Jutland 100

So 100 years ago today the great Royal and Imperial German navies met at Jutland. Naval history had been building to this moment for a generation ever since HMS Dreadnought put to sea. The battle of Jutland was an epic clash that....not really. The British lost 16 ships, the Germans 9 in an engagement which decided nothing.

It reminds one of the great stalemate on the western front, where massive armies met on the battlefield...and decided nothing.

Ahhh, the quest for decisive battle. The last great naval battle happened a scant 11 years before at Tsushima, where the Japanese navy annihilated the Russian navy, a battle which made Japan absolute master of the Far East. Before that, one supposes Trafalgar was the last great naval battle. Here the Royal Navy destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleets. Britannia ruled the waves until the USN in WWII.

On the other side of the world, the US and Imperial Japanese navies sought decisive battle., they got one at Midway. The quest for decisive battle is usually elusive, Nimitz and compnay spent the rest of the war looking for a grand stage on which to destroy the rest of the IJN but never found one. Instead they  whittled the IJN down, blow by blow. It can be argued that Guadalcanal was a far worse blow to the IJN than Midway. Over a long campaign the IJN lost 24 ships. So did the USN. The difference is the U.S. could replace its losses while Japan could not.

Bigger losses followed, the great Marianas Turkey Shoot, Leyte Guld, all leading to the virtual destruction of the IJN. It didn't happen i a decisive battle but a series of successful ones.

Midway Melodrama

Over at PJM an interesting article about Memorial Day and WWII movies. More or less right, I think, though I loath Patton. The author lists Midway, rightly so, but makes this comment:

Charlton Heston plays the central role in a Hollywood-added subplot that's meant to boost emotional engagement with the audience, but it's just an annoying distraction from the history of this epic naval battle.

As Captain Matt Garth, Charleston Heston portrays an interesting character, and easily the most compelling of the movie.

Midway was on TCM yesterday, and watching it I noticed how heart wrenching Garth is. Basically, his son Tom, a new navy flyer, is engaged to a Japanese girl, Haruko who is interned with her family. Tom asked for his father's help as Haruko and family are about to be sent to a camp in the U.S. When Tom accuses his father of racism Garth replies, 'Don't give me any of that racial-bigot crap. I don't care what color your girl is.' But he also chastises his son, 'Six months after pearl harbor you have one lousy sense of timing.'

Needless to say, Tom's relationship with Haruko is controversial. Tom's squadron commander is an old friend of Matt Garth's, and over drinks Jessup tells him, 'You don't win a war by kissing the enemy.' Garth is extremely put off by Jessup's attitude about Haruko. Heston does an excellent job, non verbally, of communicating that for Garth, the friendship is badly hurt. he pays his bill and leaves.

Garth even goes to superior officer, a classmate in the intelligence section and asked him to investigate Haruko and her family and prevent their deportation to the continental U.S. When Garth's friend refuses Heston says, 'Christ, Harry! I'm begging you.' Harry does as Garth asks, but it costs the friendship.

Later, on USS Yorktown Garth has it out with his son once and for, 'I did all I could!' Garth said, 'a hell of a lot more than I should have!'

Garth's efforts to help his son have cost him his friends, his career and even his relationship with Tom.

As I said, heart-wrenching, and I think pretty well done, in a 70's kind of way, that is.

Memorial Day War Movie Spectacular

In America this has been going on since the early 90's, the AMC-Turner war-movie-athon. The interesting thing about the deluge is the number of obscure movies one sees, World War II propaganda flicks rarely aired since the war.

Then there are the old standards, Bridge on The River Kuai, The Longest Day, a Bridge too Far, my personal favorite, They Were Expendable.

