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

Category: Reality Check

  • It Ain’t Just About Guns, You Know

    Gadsden flag

    Early in November this year, the Anne Arundel county police went to a private home at 5AM to serve a gun seizure order on a 61-year-old man, under Maryland’s newly-minted “red flag law”. https://www.capitalgazette.com/news/for_the_record/ac-cn-red-flag-folo-1106-story.html

    “The Anne Arundel County police chief defended Maryland’s new “red flag” protective law Monday, just hours after a 61-year-old man was shot and killed while officers were trying to serve a court order requiring him to surrender his guns.

    Chief Timothy Altomare said the fatal shooting in Ferndale was a sign that the law, which went into effect Oct. 1, is needed. There have been 19 protective orders sought in the county since then, tying Harford County for the most in Maryland, according to a report on the first month. Statewide, about half of the 114 orders sought have been granted.

    “If you look at this morning’s outcome, it’s tough for us to say ‘Well, what did we prevent?’ ” he said. “Because we don’t know what we prevented or could’ve prevented. What would’ve happened if we didn’t go there at 5 a.m.?”

    Altomare said the two investigating officers, who he did not identify Monday, “did the best they could with the situation they had.” One of them fatally shot Gary J. Willis at his Linwood Avenue home. – Article.

    According to the article, Mr. Willis did put the gun down on the floor.  If so then, why was it necessary to shoot him, and why did those cops go there at 5AM and wake him up? Per the article, Linwood became agitated and picked up the gun and a struggle ensued. So why was it necessary for either cop to pull out a gun and shoot him, instead of calling for back up and putting him on the floor?  Is Anne Arundel County turning into Chicago?

    And who called the cops on him, anyway? Was it family or a disgruntled neighbor? Apparently, it was a family member, but why aren’t these people responsible enough to get him to counseling if he’s agitated about something?

    Regarding this incident in Marylnad, which is now a “red flag law” state, there are many questions left unanswered. I’m hoping they will be answered, because this is bizarre, from my point of view.

    As you may or may not know, red flag laws allow someone to make a call to the police and say you’re some kind of threat, even if you are not.  If this by itself does not smack of Stalin’s era, then what is it? Someone likened it to “Minority Report”, a “gag me with a spoon” movie with that midget actor TCruise. (N.B: if Scientology has so much influence, why isn’t he more famous and more taller?)

    There are states that already have those laws in place. I think in Florida, there is also the Baker Act. Here’s the list:

    Such orders are known as “Extreme Risk Protection Orders” (ERPO) in Oregon, Washington, Maryland, and Vermont; as “Risk Protection Orders” in Florida; as “Gun Violence Restraining Orders” in California; as “risk warrants” in Connecticut; and as “Proceedings for the Seizure and Retention of a Firearm” in Indiana. After the Parkland school shooting, more states enacted such laws: Florida, Vermont, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

    In Illinois, jumping through all those hoops to comply with state legislation has been tested several times now. As you may recall, the Mayor of Deerfield, IL, was slapped by the court for violating the “unlawful search and seizure”, “due process” and all those other cautionary measures, in addition to violating the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. That sparked the Sanctuary County movement which is ongoing and becoming wider spread in the state of Illinois. (Hey, how about some Sanctuary States?)

    I’d like to point out the obvious here. In the Florida Parkland school shooting, there were calls reporting the shooter and the police did absolutely nothing. He didn’t have a “collection”, which is something that is kept in order and looked after. He just had a big pile of guns. He did make threats because he didn’t fit in at school and was bullied. The school did nothing about it. The people he lived with did nothing about him. And, finally, the police did nothing about his threats, even with the backup of the Baker Act, so there was  nothing that stopped him from his rampage.

    We must remember, too, that nothing stops cops from being jackasses either, which has a lot to do with what happened to Mr. Linwood.  The Chicago cop who shot LaQuan MacDonald shot him in the back 16 times, instead of in the leg to disable him. The Chicago cop who beat up a female bartender half his size because she wouldn’t serve him any more liquor is another example. When the police do these things, they make the rest of us doubt their sanity.

    And remember: we were subjected to Piglet and His Friend Pooh in Parkland, making their grandstanding appearances during their attention-whoring day or two.

