First up, an interesting take on the incoming Dem freshmen, from the Victory Girls blog, HERE.
The Camp Fire in northern California continues to claim more lives, HERE. I will be truly surprised if the final total is less than 200… 8000+ homes destroyed, 2000+ businesses destroyed, and over 52000 people homeless or displaced. There is apparently word going around that it may be a month or more before anyone can get back in, other that officials, due to continuing hotspots, gas leaks, and downed power lines.
The closest ‘big’ town is Chico, and they are doing the best they can, but that number of people all descending on them for services, etc. is overwhelming all of their services capacity. Apparently if you can get registered with FEMA, it’s taking two or more days to get a return call. And apparently one of the shelters where folks are staying now has a norovirus running rampant. My prayers go out to them, and to those helping to have patience, on both sides. Anger and aggression aren’t going to do anyone any good, and the LEOs are already on edge.
And this one is really scary, and a couple of counties over. A serial killer who may have killed up to 90 women over forty years, across the nation, HERE.
Then there is the weather… Colder, not warmer… More snow, earlier, HERE. This is for the NE corridor, and it’s raw, not hockey sticked or modeled, it’s ACTUAL data… Sigh
And some strange voting in Maine. I’ve never heard of ‘ranked choice’ before. I didn’t know that was even legal, HERE.
And this isn’t even getting into the Florida, Georgia, and California messes…
It looks like one more ‘old school’ beer may be going away…
PBR, Pabst Blue Ribbon for you kids, is in a lawsuit with Miller/Coors over continuation to brew PBR. Apparently Miller/Coors has been brewing PBR for a number of years (I quit drinking a long time ago, so haven’t bought beer for years, and didn’t know that).
PBR, like Fallstaff, Jax, Schlitz, and Primo (Hawaii) weren’t ‘good’ beers, but they were cheap, and cheap was good when we were 18 or so. PBR is about the only one left, and I do remember it was a ‘favorite’ during Vietnam, because the cans were steel, and made great ‘repair’ material for patching bullet holes in helicopters…
We eventually graduated, if you will, to long neck Lone Star, and the occasional Coors when somebody could get it…
Which reminds me of a funny story, back in the 70’s, Coors wasn’t sold east of the Mississippi, or west of the left coast. The USSS had just been caught smuggling Coors from California back to DC on Air Force One, and it’d been written up in all the papers. BUT, if you went to the Coastie Club at Barber’s Point, they had Coors, funny that… We were transiting back to Hawaii through Moffett Field one time, and as we taxied out, we saw a flat bed semi pull up behind a Coastie C-130, it was loaded with pre-palletized cases of Coors!!! And there were four or five of the big pallets ready to be loaded!!!
Went by the Coastie ramp the next day, and sure enough, that BUNO airplane was sitting in the parking area. And the club had Coors that night (I think you were limited to 2 cans per person).
Can’t say the Coasties didn’t take care of their troops… 🙂
Another corrupt stain on the Navy is going to jail! This time a senior enlisted!
Indicted a few months ago, along with a Commander and another senior enlisted, HERE.
A retired master chief pleaded guilty in San Diego last week to taking kickbacks and became the latest casualty in the Navy’s ongoing “Fat Leonard” public corruption scandal.
Ricarte I. David, 61, copped to one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud on Sept. 5, less than a month after prosecutors unveiled a grand jury indictment against him, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
There are more to go, and I for one, am glad to see the Navy continuing to go after these bastards and openly prosecuting them, not trying to hide it! This is the ONLY way this kind of crap gets stopped!
The truly sad part is the number of years this apparently went on, with mostly officers turning a blind eye/taking bribes that put sailors at risk, and literally cost the Navy millions of dollars…
Cyn Bagley has another short story up- The Utter Truth.
As always, click on the cover to go to the Amazon page
The blurb-
“I dream in red.” In a land where predators are the boogie-man, what kind of job can a lion get?