They Were Expendable is a John Ford classic, all his cinematography tricks are there. The sense of scope, the use of shadows, etc...The man is the greatest American director ever, and if you disagree with me, your a commie. Anywho, an air of despair hangs over the entire film. We know the entire crew is doomed. The men of Motor Torpedo Squadron start out with hope, but as the war drags on the Japs advance, the squadron loses boats, men, equipment, runs out of torpedoes, runs low on fuel; the army takes a boat away to patrol a lake. The entire film seems to slow, almost as if its taking place in a sleepy southern town. Eventually Robert Taylor and John Wayne are flown out of the Philippines.

Interestingly, They Were Expendable is based on a book, and if said book is to be believed, how events are portrayed in the movie is pretty much how it went down, including the pretty nurse.

As it happens I have an article in the current issues of World War II Quarterly about this very topic, the Philippine campaign, not pretty nurses, sorry.

I wrote a few weeks ago how I've come to view The Longest Day as a bad movie. I guess I've changed. Below are some of my favorite war movies:

They Were Expendable (obviously)
A Bridge Too Far (I wrote about this recently too. Gets better with age)
Midway (feels like the 70's but I don't care, Eric Estrada!)
We Were Soldiers (recently reviewed here as well)

Nothing really interesting, pretty standard fair for anyone who grew up watching TV in the 70s and 80s.

Soviet Stuff Sucks

Periodically I get reviewer grief for portraying Western armies slicing through their Soviet armed enemies without even breaking a sweat. I maintain, and will continue to maintain that Soviet equipment stinks.

Anyone see what the Israeli's did to the Egyptians? How about what the U.S. Army did to Iraq in Desert Storm? Look, guys I spoke with a few dozen guys who were at the Battle of 73 Easting, where the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment destroyed two Iraqi armored divisions, in a sand storm no less. Its all in A Line Through the Desert.

Look, I'm not saying that the Mig-29 or the Su-27 are bad aircraft per se. But being Soviet there will be technical and quality control problems and going into the 1980s and severe technological disadvantage.

At the above mentioned 73 Easting, the Iraqis were shredded by Americans armed with uranium depleted Sabot shells, night visions gear and GPS, the last of which is why they could navigate their way through the desert to begin with.

Now at hushkit.net a list of 11 awful Soviet aircraft.

Enjoy.

A movie surprise and a pleasant one at that

So the other day on Netflix I watched We Were Soldiers, the Mel Gibson flick about the battle of the Ia Drang Valley.

I had seen bits and pieces of We were soldiers, but never the whole thing. I was not expecting much, frankly. Boy was I wrong.

Mel Gibson is great as Colonel Hal Moore, the heli-borne operations commander. He comes off as a gruf, scenery chewing, southerner determined to wield his battalion into an elite test case. He is also a family man and a man of god, who see's his troops as his extended family. I found Gibson's performance so strong I actually forgot he was Mel Gibson (the author's standard for measuring an actor's chops).

Speaking of which there are some excellent scenes with the officer's wives and their lives on a military base. Being stationed in Fort Benning, GA, in 1965, one northern women thinks the 'white's only' sign at the laundromat refers to clothes. As much as the fighting men are brothers, these women are sisters. There are some obvious but still heart-wrenching scenes.

Greg Kinnear plays a dare-devil chopper pilot and Barry Pepper a neophyte combat reporter who suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in death. Sam Elliot brings something knew to the hard-nosed sergeant.

The parts of We Were Soldiers I had seen prior to this viewing portrayed the actual battle. They seemed like they were filmed on a Southern California ranch, the terrain should look familiar to anyone who watched TV in the 70's and 80's. I'm pretty sure I saw the tree where Bo and Luke Duke take the General Lee for a spin around. Later today I'm going to flag down my Vietnamese neighbor and ask him about this. Maybe the Central Highlands are dry.  But over the long hall this doesn't matter. The combat sequences are well shot and intense, the most intense I have ever seen in fact. The author has written before about scope in a war movie; artillery barrages in the background, columns of men moving off in the distance, a jet making an attack run, We Were Soldiers certainly has scope.

