Wars and stupors of wars

One of the multifarious issues with electing a total idiot who predictably stocked his administration with a coterie of simply-flaming-assholes, dangerously incompetent sycophants who are also flagrantly authoritarian-curious (at least), corporate whores, grifters, and outright clowns is that when problems turn up it's extremely difficult to feel confident that these gomers will be able to do something that ranges from "not actively stupid" to potentially useful.

While the bulk of the corporate media organizations circle the drain that is Trump's Twitter feed repeating his nonsense about hordes of invading brownskins, several parts of the globe are getting...interesting, and not in a particularly good way.

One of them is along the Pakistan-India border, where the subcontinental quasi-Trumper Indian PM Narendra Modi has played to his deplorable-Hindu-supremacist base by hammering Kashmiri Muslims. This, unsurprising to anyone who has more than one brain cell, has provoked some nasty posturing from the other subcontinental nuclear power. Trump's contribution was to shove his enormous orange oar (what? You say it's NOT enormous? FAKE NEWS!!!) in back in July blabbering about U.S. stumbling into the dispute and forcing a hasty denial from Modi's people that, no, they hadn't asked the buffoon to do anything.

It's hard to tell whether this will lead to anything more than posturing, but it's already obvious that the Trumpkins' geopolitical shrewdity has effectively neutered much of the U.S. ability to help defuse tensions in this nasty little dispute between two putative allies.

Meanwhile, in the Ukraine the political mess is getting messier, with a stand-up comic/president, fascist Ruthenians, Putin-fondlers, and all-around whackjobs all getting involved in a political imbroglio that would make Machiavelli throw his hands in the air.

If Niccolo himself would despair of this twelve-monkeys-fucking-a-football disaster, what hope is there for this Administration, that is, apparently, managed by tweet and whatever bats are looping around whatever is inside the tangerine-hued Tiberius' combover that functions in place of an actual brain? Certainly this would seem to be a place for a judicious consideration of the actual stakes involved and whether there is an actual dog for the United States' foreign policy in this fight and, if so, to what extent.

But, again...who outside of the MAGAt fever-swamps actually believes this congeries of fools and damned fools can do that?

Who'd have thought that Obama's "elections have consequences" line would be repeated so soon as farce?

WASF.

(And let's not even think about the weather.)

Nietzsche may have a point to consider about US

Another MassMurder by another White Man blaming Immigrants for...whatever, does it really matter at this point?

What drives me to depression is the "Cultural Christians" defense of the indefensible..."Stop making this about guns, people are dead, sad us, very sad, THOUGHTS and PRAYERS, so sad, bad people, evil people, naughty people, did I mention sad?"

Of course, it's video games, online culture, chat rooms, information hubs...those are the problems, and were said as much by the Governor's office of Texas, and the Lt. Governor who was sent to toe the line on Fox News.

But

That doesn't change the numbers...250..251..252...253 Mass Murders in 2019 alone?

as one Twitter user Professor of History at the Citadel, Micheal Livingston, tweeted

Do you hear about the Mass Shooting?
No, the other one
No, the other one
No, the other one

But what draws my ire, more than anything else, is the "Christians"

I know, I know, "not all Christians..." just like, "no true Scotsman..."

I even had one of the Elder's of my Church try that on me...and I really didn't want to gut him in front of our mens group, but I had to...not a proud moment for me.

"The World doesn't make distinctions of who is Christian and Who isn't...anyone who claims Christ as their savior, no matter how much they prove they are not, WILL BE labeled a Christian. We're stuck with them."We have a problem here in the US, a gun problem, all the Mass Murders have one thing in common...weapons designed to kill people.

But the other problem is we have a President who nurtures, encourages, and gives tacit approval of whole sale murder with this rhetoric at his "campaign" stops.


as I reread this I realized I need to bring my point home...so it is this:

Apparently, "Christians" and non-Christians have abandoned reason, and no one, the world or otherwise should look to us for common sense, answers, or truth..."we" have murdered God (or all that we claim we hold dear) by our words, actions, and in-actions.Nietzsche pointed out a key element about Christianity in Europe after the Enlightenment...though the Europeans used God's name a lot, their behavior said God was no longer a part of their thinking or lives...and Nietzsche wasn't above pointing that out...