David Tatum has a story, A Gun for Shalla, in the anthology Fantastic Defenders.
The Blurb-
Across astounding and magical worlds, five heroes step forward to defend against magical threats:
A sorceress in a besieged city faces a malignant force even more dangerous than the city’s would-be conquerors.
An unassuming bureaucrat stumbles upon a threat to a vast empire and deals with it in his own inimitable fashion.
A resourceful bodyguard for an infant princess, trapped and surrounded by merciless assassins, finds a unique way to hold them at bay.
A mage press-ganged into the Royal Navy finds himself volunteered for a dangerous secret mission on foreign soil.
A disgraced royal guardian who failed in protecting his king hunts down those who cost him his honor.
These are the…FANTASTIC DEFENDERS!
Alma Boykin has the final book in her Powers trilogy out- Against a Rising Tide
The blurb-
The World War has ended. The battles rage on.
Five years after the end of the World War, men, Half-Dragons and True-Dragons labor to repair the damage. The English and French insist on punishing the nations of the Habsburg Confederation and Germany, while nationalists and Communists threaten to tear the alliance and the Houses apart from within. As chaos swirls and tensions rise, István Eszterházy and Archduke Rudolph von Habsburg struggle to preserve order, and to preserve both Houses and Powers. Worse, an old enemy from the war stalks István, intent on revenge.
But true danger lurks to the east. The forces that destroyed Galicia threaten to devour all of the Powers and Houses, killing the very soil of the land as they do. As another war rages, István and Rudolph must hide the secret of the Powers from forces more terrible than the Mongols and ottomans combined.
And last, but not least, Margaret Ball has a new book in the Applied Topology series out- A Creature of Smokeless Flame.
The blurb-
Thalia Kostis and her cohort knew the CIA was funding their group of research mathemagicians, but they’d never demanded results like this before! After terrorists use magic to kidnap hostages from the agency’s headquarters, the Center for Applied Topology finds themselves torn from their cubicles and dragged across three continents, from holding cells to terrorist safehouses as the superiors who never believed in them before are now demanding impossible results.
Now academics who can’t organize a donut run are finding out there are worse fates than loss of funding… If they don’t find and stop the magicians responsible, they’re going to lose their lives!
California is burning again, still… As a former volunteer in Florida, I feel for them. The longest one I was ever involved with was three continuous days, and I was totally whipped. These folks haven’t had a break all summer, and that takes a toll on the psyche.
And the death toll continues to climb in the Camp Fire, which is in Butte County, CA. The towns of Paradise and Magalia are basically gone, and the death toll is continuing to rise, HERE. When you get a fire that ‘blows up’ like that one, you just have to get out of the way, and try to make rescues where you can. If you get in front of it, you’re dead.
I was talking to PP last night, and this one hits close to home for a number of reasons. My ex-wife and her husband lost their house, burnt to the ground, and no insurance because it was paid for and in a ‘fire zone’… 27 of PP’s ambulance company employees out of 100 total have also lost houses. Some of them literally have the uniforms on their backs and that is it. But they are still providing ambulance services, and assisting in the searches for survivors. And most of the police/fire forces in the area are also homeless, losing their homes while they saved others.
PP got up there yesterday, and sent pictures, and we talked about the ‘oddities’ that happen in fires like this. A plastic deer in a yard with the house burned. All but one house in an entire subdivision gone. One store standing alone. The ambulance company lost two stations in Paradise, one at the fire house, and a secondary in a strip mall, both burned to the ground, and one ambulance that got trapped, but the medics and patient were saved.
That fire is getting less coverage than the one down in Malibu, because it’s just regular people, nobody famous or rich… But they did bring in heavy airborne units yesterday, and as of last night it was 25% contained, which means they’ll be fighting that one for another month.
California has had ‘problems’ with forestry management for decades, a lot of it due to regulations and econazis. Now they are paying for it in lives, homes, and businesses lost. Two articles, HERE and HERE.
Edit- They have put up a GoFundMe, HERE, to help employees get necessities.