    So when someone goes in to a panic attack over “red flag laws”, my response would be that he file a public complaint that a law like that does not comply with the US Constitution, does not allow due process or follow that part about ‘unreasonable search and seizure’. You have to sometimes stand up for your rights if you want to keep them.

    That it is Nazism and Stalinist KGB/NKVD stuff at its worst, that it specifically follows those practices that led to concentration camps and gulags – those are all true, but has any of that come to pass? Use whatever legalities you can come up with, but keep it calm and assertive. Go through the courts and get that crap overturned.  At my age, if I’m not allowed to have a gun on me when I’m on the trails with a camera, in the odd but possible event that I may or might run into a rabid coyote (they never get their shots), I want to know why.

    You can file a complaint pro per or get the help of law students, and all of them need a shake-up now and then to rattle their complacency. They also need the real-world experience of dealing with something that they may not agree with, but which is still legally and constitutionally valid and/or invalid, and they are required to do some real legal work in some states. Good practice for them.

    Seriously, if someone really wants to be Gestapo, shouldn’t they at least wear the armbands and the insignia so we know who they are?

    Unless we take the old bullshit by the horns, the bullshit can and will bury us deep. We must always pay attention to our AO.

    The Bad Guys are out there in the darkness…. And they want Your Guns. (Snerrkkkk!)

    Well, they DO!

  • After the Storm

     

    No, that is not what happened last night, but it’s close. The 1967 blizzard that shut down Chicago left a trail of downed power lines in Central Illinois that were caused partly by the weight of the sleet that attached itself to them and created pounds of ice on those wires, and partly by a fierce, blowing wind with nothing to stop in on the cornfields or the highways, except for maybe a few dozen windbreaks of hedge apple trees that had been planted back in the 1930s and 1940s to reduce wind speeds and soil loss.

    I think I can say that the storm that hit the Midwest last night was the same in nature, starting with globs of slush and rain mixed together and a strong wind, and ending with about 3 inches of snow, depending on where you were. It was 33F at 2PM, with a humidity level of 84%. Yes, I was out shoveling that stuff, and by 2:45PM it had turned into blowing snow. Then it seemed to quit… until it started up again a little after 5PM, with snow and a humidity level of 95%.

    I’ve been keeping track of that humidity oddity for a while now. Low humidity used to be common in the winter. When was the last time you were zapped by a doorknob? For me, it was sometime in 2002 or 2003.  This is a significant difference, because it may account for the slop and slush that accompanied this storm

    I kept going out and shoveling the steps clear and thought it was over because the snow had arrived and was not heavy at all. And I was working on something very late, 1AM, in fact, so that I could keep track of the volume on my front steps, and bing! the power went out. It was out for 10 minutes. Then it returned, but at 1:20AM, it went out again, so I called the electric company’s reporting number, filed the outage report, and at 1:35AM, power returned – at a lower level than normal. Almost like someone had squeezed a water hose. Then again at 1:40AM, everything blinked out and returned and the clock on the microwave was nearly invisible. The furnace would not start. I reported that outage, and by 2:43AM, the indoor temperature had begun to fall.  Not a good sign, and not enough voltage to run the furnace or the microwave. I had to start the stovetop burners with matches, because the striker was not getting enough current.

    Long story short, the entire county and a couple others lost power, some of it in the midst of court proceedings, which meant that hearings were postponed. The slush piled up and froze, hung on power lines, pasted itself to the windward sides of houses, glued vehicle doors shut, and required that people call in the outages because no one had heat or electricity, which is distributed by the blower motor in the furnace. Some newer models of gas stoves have gas valves that won’t open if the power goes out, which means you can’t light the burner to heat water or make coffee or fix food.  I had also lost internet service, which took some time to fix.

    Early the next morning, I checked the outage reports: 364,000 outage reports, 180,000 in my area alone. My neighbors were out in their cars, trying to keep warm. I bundled up, wondered if we’d get electricity back and then saw the Com Ed truck going north with a gigantic ladder and whatever else they were dragging, and hoped it meant “power soon”, because my indoor temp was down to 60F. Not life threatening, but chilly. Then at 4PM, all the power was shut off. No weak, dim light from the LED strip over the counter. No light in the fridge, no weak ‘click’ on the stovetop. Nothing. I figured those linemen had found the problem and were working on it, and my neighbors wouldn’t have to spend the night in their cars. I finally got bored and went to my trundle bed under 7 blankets, but woke at 11:40 because the lights had finally come on and the furnace was running.  I checked my phone for some notice from the electric company: power was fully restored at 8PM, while I was sleeping, like a putz.