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"


Nietzsche...the son-of-a-bitch, after all these years, still points out the unholy truth about Christians...and the unfortunate part is we can substitute God for the Constitution, America, Truth, Freedom, whatever the topic we spill words for...we killed it, we killed it dead with our knives.

AND STILL, we have no intention of changing our words, or deeds

Nietzsche is right, we killed our God and gods, what else is left to us?

P.S. 253 Mass Murders...apparently there was another one last night

/facepalm@America

Don't Be A Sucker

Produced at Warner Bothers by the US Army Signal Corps in 1943.  Below is a three minute plus segment.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1151325266360381440

The guy on the soapbox belting out hate messages is famed Dick Lane.   An early TV announcer for professional wrestling, kind of like Trump's hosting of WrestleMania.  Those early 40s and 50s bogus wrestling matches were the reality shows of 70 years ago.  Our own  reality show TV personality, Citizen Bone-Spurs, seems to be a duplicate of Dick Lane.  It's time to yell Whoa Nellie and get rid of this whining diva-wannabee.

Bastille Day

Mr. DoUntoOthersBeforeTheyDoItToYou is green with envy.  Why didn't the Pentagon give him a flying hoverboard and a three and a half hour show?


My favorite as always was the axe wielding Pioneer detachment of the Légion étrangère.  Axes for their Pioneer duties.  Tough buffalo hide aprons for their Sapper role to protect the family jewels from 18th century breaching blasts.  I need to grow a beard like those.  I'll pass on the epaulets though.  They won battle honors at Sevastopol, North Africa (three times), Italy, Mexico (Camarón), China, Việt Nam, Madagascar, and Macedonia.

I do like that UAV mounted on the yellow pick-up.  It appears capable of being launched from the truck bed.  What about landing?  Can't find any data on it.  Kind of a mini-UAV.  For tactical level recon maybe?  But it clearly has French Air Forrce markings and NOT French Army.  The launch catapult rails look similar to a ground-based version I've seen before, can't recall which system.

The hoverboard which got all the raves was piloted by the civilian inventor, Franky Zapata, and NOT by a member of the French military.   Apparently the French Army has wisely not bought it yet and it is just there for the show.   I am not a fan either.  At least not for the high-flying part.  If it could skim along a foot of the ground in real nap-of-the-earth fashion maybe I'd change my mind, but that would take some major upgrades.   And how about unmanned for hi-value logistics delivery?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K37aB80mZLA


 UPDATE:

Franky Z's next Flyboard show will be critical for his ambitions — On July 25, he plans to cross the English Channel.   I wish him good luck and fair weather.  But he reportedly will need mid-air refueling.  It must be a gas hog as the Channel is only 33 kilometers (<21 miles) wide at the Strait of Dover.   The 25 July date is the 110th anniversary of Louis Blériot's historic flight across the Channel: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#1909_Channel_crossing

Zapata claims his Flyboard has a top speed of 190 km/h (118 mph).   Maximum load is 100 kg (220 pounds), perhaps 200 kg for short distance3 low speed runs.   Maximum altitude is 3,000 meters.

Parade

For the out-of-towners, forget the First Toddler emceeing for an imitation of NorKo’s Kim Il-sung Square.  Here is what a normal American small town looks like on the Fourth of July.  No tanks and no B-1s.  And best of all no pompous windbag bloviating while staying dry from the rain behind bulletproof glass.  

More typical is my small town,  We had a Shopping Cart Drill Team from the local non-chain grocery, 

the Daffodil Ladies,

and the Butterfly Bicycle Troop.

Plus half a dozen gearheads showing off their antique cars, and Shriners in funny hats and trick cars.   

The only military presence was six old men from the VFW marching out of step, mishandling the colors, and winking at certain ladies in the crowd of onlookers.   

