obtain political favor?

With new donations dwindling and donors demanding refunds, lawsuits piling up, and an aggressive special prosecutor seeking evidence of ongoing crimes, it’s quite likely that the future is not going to be quite as rosy as the Clintons had pictured it prior to Tuesday. It is even more likely that it’s going to end in a way that at least half of America is going to find extremely gratifying.

It’s my opinion that the idea of Crooked Hillary escaping justice was a hugely motivating factor for voting against her, even by those who didn’t like Trump. They were adamant they did not want to see the Democrats reward her for her corruption.

And for those of you who will be quick to respond that Obama will simply pardon the Clintons, you will only be partially correct. He can pardon them for federal offenses. However, he has no authority to pardon them for future federal offenses, from state offenses, or from civil lawsuits arising from their corrupt behaviors. That reality leaves a lot of prosecutorial and litigation doors open to a pair of grifters with a long list of political enemies

Crossposted at American Thinker

Congrats to GR-ATC who came up about 900 votes short in NH from getting every single race correctly.

total TAH Name
9 GR_ATC
8 68W58
8 ex-OS2
8 Hayabusa
8 Lilredhen
8 propsguys
8 RGR 4-78
8 Skippy
8 Sparks
8 Tony180a
7 Brian
7 Claw
7 Crawfish
7 Dana1371
7 gc
7 Jake11boots
7 Jon The Mechanic
7 Just An Old Dog
7 Poetrooper
7 Radioactive G-spot
7 Some Guy
7 TSO
7 W2
6 26Limabeans
6 AW1 Tim
6 CAs6
6 charles w
6 ChipNASA
6 Conservatarian
6 David
6 desert
6 Devtun
6 HMC Ret
6 Holdfast
6 MA2USN
6 MCPO NYC
6 OAE CPO USN Ret
6 Oilie
6 Ol’ Trace
6 OWB
6 Roger in Republic
6 Veritas Omnia Vincit
6 Wilted Willy
5 AZtoVA
5 Bill M
5 Ex-RM
5 John S.
5 jonp
5 OC
5 sfp2
5 Silentium Est Aureum
4 AndyFMF
4 Bubblehead Ray
4 Drag Racing Maniac
4 Lilyea
4 Rich

Had machine issues last night and continuing into this AM.  I have to say that it was very nice to wake up to a truly pleasant surprise.

Many media “talking heads” and other libidiot fools must be damn near apoplectic – or possibly even suicidial – this morning.  Good to see them get a well-deserved comeuppance from the American voters.

Anyway: as a result of those issues, my musical “coda” for the campaign season was delayed until now.  So here ya go: three from the late muse Warren Zevon.  They IMO sum things up fairly well, from three different perspectives.

In honor of the Trump campaign – which thankfully IMO turned out well in spite of itself.

For the American public, who indeed IMO found the “next best thing”.  IMO Trump certainly isn’t a perfect choice, but considering the alternatives, well . . . .

And, finally:  a suggestion for Clintoon, her close confidantes, and perhaps a number of those in the current DC Klown Krewe.  If there’s any justice, many of them will certainly need at least the first and third items starting on 21 January.

Well done, American public.  Damn well done.