Other reviewers have pointed out that We Were Soldiers is no jingoistic flick showing virtuous Americans up against a faceless enemy. Writer/director Randall Wallace goes to great lengths to humanize the North Vietnamese. The viewer gets to know them as well. This is always a nice touch in a movie.

The author has a personal cannon of war films he think are something more than just entertainment. He's adding We Were Soldiers to the list.

Will's good idea for the week of 5/23

Last week my great idea was 'A Ride Through Mexico'. Half the impetus is simply having the title. That A INSERT Through LOCATION tells one two things. First this is Will's character driven stuff, two this is the location of said character driven stuff.

Well, the World War series had expanded like a Long Island JAP bride's waist-line in the weeks leading up to her big day.

Had another random idea for the series and this would be he final, the election of 1992.

Now, alert readers will see that in Arctic Storm and Eastern Storm, various persons in the Office of the Vice President are trying to set the table for Quayle to run in 1992. The idea is, and this was actually spoken about in the real world that Bush, having just won the Third World War, has nothing more to accomplish and decides not to run. Really, he has no where to go but down. This is exactly what happened after Desert Storm.

I've written some political intrigue before, we have plenty of that in War of the Red Sea.

I'm thinking a battle royale in the primary between the forces of Dan Quayle, led by William Kristol, art imitating life I guess, though the embers of this were planted in Arctic Storm before Kristol's current real world intrigues. The opposing side to be led by, I dunno, Colin Powell, thrust forward by the anti-Quayle types?

Then there is the matter of the Dems. In the real world, all the Dem heavy hitters chickened out; Algore (a little conservative humor), Mario Cuomo (he's no homo...sorry an NYS thing, you had to be there) and its been so long now I'm having trouble coming up with other names. Clinton came out of nowhere, more or less. He had been laying the ground work for this during the last decade, but if one was a normal human, you didn't know anything about the man. I still remember seeing Bill (for whom I would eventually vote) for the first time in late 1991. 'Man is he slick,' I thought.

I didn't know the half of it. Nor did I know that two and half years alter I'd be interning for the man. Don't worry, I was the year before Monica ahhhh the summer of '95, my summer of the Stone Roses...

Anyway...I wonder if I can make a political novel about an election work? Who knows, maybe by then I'll be sick of writing about blowing stuff up.

Am I editing wrong?

Via The Passive Voice, and interesting article about Indie Publishing [that's you, Will]:

In the past few months I learned a very important lesson about the best way to revise your novel.
Don’t.
It’s a waste of time and energy. Not only don’t readers mind too much, they’ll still buy your books.
Grammar errors, spelling errors, sentences tangled like the earbud cords in your pocket: Not a problem.
Put it out. Rake in the bucks.

Here I am, going through Castro's Folly with a fine toothed comb [is that what you call it?-ed] before I even get it to my bevy of proofers, and then this guy comes a long and says, fuck all that, yo.

I have seven novels in print with numbers eight and nine on the way and I'm still banging my head against the wall trying to get the typos out. Are there a lot of them? No. But say 10 or 15 slip through and it drives me bonkers. It's not like I rush things. I have two proofers and then a well paid[you think so do ya mate?-ED] editor. One of my books had an expensive Amazon editor, and I, me, found a dozen typos she let through.

The author's right about one thing. My best seller ever, Israel Strikes went out with a ton of typos. I tracked it down to mistake, the wrong MS got uploaded, and not by me. The problem has since been remedied.

Honestly the editing is the worst part. I find myself bored reading the same scene for the 10th time on the off chance there's a typo. My eyes glaze over. I get distracted looking up stats on baseball reference or putzing around on FB.

Maybe I should pull a Harold Robbins? [You think you have that kind of clout, do you?-ed]

The Coming (or not) War in the Middle East

Interesting, though somewhat obvious essay on the potential for war between Hezbollah and Israel. The nut graph, as the bores at J-school say:

So, while another war between Israel and Hezbollah may not be inevitable, Hezbollah's growing arsenal, combined with its conviction that fighting Israel is part of its identity and legitimacy, means that outright conflict is a genuine possibility. If it comes, it will be devastating -- especially for the civilians on both sides caught in the middle.