Words that bring a chill to anyone who studies history… 9,000,000 overall war dead, 21,000,000 wounded, 117,000 Americans dead and 5,700,000 civilians estimated dead…
At 5 a.m. that morning, November 11th, 1918, Germany, out of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The decision was made to hold the notification of the signing until 1100 to provide the symmetry that we know today.
It all started on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
It led to trench warfare, biowarfare, with the gassing of troops on both sides, and battles across Europe and the Mediterranean, including the infamous Battle of Gallipoli, searing that name for every in the history of Australia and New Zealand, HERE.
Germany, France, Britain, and other countries lost pretty much an entire generation of young men, and scars from WWI still mar the landscape in Europe. Supposedly the war to end all wars, sadly became merely a prelude to WWII, around 20 years later.
My dad served in WWI as a rifle and pistol instructor at Camp Beauregard in Louisiana, because he was an expert with rifle and pistols prior to joining the Army. He also suffered from Influenza during the time, and that may have contributed to his early death in 1959.
The first unknowns were selected from among the British, French, and American war dead.
Following the custom inaugurated by other allied countries in World War I the Congress on March 4, 1921, approved a Resolution providing for the burial in Arlington National Cemetery Memorial Amphitheater on Armistice Day 1921 of an unknown and unidentified American soldier of World War I. The Secretary of War delegated to the Quartermaster Corps the duty of selecting the Unknown Soldier and accordingly the Quartermaster General directed the Chief, American Graves Registration Service in Europe to select from among the burials of America’s Unknown Dead the bodies of four who fell in the combat area in order that one from among them could be anonymously designated as the one for burial in accordance with the provisions of the Resolution. Four bodies of Unknown Soldiers were selected, one from each of the following cemeteries Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme and St. Mihiel–and brought to Chalons where they were placed in the Hotel de Ville. The fact that the bodies selected were those of Americans was determined by the location of place of death, original burial and uniforms. The utmost care was taken to see that there was no evidence of identification on the bodies selected and no indication that their identity could ever be established.
After the four bodies were arranged in the Hotel de Ville, the next step was the matter of selecting the one from among them to represent all the Unknown American Dead. This ceremony though simple was most impressive. In view of his outstanding service, Sergeant Edward Younger, on duty with the American Forces in Germany, was given the honor of making the final selection. On Monday morning, October 24, 1921, at 10 :00 A.M. in the presence of The Quartermaster General, the Commanding General of the American Forces in Germany, the Mayor of Chalons-sur-Marne, high officers of the French Army, distinguished French citizens and eminent American and French civilians the selection was made. While a French military band played an appropriate air, Sergeant Younger slowly entered the room where the four caskets were placed. Passing between two lines formed by the officials he silently advanced to the caskets, circled them three times and placed a spray of white roses on the third casket from the left. He then faced the body, stood at attention, and saluted. He was immediately followed by officers of the French Army who saluted in the name of the French people.
TODAY is the day to thank those veterans, and say a prayer for those currently serving in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. To my fellow veterans, I would propose the toast, “Absent Comrades.”
And to the families- No one says thank you for your sacrifice. So let me say thank you to all of the significant others that hold the fort down while we go on long deployments. Thank you for putting up with all the moves. Thanks to all of the dependents who step up and do the extra chores around the house. When the veteran is deployed the budget has to be stretched. The significant other becomes the banker. Thanks to all of the families that hope for only good news. Thank you families for your service.
And to my shipmates in the P-3 all those years, and those onstation today…
Florida, Georgia, and Arizona can’t seem to be able to ‘count’ votes accurately…
It’s amazing how they keep ‘finding’ votes, the preponderance of which seem to always favor Dems for some reason…
One of the Dems lawyers in Florida actually said yesterday, “I’m here to win the election.”
Shades of 2000, 2014, and 2016… Sigh…
I’m going to quit before I start using four letter words. YMMV, take your BP meds, and a deep breath. There isn’t crap any of us can do. As a friend said, “It’s in the margin of cheat.”