    Those guys worked four hours straight in the dark, in the wind and cold, to get the power back for us, and I will never know who they were or how long their day was, but they and other emergency people are the only things that stand between us and real disaster.  Whoever they are, they have my eternal thanks for getting us back up and running so quickly, in the worst possible weather.

    The same goes to anyone else who has had to make those calls in wretched cold with power lines down, spitting sparks at each other.  I don’t take any of you for granted – EVER.

  • Veterans Day Is Not Memorial Day

    poppy

    There seems to be some confusion in the public about Memorial Day and Veterans Day.  This should clear things up. They are observed in different months (May vs. November) and one is a federal holiday, which means government offices are closed, while the other is not.

    Memorial Day is always the last Monday in the month of May every year. It’s a federal holiday, which means that it is officially a day when government is shut down, just like Thanksgiving Day (and sometimes the day after turkey day!). Originally known as Decoration Day, the name was officially changed to Memorial Day in 1971.

    Decoration Day was started as a way to remember the fallen and missing in the aftermath of the Civil War. It started as local and sometimes individual events, but the town of Waterloo, NY, had already begun to hold a communitywide event, starting in 1866.

    The full history of Memorial Day, including the reason for making it a 3-day weekend for government employees, is here at https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/memorial-day-history

    Established as the last Monday in the month of May, every year, it is a day when everything government is closed for a day off. There is no specified calendar date for Memorial Day. It is always the last Monday in May.

    The establishment of Armistice (Veterans) Day as a national holiday, but not a government day off, followed Decoration (Memorial) Day, and is always the date of the signing of the peace treaty ending World War I, which was November 11, 1918.

    I wrote an article for Veterans Day, outlining the history of this date.  https://www.azuse.cloud/?p=82786

    Originally known as Armistice Day, President Eisenhower’s administration changed it to Veterans Day in 1954 to honor the fallen of World War II, in which he was posted to the European theater, and the Korean War. It now includes all those fallen in warfare as well as living veterans and frequently, active duty people, too, and is always observed on November 11th, the date of the signing of the Armistice ending World War I.  The day of the week does not matter. This year, it fell on Sunday and a large memorial event took place at Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday, as well as observations and ceremonies in France at American cemeteries there and elsewhere.

    The difference between these two days honoring the military and those fallen in warfare is simple.

    They both have a specific month, but one has a permanently fixed week day, and the other is a permanently fixed calendar date.  What’s the difference in these two words: day versus date? Friday is not always Friday the 13th, but Christmas Day is always December 25.

    Memorial Day has a permanently designated weekday, the last Monday in May, every year. It is a federal holiday, meaning banks will be closed and the government has a three-day weekend, as do a lot of private businesses and some banks.

    Veterans Day is observed always on November 11 every year, regardless of the day of the week. It is not a federal holiday, but if it fell near a weekend when I was working, I usually took a long weekend. A lot of people I knew did the same thing.

    I don’t know how much more plainly these differences can be explained.  However, it should clear up any confusion in people who decided that somehow, Veterans Day this year fell on Monday, November 12, when it did not. The ceremony was held at Arlington National Cemetery on November 11, not on the next day.

  • Yesterday’s Election Results: A Semi-Feel-Good Story

    Not a great day for the Republic yesterday, but not a bad one either.

    In Georgia as well as in Florida, the Communist Socialist “Progressive” candidates running for Governor both appear to have lost.

    In Texas, the drunk-driving, ex-punk rocker Communist Socialist “Progressive” candidate for Senate – lost in spite of apparent out-of-state, Hollywood celebrity-led attempts to buy the Senate seat for him through massive fundraising.

    While the House was lost to the Prevaricating Promisers from the Pandering Progressive Party (the incumbent President’s party virtually always loses a number of House seats in mid-term elections, often losing control of the House), the Senate remained in adult hands with an even larger adult majority. So any Federal offices requiring Senate confirmation will still be considered by a majority consisting of adults vice dung-flinging SJW howler monkeys.