A hundred thousand Hezbollah missiles, one fifty, the author claims. Why not 200,000? Its not so much the number of missiles so much as Hezbollah's ability to keep launching them. They have only so much space, after all. So the hundreds of thousands of missiles wont lead to a deluge of say 10,000 a day, but give Hezbollah the capability to keep launching them indefinitely.

There is also much talk of Hezbollah trying to mount armed incursions into Israel. Its a scary prospect but this would be like trying to invade Texas.

The author casts some doubt about Iran's willingness to support a war with Israel:

Iran is looking to build on the nuclear agreement with the United States and other powers to strengthen its economy and attract foreign investment. And having to rally publicly and loudly to the side of an organization that the Europeans, Americans and Gulf states regard as a terrorist entity wouldn't seem to further Iran's interests.

 Of course, this relies on what I think is the rational actor fallacy. The great Mark Steyn likes to note that the Cold War never got hot because we were dealing with the relativity sane men of the Politburo. Iran is run by an apocalyptic Death Cult who think its their job to bring about the 12th Imam via nuclear fire. Maybe I'm just a pessimist.

To date Israel Strikes is my most successful book. At the time (2011-2012) I felt I was in a race to get it published before the real thing happened. Israel Strikes was written in the post 2006 war, rather than the pre 2016 war period. Is that a prediction? Not really. But Islam does love ten year truces.

Star Trek: The Next Crappy Show

Via Sci-Fi Obsession Blog, Now this is a great idea:

Nathan Fillion as the new Star Trek series captain?

Of course, Nathan Fillion was Captain Mal (Han Solo, basically) in Firefly. The show was good, the movie, Serenity was awesome, and I'd have to rate it as one of my top five ever; Empire Strikes Back, War of the Worlds, etc.

Firefly only lasted 14 episodes, and personally we are kind of glad the show didn't have a chance to evolve and begin to suck. I mean, who knows where a Social Justice Warrior like Joss Wheedon would have taken it?

Of course, the show has left me with an eternal conundrum, an un-answerable question, the unsolvable puzzle...Inara  or Kaylee?

Here's the new Star Trek trailer:

To Survive the Earth

Soon:

In the (digital) media

My interview with Alexander Wallace of Odyssey On Line. Enjoy.

The Song Remains the Same

My first novel, A Line Through the Desert, opens with our protagonist driving home from the army recruiter blasting Led Zeppelin from his radio, specifically The Song Remains the Same:

Jake Bloom trotted down the steps of the Army recruiting office, enlistment papers in one hand, car keys in the other. He hopped briskly into his car and tossed the papers into the passenger seat on top of his cap and gown. Then he rolled down the windows and blasted Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. Electricity racing through his body, Jake started his car and began the drive home.

I wrote that paragraph in the spring of 2003. It was the spring when things started to come together for me, I think that comes through in the paragraph. It was the spring I rediscovered Led Zeppelin.

The moment I re-heard the Song Remains the Same and loved it. I still do. The song is utter rock and roll. It conveys a sense of pure joy. Jimmy Pages also shows of some excellent guitar licks. Its one of their best songs.

Well lookie here, someone else thinks the same thing:

From Zep's 1973 album, "Houses of the Holy" (the start of late-Zeppelin), this is without a doubt the band's happiest song: A rollicking ode to hard rockin' joy (more so than even "Rock and Roll" from 1971, which, while a hoot, sounds like the band's thank-you to the American musicians they loved when they were kids).

The rest of that article is interesting. He lists Achilles Last Stand as a great Led Zeppelin song. Personally I can't stand it.  He also talks about Kashmir, which needs no explanation. Its a great metal song and heavy as all hell.

