Day: May 23, 2018

Closing Thought–23May18

It Just Sucks!

There is a situation in DC that needs watching and better yet explaining……something in or around the White House is sucking badly!

A sinkhole has appeared on the White House lawn, causing headaches for groundskeepers and giving the current occupant’s critics an irresistible metaphor. The Washington Post reports that the sinkhole was first spotted last week on the North Lawn, yards away from the White House press briefing office and the office of deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley. Over the last few days, the sinkhole, which groundskeepers have surrounded with caution tape, has expanded and a second one is apparently opening up next to it. The sinkhole could be the result of a leaking old water line eroding space underground, and it doesn’t help that much of Washington, DC, is built on swampland, Forbes notes.

Some experts believe the sinkhole could be the result of debris settling from Obama-era construction projects. National Parks Service spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles says the service is keeping a close eye on the situation and is bringing in outside experts to help “remedy the situation,” CNN reports. “Sinkholes, like this one, are common occurrences in the Washington area following heavy rain like the DC metro area has experienced in the last week,” she says. “We do not believe it poses any risk to the White House or is representative of a larger problem.” (A year ago, a sinkhole opened up in front of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.)

It appears as if these sucking sink holes are following our President around……I am sure that there is a comic skit in this situation……I will leave it to late night TV hosts to do the honors….in the mean time I await the rebuttal from those lovely supporters that will have a good excuse (I am sure).

Peace Out Brothers and Sisters…..chuq

1940–Was France Truly Doomed?

In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland and thus began the last “great” war….WW2….then in 1940 Hitler decided to take over the rest of Western Europe and they began with Belgium, Holland and into France…..

Many observers say that France was doomed because it depended on the Maginot Line for its defense and the Germans basically just went around the fortifications and into the heart of France…..

So the question remains…was France doomed in 1940?

France holds a unique place in the collective military psyche. Once the military paragon of Europe, the French seem to have been doomed to an inexorable decline since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.[1] France’s recent expeditionary achievements in Mali are praised, but within the range of small-scale operations. When it comes to major wars, many Americans remember France’s military collapse in 1940 and assume it was inevitable, since the French were stuck in the obsolete tactics of Verdun. This is not some kind of a post-2003 French non-interventionism bashing. Rather in Europe, the most severe critics are often the French themselves.

Surprisingly, it is seldom emphasized that the French could quite possibly have imagined something close to the Blitz if they had been not just one but two wars behind in 1939. Indeed, before 1914 they were the strongest advocates of the offensive, which had been taught for years at the Ecole de Guerre by future Marshal Ferdinand Foch, and theorized by the influential Colonel Louis de Grandmaison to the point of the offensive à outrance (attack with no limit). The latter was much criticized later for having inspired the bloody and failed offensives of 1914-1916. But that does not erase the fact that, in the dialectic of the cannonball and the cuirass, the advantage goes successively from one to the other. Hence, the concept of lightning war was really nothing new in 1940, especially to the French. Today, Western armies see the blitzkrieg as the quintessence of military art because it splendidly combined technological innovation with the culture of mission command.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/04/26/were_the_french_really_doomed_to_defeat_in_1940_113374.html

Many stories have been told about the French in 1940 but the one that too many have overlooked is the heroism of the French army to hold off the Germans so that the English could be evacuated off the beach at Dunkirk.

Was That With A “T”?

I have written many times about the waste and the out right loss of funds budgeted for the Pentagon…..the latest article just makes my case for me…..

Twenty-one trillion dollars.

The Pentagon’s own numbers show that it can’t account for $21 trillion. Yes, I mean trillion with a “T.” And this could change everything.

But I’ll get back to that in a moment.

There are certain things the human mind is not meant to do. Our complex brains cannot view the world in infrared, cannot spell words backward during orgasm and cannot really grasp numbers over a few thousand. A few thousand, we can feel and conceptualize. We’ve all been in stadiums with several thousand people. We have an idea of what that looks like (and how sticky the floor gets).

(Read On……)

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-pentagon-cant-account-for-21-trillion/

You realize that amount is greater than the GDP of Australia?  We could fund a whole other country on the missing funds from the Pentagon

Isn’t our Pentagon a wonderful department…..that is my money, your money, the taxpayers money that no one can account for….time to a change.

Afghanistan–Well Duh!

It has been 17 years that our troops have been fighting in Afghanistan……I was never in favor of a continued presence after the first 2 years….I felt it would be an irritant and just a replay of the Vietnam scenario…..and so far I have seen NOTHING that would warrant us staying this long or another minute longer……..

But Hell I am a crotchity old fart but I am NOT wrong……and now so says the Pentagon’s Inspector General……

The inspector general has issued a new report openly scorning Pentagon claims of progress in the war in Afghanistan, noting the continued large attacks from the Taliban and ISIS, and that available data simply doesn’t show progress in much of anything.

That’s been a recurring theme in the war, now 17 years in. Pentagon officials have claimed in recent months that they see progress being made, and that they’ve “turned the corner,” but they’ve made similar claims dozens of times with nothing to show for it.

Meanwhile, ISIS and the Taliban are able to carry out major attacks even in supposedly secure districts. The Taliban controls broad swathes of the country, and only yesterday the Afghan senate admitted that roughly half of the country is outside their direct control.

That’s all bad news that’s been growing markedly worse in the past couple of years. The US has increased their own presence in Afghanistan, and is launching a soaring number of airstrikes, but neither of those has changed the underlying reality that the war is being steadily lost.

(antiwar.com)

This is not the first report that has shitty news about Afghanistan….if so then when will a spineless bunch of Congresspeople do something.  Time for these cowards to stand up and demand that our overworked and over-deployed troops come home and leave Afghanistan to the Afghans?