I keep hearing that the Republicans don’t have a plan on health care. That charge is demonstrably false, but it persists. Just yesterday, a friend of mine posted a snide comment on Facebook, asking whether anybody really thought the Republicans would “start over” and do something about health care. The unspoken assumption is that health care is in terrible shape and anything would be better than what we have now.
The Democrats have a sweeping plan for radical change, and the Republicans don’t. Never mind the polls showing that people mostly like what we have now.
I readily concede that the Democrats have a plan. Custer had a plan, too. It was a bad plan based on a false assumption that Indians would never congregate in such large numbers. Therefore he believed he could send half of his troops to attack one end of their encampment while he led the rest around to the other end. No one was able later to ask Custer just how far away he thought the other end was or how many Indians he expected to encounter along the way.
So while the Democrats prove their willingness to go charging into the situation with no concern for the consequences, with no idea where they might come out on the other end, I find myself siding with Major Reno, who led the initial charge into the Indian camp while Custer set off to implement his grand envelopment. Reno recognized a disaster in the making and went into a defensive position, holding on until saner commanders arrived on the scene.
February 27th, 2010
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Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
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What’s the point of remembering Pearl Harbor? Or, for that matter, 9/11, Gettysburg, the Alamo, and myriad other days of conflict? It’s a relevant question given the current reluctance of many to remember 9/11 and the concerted media effort to keep photos of 9/11 out of the public eye.
9/11 generated the truthers, and a similar crowd sprang up around Pearl Harbor. Even posting the human interest story below concerning a pulley from the mast of the U.S.S. Arizona brings out the nut cases who believe every bad thing results from a conspiracy among a cabal of warmongering bankers and whoever occupies the White House. Giving the truthers their say has some benefits. The paranoid will always be with us, and it’s useful to know just how deranged they really are.
But there are better reasons to remember such things. They are defining events in our culture - rallying points. The concerted effort and sacrifice of a nation or people to meet such challenges speaks well of humanity. Storytelling sustains a culture, and the content of those stories defines it. In remembering the rallying points, we do well also to remember the stories of ordinary people who rallied to a worthy common cause.
December 7th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Reflections |
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Today is National Ammo Day, which seems like a cause worth noting.
Belt of 7.62mm linked ammunition.
The purpose of National Ammo Day is to encourage people to buy ammunition and empty the store shelves. This year, that has already been accomplished. It seems the Obama administration has already provided so much encouragement that the store shelves have been empty for quite some time.
The ammunition manufacturers want everyone to buy 100 rounds today. Good luck finding it.
Image by Micha Niskin - Creative Commons
November 19th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo |
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China is building a new fighter jet to compete with F-22. Unfortunately, there won’t be an F-22 for it to compete with. Obama killed the F-22 project, saying that we had no need for it. Why? Because, as the administration explained, no other nation was developing a competing fighter.
CNN reported on July 21:
[Defense Secretary] Gates said Monday he’d heard no “substantive” argument for keeping the jet for national security reasons, pointing out that China has no planes that can compete with the more than 1,000 advanced fighter jets the U.S. will have by 2020.
And so Obama threatened to veto the entire defense budget if it included money for the F-22.
Obama went to China last week with a message of “strategic reassurance.” Beijing took the occasion of Obama’s visit to announce its new fighter. Nice touch. According to Aviation Week:
Beijing’s fighter announcement suggests a serious failing in U.S. intelligence assessments, mocking a July 16 statement of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that China would have no fifth-generation fighters by 2020.
And what was Obama’s rationale for killing the F-22?
“At a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, (expanding the F-22) would have been an inexcusable waste of money,” Obama said shortly after the vote.
Hmm, fighting two wars renders weapons an inexcusable waste of money. . . . Okay, we’ll never make sense out of that, so let’s try the deficit argument.
On that score, the massive stimulus funding and the imperative to create jobs simply didn’t apply when it came to defense. We killed real existing jobs at Lockheed to create pretend jobs elsewhere. Just yesterday, in fact, the administration announced on its slick new $18 million web site that it had created a grand total of 30 jobs in Arizona’s 15th congressional district (at a cost of $ 25,380.67 each). Only there is no such place as the 15th congressional district of Arizona.
So, there’s nothing to worry about. Any administration that can create a whole congressional district from nothing won’t have any problem creating regiments and fighter wings from nothing . . . when the need arises.
H/T: RedState
November 17th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Commerce, Politics |
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The Russians are conducting war games, simulating a nuclear attack on Poland.
And why not? After all, the Poles are basically defenseless. They pitched their tent with NATO, and took the risk of accepting a missile defense system on their territory. They obviously didn’t count on the naivety of the Obama Administration.
In July, the region’s most famed and influential political figures, including Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, wrote an open letter Barack Obama warning him that Russia “is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods.”
But Obama cancelled the missile defense system (on the anniversary of the invasion of Poland in 1939 – the start of WWII), signaling America’s willingness to sacrifice its East European allies. The Russians recognized this development for what it was. Norwegians mistook it for visionary policy.
Now the Poles are experiencing the predictable results. At least now they won’t have any irrational expectations of help from the West. Obama has no cards to play, having already folded his hand.
Ordinary Poles were outraged by news of the exercise and demanded a firm response from the government.
One man, identified only as Ted, told Polskie Radio: “Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole most now get of the off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor.”
The Poles deserve better. Despite suffering catastrophically from the feckless policies of the West leading up to WWII, they contributed much to the Allied victory.
Come to think of it, we all deserve better.
November 2nd, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
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Mao Zedong or Sun-tzu? Perhaps to White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, they’re just a bunch of Chinese and they all look sound pretty much alike.