I began writing for real just as I rediscovered Led Zeppelin. There's a reason why Sgt. Jake Bloom loves Led Zeppelin, after all. Of course, had I started A Line Through the Desert in 2005 Bloom would love AC/DC, 2007, Iron Maiden.

Listening to Led Zeppelin that summer, I was working out in my basement and playing air guitar along to The Ocean when it occurred to me that it would be cool if I could do something like that.

 I'd finally finished up my BA, was working toward a masters, had gotten a few pieces published. I'd landed my first full time teaching gig. Heck, just running, something I never thought my 5-11, 250 frame would ever be able to do, was a big confidence boost.

Then it occurred to me that maybe I could do something like that.

Now I can do something like that.

Like I said, 2003 is when it all started to come together for me.

Forgive me if I indulge in a but of nostalgia about that year, with Zeppelin as the soundtrack...ahhhh, substitute teaching, writing that grad-paper about Light Horse Henry Lee, running four or five times a week...

I've been playing guitar since 2004. I can do Zeppelin. It's disappointing in a lot of ways. As soon as I learned how to play The Song Remains the Same that track, and everything else Led Zeppelin lost that ethereal, druidic Myst that  seemed to hang over the band. Honestly, I can play Jimmy Page. No Angus, well, he's tough for me.

Sgt. Jake Bloom will be showing up in fiction again, no time table there. He's still listening to Zeppelin, but let me tell you, he's been to a lot of Maiden concerts.

World War Two's Competing Myths

With the President's scheduled visit to Hiroshima next week, god I cringe at what he might say, I've been reminded of various WWII arguments I've gotten into over the years. Facebook is great for this, of course.

Recently on an alt-history forum we were debating how long Britain could fight on without the United States entering the war.

I was of the opinion that Britain could hold out indefinitely, which brings us to our first myth: Britain Stands Alone.

Not really. Even in his famous speech Churchill referenced the Empire and Commonwealth fighting on. These were no minor contributors. Canada fielded an army in Europe (they had their own beach at Normandy), Australia one in the Pacific and India on the subcontinent. That's more than 3,000,000 troops right there, no to mention naval contingents. At the end of the Canadians had the third largest navy in the world.

There was also the matter of American help to Britain, which brings us to myth number two: 'We won the war for you Brits'. I had forgotten how many Americans truly believe this. It's not our fault, when looked at from our point of view we see a Britain on the brink, needing Americans arms and financing to keep them afloat until we join the war. Which isn't to say we weren't crucial and by 1944 western leadership had passed to the US. But in terms of war strategy and forces contributed the U.S. and Britain were more or less co-equals.

At said alt-history forum we also delved into Britain's chances without the Soviets getting involved. Last summer I got in a furious row with my Russian friend's friends on FB over this. Of course, the commies think of World War II as 'Great Patriotic War' and point out they inflicted 80% of the casualties suffered by the Wehrmacht and lost 26,000,000 people. All true. But the Western Alliance drew off dozens of divisions in North Africa, Italy and later France and launched a strategic bombing campaign without any Russian help whatsoever. See also Britain and the Empire standing against the Germans for a year without the Russians. There was also, you know, the little matter of Japan.

So nobody won the war for anybody else. The United States didn't save Great Britain, the Soviets didn't defeat the Wehrmacht all their own. It was a combined, symbiotic effort and we all share in the victory.

He lived in poverty, or he could've gotten a real job

To be an adjunct professor is to be bombarded by stories like this by your colleagues on Facebook:

When visitors walked into the dilapidated boardinghouse where Dave Heller lived, the smell alone could transport them back to their college days.
“It smelled like grad student,” jokes Charlie Fischer, a friend. “Like years of boiled noodles and rice.”