    And if any rank idiocy from the Pandering Progressives manages to get by the Senate . . . well, the current POTUS has a pen and knows how to use it, too. Good luck in overriding a veto.

    All but one of the Senators standing for re-election in competitive states who participated that organized campaign to destroy a good man’s reputation using highly suspect – and in some cases, outright fabricated – bogus testimony . . . lost. (Why West Virginia voters didn’t kick their jerk to the curb is beyond me.)

    And, finally: guess which one of these guys (well, the term technically also applies to the one on the left) had the last laugh?

    You can call him “Congressman Hit Man” now, Davidson. (Well, you could if you were truly a man vice a smarmy, butthurt little twerp who gets a kick out of mocking better men than yourself because of their combat-related disabilities.) (smile)

     

    Added Postscript: Oh, and it looks like Taylor Swift will be eating a bit of crow today, too. Hope you like it, lady. A dry rub with garlic and chili powder might help.

    And perhaps you should just stick to singing in the future. (smile)

  • Our Plan Is The Best Plan Ever

    I found an article at ‘The Guardian’ that reviewed George Soros’s failures. It’s obvious that the writer likes Soros, but he does not gloss over the failures.  https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/06/the-george-soros-philosophy-and-its-fatal-flaw

    One of those failures – Soros’s biggest –  is not understanding that this country is a democratic republic, not a democracy, and that’s why it works so well. Democracies fail. When Rome stopped being a republic and became a democracy as idealized by Pericles and Cleisthenes in Athens, it began to fail. Soros thinks that the USA is a democracy, which is incorrect.

    We should outlast Rome, if we don’t fiddle with it.

    He really disliked Bush’s war-oriented reaction, a completely natural response, to the 9/11 hijackers’ use of passenger planes as flying bombs, and a means of committing mass murder. It was warlike and reactionary (no, really?) and should have been less aggressive, according to Soros. Yes, let’s do appease those who wish to kill us in large groups. 

    He thinks Trump is a dictator. Trump is a lot of things, but a dictator? Not even! He’s just really good with timing. I’ve seen stopwatches that are less accurate. He knows how to throw a bone out there with a string attached to it and reel in the fish that swallowed it. I’m sure he could successfully herd cats.

    The Guardian’s rather interesting article is about Soros’s complete failure to understand how important capitalism is to a prosperous and healthy economy. This is really quite odd, because he’s a hedge fund manager, someone who manipulates financial markets to make a profit. That is pure, unadulterated, unfiltered capitalism. There’s a real serious disconnect there.

    Per The Guardian article, Soros seems to be slipping further to the Left of the political spectrum. He looks at Hungary’s Orban as a “dictator” the same way he looks at Trump. Is this some kind of ‘turf jealousy’? I must pay more attention to Hungary. This is interesting.

    Where else in Europe is this going on? Oh, that’s right: Germany. They just had their elections.

    Merkel is not going for a 5th term. The AfD party (right-wing) received 12%+ of the most recent vote and now has a seat in the German parliament, while Merkel’s two centrist parties (CDU and SPD) lost votes. She can no longer achieve a majority vote, so she’s giving up. I think our two-term president rule is much better. We really don’t want a Prezzie for life, like Xi Jinping. Even Vlad Putin is slipping in popularity. This ain’t Venezuela.

    Soros is the guy who shorted the British pound sterling in 1991-1992 and got it yanked out of EU circulation. It was generally described as ‘breaking the pound’. Remember our brief recession then? You think there’s no connection?  Soros is a financial speculator, not an investor. Taking that into consideration, I would like to know how many fingers he had in the US financial pie prior to the disastrous collapse of US financial markets in 2009. And how much did his hedge fund profit from it? Understand that when you manipulate financial markets the way he can, you can trip over your own hubris.

    As much practice as he’s had, he could have done to the US dollar, the basis for international currency values and trade support, what he did to the British pound. If you understand that, you’ll know how close we came to a worldwide financial disaster.

    The Guardian’s final paragraph:  “Presently, Soros’s cosmopolitan dreams remain exactly that. The question is why, and the answer might very well be that the open society is only possible in a world where no one – whether Soros, or Gates, or DeVos, or Zuckerberg, or Buffett, or Musk, or Bezos – is allowed to become as rich as he has.”