Mickey Kaus thinks that may be the animating factor behind Dunn’s excuse for touting Mao Zedong as her favorite philosopher. Dunn said she was merely parroting Lee Atwater, the late Republican election guru:
“My source for the Mao quote was actually the late Lee Atwater, either in an article or bio I read after the 1988 election. Now that I’ve revealed this I hope I don’t get Keith Olbermann angry with me,” she wrote, noting that she had also quoted Mother Teresa.
But Atwater was a big fan of 
Sun-tzu, a military strategist whose writing predates Mao Zedong by about two and a half millennia. Kaus can’t find anything in the record suggesting that Atwater was a fan of Mao Zedong, but notes that he regularly carried a copy of Sun-tzu’s Art of War with him.
But hey! No biggy. Can’t we just agree with Dunn that one Chinaman is pretty much the same as another, even if one of them is credited with the deaths of 50 to 70 million people and the other one isn’t?
Just keep telling yourself that Bush was stupid and Obama is smart, so the fact that Obama has surrounded himself with idiots can be overlooked.
October 29th, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
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Apparently our commitments to Poland (see yesterday’s post) and the Czech Republic will be discarded while Obama hits the reset button with Russia. What America gets out of this is . . . well, Obama looks like a good guy to the pantywaist left. Nile Gardiner has this:
I blogged a couple of weeks ago that the Obama administration was about to abandon its plans for Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. I wrote then that “if enacted, this would represent a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defence system, and a massive betrayal of two key US allies in eastern and central Europe. Such a move would significantly weaken America’s ability to combat the growing threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and would hand a major propaganda victory to the Russians.”
And others are saying that Neville Chamberlain was a “far-sighted hero” by comparison.
Update:
So let me be clear: Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran’s neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles. As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven. (Applause.) If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defense construction in Europe will be removed. (Applause.)
Obama, April 5, 2009. Thump, thump. Lech Walesa recognizes the underside of the bus:
“Americans have always cared only about their interests, and all other [countries] have been used for their purposes. This is another example,” Mr Walesa told TVN24. “[Poles] need to review our view of America, we must first of all take care of our business,” he added.
Remember, it’s all about restoring our global standing.
September 17th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
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Read Stuart Koehl’s article on the Battle of Britain. Today marks the anniversary of the turning point:
September 15 did not mark the largest air battle in the extended campaign called “The Battle of Britain”; neither was it the bloodiest (historian Alfred Price aptly described August 18th “The Hardest Day” in his eponymous book, on which the Germans lost 69 aircraft and the British a staggering 68), nor was it the last (German daylight raids continued well into November, including a belated appearance by the hopelessly outclassed Italian air force). But September 15 did mark the irrevocable “tipping point”, the day on which the German high command admitted to itself that air superiority could not be achieved in 1940, and therefore the planned German invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion, would not happen that year.
But the article is more about Poland than Britain. Koehl writes about the critical role played by Polish pilots in the RAF. They were seasoned as compared with the novice British pilots, and accounted for much of the RAF’s success. That dedication by the Poles was hardly reciprocated when Poland was left at war’s end to the Soviets.
The most remarkable thing about these men–and their brothers in RAF Bomber Command, and those who fought with the Free Polish Army under General Anders in Italy–was their fidelity to the cause for which they were fighting, which did not waver, even after it became apparent that the Allies had sold out the Polish cause, putting that sad country under the control of the Soviet Union. Knowing they could not go home again, they continued to fight, as the ancient Polish battle cry puts it “for your freedom and ours”.
Poland has been a most reliable ally, but the U.S. now seems intent on snubbing the Poles and discounting its substantial contributions to the security of Western Europe and the Middle East
–in order to “reset” its relations with Russia, a country that consistently works against U.S. interests around the world, supports governments antithetical to the United States (Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Iran and Syria), violates human rights on a massive scale, uses its control of European oil and natural gas supplies as an economic weapon, invades and partially annexes the territory of a neighboring state, and which seems intent upon subjugating all of its neighbors in a simulacrum of (if not the Soviet Union) the old Tsarist empire.
And that’s how the new administration expects America to re-earn the respect of the global community.
September 16th, 2009
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Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
one comment
On this 64th anniversary of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it seems appropriate to remember the facts surrounding Truman’s decision to employ that weapon.
A little while back, alleged comedian Jon Stewart labeled Truman a war criminal and went on to suggest some militarily and morally facile alternatives. Jeff Whittle provided a blistering response, which is worth a few minutes of your time.
I could add some comments, but Whittle really says it all.
August 6th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
2 comments
Disaster can be predicted reliably from two facts reported today by Fox News:
- The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has doubled in the last year and more are on the way.
- The President eschews any talk of victory.
Those old enough to remember Vietnam (Obama apparently not being one of them) will see the parallel.
The President who did his best as a Senator to hobble our efforts in that region had this to say.
I’m always worried about using the word “victory,” because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.
And we certainly wouldn’t want to repeat that, would we?
Two things in Obama’s statement are striking. First, Hirohito did not surrender to MacArthur. Japan surrendered to the U.S. (Hirohito was not present at the signing.) MacArthur, for all his hubris and love for photo ops, knew that. He did not have to make some ridiculous disclaimer like, “It’s not about me.” Second, that word “always” speaks volumes. It tells us that the absence of victory is not a tactic devised to meet the realities of the current situation, but a strategy – a guiding principle.
It has taken a long time for the reality to surface that victory was within our grasp in Vietnam at the very point we adopted a strategy of defeat. The consequences of our half measures were horrific.
It would be reasonable to define victory as something other than a Hirohito moment, but taking victory out of the equation will surely lead to defeat.
July 24th, 2009
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Ammo, Politics |
one comment