As an old fart, retired military, and retired .gov contractor, I don’t have a lot left…
BUT, I have always prided myself on three things, my honesty, my integrity, and my professionalism. When you come right down to it, that is what makes me who I am, and marks what I stand for.
Honesty- Be free from fraud or deception : legitimate, truthful
Integrity- The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness
Professionalism- The competence or skill expected of a professional
Yes, honesty and integrity are ‘interchangeable’ to an extent, but they are two different approaches.
Most of that comes from my family and the way I was raised. It was ‘fine tuned’ by my military career as an aviator. You tell the truth, you own up to your mistakes, you don’t jeopardize others by ‘ignoring’ things, and most importantly, you take care of your sailors.
When you go into the ‘real world’ outside the military, it’s professionalism that gets reviewed the most. You take the man’s money, you give the man an honest day’s work, first and foremost. That is the basis for your reputation. If you make agreements, you do your damndest to stand by those agreements, that’s the second part- Can you be trusted. The third part is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching. That’s taking care of your people, not for praise, but because it’s the right thing to do. The same with people you work with outside your organization. It’s loyalty up, and the expectation you will have loyalty down (seems to be passe today, sadly).
Sadly, I don’t see a lot of these ‘values’ in the younger generation. Both my daughters have thanked me for the way they were raised. I didn’t hide things from them, or try to ‘protect’ them from the real world. Things happen. I never ignored those things, they were dealt with openly, even when they weren’t pretty, or necessarily things young girls should be seeing. Of course that’s caused them some problems, since they adopted ‘my’ attitudes, which don’t necessarily agree with those of their peers… Sorry kids.
None of us are irreplaceable, it’s like the bucket full of water. Stick your finger in, you displace a little water (very little), pull your finger out, there is maybe ‘one’ ripple, but there is no hole in the water. Once you accept that, and the fact that regardless of how good you are, there is always somebody better, life gets a lot easier.
Too many people put so much pressure on themselves they literally work themselves into serious medical issues, or they collapse under the pressure, which can take many forms, including ‘go along to get along’, or ‘don’t rock the boat’, especially in the work environment.
I would end this rambling with this old analogy.
Put a frog in a vessel of water and start heating the water. As the temperature of the water rises, the frog is able to adjust its body temperature accordingly. The frog keeps on adjusting with increase in temperature…
Just when the water is about to reach boiling point, the frog is not able to adjust anymore… At that point the frog decides to jump out… The frog tries to jump but is unable to do so, because it has lost all its strength in adjusting with the rising water temperature…
Very soon the frog dies. What killed the frog? Many of us would say the boiling water…
But the truth is what killed the frog was its own inability to decide when it had to jump out. We all need to adjust with people and situations, but we need to be sure when we need to adjust and when we need to confront/face.
There are times when we need to face the situation and take the appropriate action… If we allow people to exploit us physically, mentally, emotionally or financially, they will continue to do so…
We have to decide when to jump. Let us jump while we still have the strength.
Now back to the regularly scheduled brain drivel… 🙂
We knew this kind of law wasn’t going to end well…
Two Anne Arundel County police officers serving one of Maryland’s new “red flag” protective orders to remove guns from a house killed a Ferndale man after he refused to give up his gun and a struggle ensued early Monday morning, police said.
The subject of the protective order, Gary J. Willis, 60, answered his door in the 100 block of Linwood Ave. at 5:17 a.m. with a gun in his hand, Anne Arundel County police said. He initially put the gun down next to the door, but “became irate” when officers began to serve him with the order, opened the door and picked up the gun again, police said.
Note the time- 0517. You come knocking on my door that time of the morning, I’d be answering with a gun too! There’s apparently more to this than meets the eye, but I have a feeling it’ll be buried quickly by the MD dems. MD is very tight on guns, and is ‘may’ (read pretty much never) issue state.