Except Heller was 61 years old and a philosophy instructor at Seattle University. Yet he lived in a room in a tenant group house in Seattle’s U District, with nothing but a bed, a fridge and his library of 3,000 books.
When he died earlier this year from an untreated thyroid condition, Heller was making only $18,000 a year teaching philosophy on a part-time, adjunct basis, his friends say. That’s about one-third the median income for a single person in Seattle, and barely above the federal poverty line.

There's a lot of moral posing in this story. 'Look, I live like a grad-student! Look, I'd live in a barrel to teach!'

Actually judging by the pic, by the words of his colleagues, and by his Rate My Professor rankings, I can't help but like our 'gifted professor'.

But he made a choice, didn't he? Many of my colleagues do the same thing, and they all complain about the same thing. The plight of the adjunct is all too real, I see it up close with colleagues who teach at three, four even five different community colleges. The coffee shop I go to in the morning is hiring, ten bucks an hour, eight hours a day. These folks could do that.

Or maybe they can stop acting like they got a right to a decent living teaching Basque Poetry: 1848-1917, Lesbian Labor Activism, and Early American Post Modernist Art.

Me I teach history, or used to, anyway.

Of course, in the article they get the problem completely wrong taking about the 'comodification' of college, whatever that means. All that money people are paying ain't going to the adjuncts, its going to the admin all the deans, assistant deans, provosts, none of whom actually do anything.

Trumped Again!

A Lone Author's Attempt to Understand Donald Trump and his Phenomena

Part II: Misunderstanding Ronald Reagan

In our previous Trumped! post we discussed the modern right's obsession with wonkish policies and how these just don't win out against simple slogans and ideas.

Reagan understood this. Let's look at one of his 1980 campaign commercials. Now, in 1980 your author was 7 years old. But it was obvious to everyone, even a 7 year old, that something was wrong. The Soviets were on the march, we faced constant energy crisis, we had double digit inflation. So here's an ad:

Longish for a campaign ad, not. Let's look at his two more famous ads from 1984:

And on foreign policy:

In the middle ad there's a lot of economic fact, true, but no wonkish policy talk.

Reagan was talking about broad ideas, 'morning in America' a 'bear in the woods'. What us wonkish types failed to understand about Ronald Reagan was his easy themes. Nobody was voting for him because they wanted IRA accounts, 35% and  marginal tax rates. Nobody voted for Reagan thinking, 'Yes! I want a 600 ship navy!' People were voting for strength and prosperity.

Ronald Reagan was waging culture war not policy war. We have forgotten this. He was telling us that the other side was weak, didn't mind that it was weak and had no idea how to fix the nation's problems. And he wasn't just running against Carter, but against the last 20 years of center-left consensus.

This was true for George Bush in 1988. Let's take a look at this doozie:

This ad is not about policy. It is about culture. This ad says, 'Michael Dukakis is a northeastern liberal who is soft on crime (also he's a member of the ACLU and burns the flag. Noe check out this one:

Now don't get distracted by the listing of weapons systems, those are just facts to back up the argument, not the argument. The argument was, 'Michael Dukakis is a liberal wimp'.

This was culture war, and it was the last time conservatives fought one. They won 53 percent of the vote and 42 states.

One more:

I saw this in 1980. It stuck with a 7 year old. Think about that!

Anyone remember a Bob Dole ad? Or a Romney ad?

I didn't think so.

Eli Wallach Call Your Office

Damn, I got a great idea this morning.

Looking through the Pershing MS, I was rereading the chapter on Poncho Villa and the Battle of Columbus, New Mexico when it hit me, A Ride Through Mexico. Like A Line Through the Desert and A March Through Hell, a character driven book about the Poncho Villa campaign. This only became feasible when I had the title and there it was, A Ride Through Mexico.

Lots of fodder there; the Battle of Columbus, the follow up chase and then of course, Pershing and his Poncho Villa expedition.

I recall the great Kathy Shaidle, commenting on a Brit writer saying she gets ten good ideas a year. Shaidle scoffed at the idea. So did I. I get ten good ideas a day.