    Think about that for a minute: a world where NO ONE is allowed to become wealthy or rise from poverty to a better life. NO ONE. Ask people who finally were allowed to leave the Soviet Union and subsequently, Russia, what that feels like. Strangely, many of them are like my skating teacher, who is Polish by birth, and Russian immigrants, and who found a home and support in Skokie, IL, when they got here, and were able to get right on track to a better life.

    We have pockets of severe poverty in this country, places like the Big Ugly district in WV, in the heart of coal country, where people are having a desperate struggle for basics and the kids want books and school time. https://www.stepbystepwv.org

    In this country, a West Virginia coal country teenager with the stuff of dreams in his head can learn to build rockets and go to work for NASA, like Howard Hickam did.

    In a “Soros cosmopolitan society”, it won’t happen. There’s no moving forward, no progress, no inventiveness, no exploration, no discovery. Stagnation is what happens instead. Why else would the Soviets look for people in the US to sell them classified information on engineering and rocket science?

    Stagnation and decay – yes, that’s a real good way to muck up a thriving economy. Even China knows better than that. Don’t weep for poor old Venezuela or Cuba. Some day, Maduro and the Castros will die. Then what do you think will happen?

    It’s the struggles that make us who we are, not waiting to be handed ‘stuff’ or told what to do, which is how Soros thinks things should be done. He does not understand squat about human beings at all. A strong rise occurred in England’s economy during the reign of Elizabeth I because she had enough good sense to get out of the way of people who had good ideas. She also had excellent advisers at her back. Ditto for Queen Victoria.  None of us – not a single one of us – needs permission to think for ourselves or to speculate about the shape of things to come.

    Does what Soros want sound like a dictatorship to you? It does to me. Sounds like the “benevolent” dictator who thinks he knows better than you do what is best for you. Soros doesn’t seem to have even the slightest understanding of humans as a competitive species. This is quite odd, because his entire life has been aimed at acquisition of wealth in a competitive industry. So it’s okay for him, but not for us?

    Yeah, well, he can take his cosmopolitan twinkle twaddle and stick it right where the sun don’t shine. These gasbags all fail in that they are just as mortal as the rest of us, but they do not recognize it. Ask Stalin about his brain cramp, which killed him. After he was discovered dead in his bedroom, Krushchev took the reins and things began to loosen up, a millimeter at a time until finally, the USSR ceased to exist because its war of acquisition in Afghanistan had bankrupted an already stagnant economy.

    I’ll repeat what The Guardian says about Soros’s failures: The system that allows George Soros to accrue the wealth that he has created has proven to be one in which cosmopolitanism will never find a stable home.

    The open (cosmopolitan) society is only possible in a world where no one – whether Soros, or Gates, or DeVos, or Zuckerberg, or Buffett, or Musk, or Bezos – is allowed to become as rich as Soros has.  – Article

    You all have a good week, and go vote on Tuesday (if you haven’t already).

     

  • A Somewhat Different “Feel Good Story”

    As promised, here’s a different kind of “feel good story” for our readers. The money quote, with emphasis added:

    The United States returned to the top spot as the most competitive country in the world for the first time since 2008 after it made the second highest overall gain from the previous year’s ranking from the World Economic Forum.

    The year being considered was 2017.

    Gee. I wonder what might have caused that?

    You don’t think having reasonable adults vice naive, petulant children running things in DC could have had anything to do with it – do ya?

    (smile)

  • Vlad, You Naughty, Naughty Man….

    It appears that Vlad Putin, the guy who is really in charge of everything Russian, has two more spy guys who have recently been arrested for attempted murder in March 2018 of the 67-year-old defected Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, through the use of a Novichok nerve agent known as A-234.  They were trades in a spy swap several years ago.

    If you will recall, in 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned and murdered by dropping polonium-210 into his tea.  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-19647226

    This most recent attempt to destroy ex-spies who defected to the West seems to be a continuing story.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/second-spy-poisoning-suspect-identified-as-russian-military-doctor-1539069356

    From the article:  A London-based investigative journalism group said it has learned that one of the men accused of poisoning a former Russian spy in Britain earlier this year is a medical doctor and veteran of Russia’s military intelligence service.