The only politician was a county commissioner in a convertible throwing candy to the kids.  No speechifying!  

Plenty of hot dogs and watermelon afterwards. 
  
I skipped the fireworks.  I miss the huge bonfires of stacked railroad crossties from my youth.  They lit up the night until dawn.

Tanks but no tanks

A couple of thoughts, based on this Politico piece that Sven provided in the comments on the previous post:

1. For a dude who claims to luuuuuurve his military guys El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago has no problems with making at least some of the poor bastards work over the holiday weekend rather than hang out at home or drink with the guys in the billets. I wonder who drew the short straw down in Ft. Stewart to drag ass all the way to D.C. to babysit the Brads and tanks and the M88 so somebody who would rather not have dragged ass to Southeast Asia when he had the chance (cough!bonespurscough!) could pose with the heavy metal and get a little woody?

2. There's a big reason that the Fourth isn't like Bastille Day.

For all that both republics were born in war and the use of force, the U.S. deliberately pushed the troops back into the barracks - hell, the Founders and Framers didn't want "troops" in the sense of regular GIs at all - in a way that France did not. And, in part because of that the U.S. has been spared the sort of man-on-horseback problems France has had with it's armed forces. There's a reason we here revere George Washington; for all his flaws (and he had them, like all of us) he could easily have been Napoleon and consciously turned away from that.

It's a sad comment - not so much on Trump, who is a ginormous toddler with the soul of a cinerious lump of coal and the intellect of a howler monkey who can only be expected to crave the fake toughness of being close to soldiers and military hardware, but - on the state of this nation that the vast bulk of Americans are reacting to this ridiculous Red Square propaganda show with vast indifference.

I'm sorry I'm 3,000 miles away, because somebody owes those 3rd ID guys a beer for having to be part of this Reichsparteitag shit, and I'd be buying.

And someone owes Trump a finger, while they're at it, and I got one of those for his orange ass, too.

Lovers in a Dangerous Time

The latest media take on the "legendary" Trump-Kim border stroll is that in so doing Trump has "normalized" the NORK nukes.

Far be it from me to hand El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago any diplomatic props whatsoever, but...what the hell else could he do?

The DPRK has nuclear weapons. Crude, perhaps, but certainly no cruder than the weapons used in 1945. Donnie Trump hasn't "made" North Korea a nuclear power; North Korea IS a nuclear power. Short of risking nuclear detonation on the Korean peninsula, what the hell is the U.S. going to do to change that? Kim, as big a sonofabitch as he is, is not a fool. He knows his survival and that of the Kim Dynasty depends on making his little fiefdom too nasty for a larger enemy to take down without paying an unacceptable price. He's seen what happens to the Saddams and the Gadaffis of the world. He's no more going to "denuclearize" than he's going to appear on The Apprentice in a cheap suit.

Only a monstrous simulacrum of a human being with the intellectual capacity of a brain-damaged marmoset would think or expect otherwise.

Oh, wait...

Christ, what a maroon. What an im-bessal. Can anyone explain why the Mustache of Stupidity still has any geopolitical credibility whatsoever?

Christ, what an asshole.

So while I'm perfectly willing to dopeslap the Tangerine Tinpot for his behavior at the G20, where he did his best to imitate his boss from Moscow and follow the boss' direction for continuing his efforts towards the demolition of the Western hegemony (his comments on the 1951-1960 US-Japan agreement were particularly moronic), I can't really get too arsed about this little jaunt around the bricks at Panmunjom.

The notion that the U.S. can do what it can and the NORKs must suffer what they must died the moment the first fission test succeeded north of the DMZ.

North Korea is and will be a nuclear power; regardless of what gas Trump and the Trumpkins may expel, the U.S. is going to have to accept that unless and until the people running the show in the U.S. are willing to risk a nuclear, biological, and chemical attack on their Korean and Japanese allies. Bolton may be willing to do that, and Trump may be ignorant enough to let him, but almost no one else in the U.S. government is.

For the U.S. "news" media to bloviate otherwise simply makes that acceptance more difficult and fraught.