This is why the World War series, originally supposed to be a one off book, is now going to be at least five books.

Honestly, when I feel the idea rising up from the depths I think, 'oh no, not another one.' Resigned to my fate I sigh, make a note and think, 'Okay, some I'm going to have to write that now.'

Put it on the list.

Trumped!

A Lone Author's Quest to Understand Donald Trump and his Phenomena

Part I: The Failure of the Right

We've touch upon this before but it's worth delving into again.

The writer is part of the 1990's generation of Young Conservatives. We were a new breed of conservative. Our ideas were plentiful and our women were hot. About those ideas, well we had one for everything. School reform, tax reform, faith based charities, covenant marriages, welfare reform, and on and on. We got our policy chops at Heritage, the American Enterprise Institute, CATO, we read Alvin Tofler. We were policy wonks and Newt Gingrich was our gran-pooh-ba (its a Gen-X thing).

Problem is, complex ideas about reforming the school lunch program don't translate well into plain English, especially not when the other side bellows, 'You want to starve Children!'. You can have all kinds of great pie graphs about how a few reforms in Medicare will save us $700 billion over a decade while still increasing spending by 6% per year, but they don't do you much good when Bill Clinton is hollering, 'You want to throw old people out on the street.'

Oh sure, you can explain, but as Ann Coulter has said and the author here has experienced, if you're explaining, you're loosing.

Conservatism has spent too much time explaining complex ideas when whittling them down to a a catchphrase or two would have done much better.

Remember the Iraq Campaign? Conservative arguments about policy in the Middle East, Sunni vs Shia, al Qaida, the Taliban, supporting moderate elements, upending the balance of power...and so on, simply didn't hold up against, 'Bush Lied, People Died.' Now in response to the slogan a conservative might launch into a detailed explanation about Saddam's capacity for manufacturing WMD, his Sarin gas shells, his medium range missiles....As Mrs Thatcher once said, No! No! No!

This is what you say, 'Bush Lied, People Died, huh? Yeah? You want Saddam to still be in power? Why do you want to lose the war? Everything may not be going perfectly, but at least I want to win, unlike you, who would rather lose a war than an election.'

Then you lean back and shake your head, not so much in anger but in sorrow and disappointment.

Oh sure, have all the wonkish policy papers you want in your blazer, might as well throw them on the fire for all the good it'll do you.

You want to win? Stop explaining and start calling the other guy a bunch of bad names. Let's start with communist sympathizer....

Sweet Child O AC/DC

Well, I never thought I'd see this:

I've seen AC/DC four times in concert. Three times on the Black Ice Tour, once on this current tour.

The first time, on the opening leg of the tour, well, I'll never go to a better concert in my life. Floor seats, maybe 20 back. It was like being in some of their old videos:

It was wondrous, that's really the word. Like a dream. Just awesome.

If you ask me, Axl singing with AC/DC works real well. He has about the best range in the history of metal, and his vocal style is very similar to Brian Johnson's.

I'd see them.

'They know nothing'

The fine men at Powerline provide an interesting excerpt from the piece about Ben Rhodes, President Obama's foreign policy guru:

All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Nixon wishes he could pull off something like this. But the fecklessness and shamlessnes of the Obama admin is not really what I'm interested in here.

Its the journalists, the 27 year olds who've only reported on campaigns.

I know a bit about what happened to this business. I wrote for my college newspaper. I worked for a time at CNN Inside Politics. I grew up in a media household. My father worked at NBC nightly news for 30 + years.

Am I an insider? No. But that doesn't mean I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

When I started writing at my college paper, the editor was a 30 year old army vet. God he might as well have been my father. He still expected journalists to be cigarette smoking, coffee drinking, donut eating fat guys. He expected journalists to have little college and to have come up the hard way.

These 27 year olds that Ben Rhodes is talking about. Do you suppose they earned their chops covering school board meetings and HS football games? No, these people came right of of college, probably grad school, right into these prestigious reporting jobs.