    The group, Bellingcat, reported on its website Monday evening that the man identified and charged by U.K. authorities as Alexander Petrov is actually Alexander Mishkin, a highly decorated member of Russia’s military intelligence service, commonly known as the GRU.

    Bellingcat used documents including a passport to identify Mr. Mishkin, it said.

    The announcement came two weeks after Bellingcat and investigative website Insider reported that Ruslan Boshirov, identified by U.K. authorities as Petrov’s partner in the alleged assassination attempt, was actually Anatoliy Chepiga, a GRU colonel of high rank.

    Bellingcat said it used “multiple open sources, testimony from people familiar with the person, as well as copies of personally identifying documents,” including a scanned copy of Mr. Mishkin’s passport to prove that he wasn’t in fact Petrov.

    Last month, British prosecutors charged two Russian men—named in court proceedings as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov—with four offenses related to the poisoning of 67-year-old defected Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who has lived in Britain since a 2010 spy swap with Moscow. His daughter Yulia was also poisoned, and like her father, left critically ill following the attack.

    Western allies expelled dozens of Russian diplomats as punishment for Moscow’s alleged role in the Skripals’ poisoning. In August, the U.S. unveiled a new series of sanctions and threatened additional stronger measures in November if Moscow fails to comply with certain criteria. — WSJ article

    The two Russians who were arrested and charged with attempted murder insist that they were in Salisbury simply to see the cathedral. I’ve been there myself. It is quite old and quite impressive in that it took so long to complete building the cathedral that it includes both Gothic and Romanesque structures and windows. It is a quiet place, with scars from the swords of Oliver Cromwell’s army when they entered the cathedral and tried to destroy some of the tombs.  It’s not far on a daytrip bus tour from Stonehenge.

    These episodes of murder and attempted murder of people who either defected or were trades for others clashes with Vlad’s efforts to build Russia into a major power, when he engages in this extremely petty and nasty stuff. If they were trades in a spy swap, why would you have them murdered? Yeah, I know – they defected afterwards, which is embarrassing, but they just don’t like you, Vlad. Revenge is just a dumb thing to do. If they had any info, it’s already in the hands of “others”.

    Read the linked articles, especially the one about Litivinenko. Nobody believed him at first, until it was literally too late.

     

     

  • Who Are You, and What Have You Done…Update Kav Confirmed!

    cnn

    …with CNN?

    President Donald Trump’s winning streak
    Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
    Updated 12:27 PM ET, Sat October 6, 2018

    Donald Trump may have never had a better time being President.
    Only a re-election party on the night of November 3, 2020, could possibly offer the same vindication for America’s most unconventional commander in chief as the 36 hours in which two foundational strands of his political career are combining in a sudden burst of history.

    Trump will become an undeniably consequential President with the Senate due to vote Saturday to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, consecrating the conservative majority that has long been the impossible dream of the GOP.

    On Friday, Trump had celebrated the best jobs data for 49 years as the unemployment rate dipped to 3.7%, offering more proof of a vibrant economy that the President says has been unshackled by his tax-reduction program and scything cuts to business regulations.

    While his 2016 election campaign was most notable for swirling chaos and shattered norms, Trump’s vows to nominate conservative judges to the Supreme Court and to fire up the economy were the glue for his winning coalition.

    The struggle to confirm Kavanaugh split the country, deepened mistrust festering between rival lawmakers and threatens to further drag the Supreme Court into Washington’s poisoned political stew. But Trump stuck with it and ground out a win.

    So he has every right to return to voters in the next four weeks ahead of the midterm elections to argue he has done exactly what he said he would do. He now has a strong message to convince grass-roots Republicans that it’s well worth showing up at the polls.

    While not exactly pro-Trump, this article at least reports the facts on the ground, a refreshing change from the anti-conservative bias shown by nearly the entire Main Stream Media since 2016.

    Trump has indeed changed the dynamics in America’s foreign policy, taxes and the economy, placing Constitutional judges in Federal courts, and now on the Supreme Court. Twice. Rebuilding the military is a work in progress- the only misstep has been The Wall, and even that is on-going, albeit slowly.

    All this in spite of the distraction of supposed collusion with Russia during the election that placed him in the White House. It’s been a pretty amazing two years, and I am looking forward to the next six.

    The entire article may be viewed at, no really, CNN.