They know nothing except the little circle they travel in, lets say Sidwell Friends to Cornell to Columbia School of Journalism to their current gig reporting on foreign affairs.

This change began in the 90's. My old man saw it up close. He used to come home from work complaining about the up and coming news room types who didn't know who Desmond Tutu or Helmet Kohl were. This was around 1992, mind you.

I saw it in my time at CNN. The Inside Politics office was staffed with a bevy of young women, that's another post, two of who are now regularly on TV. I don't think they knew as much as me, and I was there age, though far more important than I.

These were the youth on the path to success. They're successful and they didn't have to earn it.

What's worse to think about is their editors. Who thinks an untested 27 year old is qualified to write about complex foreign affairs? I don't believe in credentialisation and 'experts' or 'specialists', but I'd like to think the guy writing about the Syrian Civil War has a few by lines under his name. I regularly write magazine articles about military matters, just sorting out the sides in the Middle East is a daunting task.

Then there's this fact, they called the White House to ask them to explain what was happening. They're journalists. They're supposed to be covering the White House. I harken back to my college newspaper days. We had a placard on the wall that said, 'If everyone is happy with your newspaper you're doing something wrong.' I mean, aren't these guys supposed to be a kind of permanent opposition?

And most horrifying of all, Ben Rhodes knows he can talk about how he manipulates the press, and there will be no consequences. Of course, Ben Rhodes' brother directs the CBS evening news. That incestuous relationship is a subject for another post.

World War III: Pacific Storm

Now this is interesting:

Scholars have devoted far less attention to the planning of World War III in East Asia than to the European theater. The two classic novels of the Third World War (Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and John Hackett’s The Third World War) rarely touched on developments in Asia.
However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Naval War College traced the potential course of war in East Asia as part of a series of global war games. These games lend a great deal of insight into the key actors in the conflict, and how the decisive battles of a Second Pacific War might have played out.

Its like they read my mind. Clancy made a reference about Vladivostok being too much for Midway and her battlegroup to handle, which even at 14 I found preposterous. Ralph Peters had the U.S. planning to make a move in the Far East after the war in Germany was lost.

Which is why I started Operation Eastern Storm in the Pacific.

The above article talks about a massive Soviet attack on Japan, American moves against Vladivostok, etc, and what is the role of Korea in all this. For my money I think nothing happens in Korea as the potential for Chinese intervention was a massive wildcard. When would they intervene, and on which side. In 1990 we were more or less friends with China.

Anywho its an interesting scenario, one we will be delving back into in future volumes of World War 1990.

Updates

Well been busy, busy here, or not here here really.

To Survive the Earth is in production.

Finishing up Castro's Folly and wondering if I shouldn't break it half and make it two books, one about the war in Angola, one about the war in Central America. We'll see.

Also agonizing over weather to write all the side theater books and then the final about the war in Europe, or the mirror.

Feel free to chine in.

Meeting with my agent next week about Pershing in Command.

The Trump Star Approaches

This must be how the good people of Alderan felt when they saw the Death Star approaching.

Lemme explain.

I'm 42. That's makes me in the same demographic cohort as Cruz and Rubio. 20 years ago I was a college Republican participating in the roacous back in forth of the College Republican National Committee. I was personal friends with most of the D.C. College Republican leadership.

I hosted Jo Gali at my apartment for a few CR parties. Go ahead and google. He was actually lied about by Stephen Glass of Shattered Glass fame.

We were the up and coming conservatives, a new generation that grew up under Reagan and swept into D.C. on Newt's coattails. I myself was part of the infamous 104th Congress, interning for Senator William V. Roth of DE.

Washington was Rome and we were the Goths. We had policy proscriptions, studies on important matters of the from school choice to Medicare reform. We knew government and how to reform it. It is now forgotten but John Kasich was chair of the House budget committee. He was pictured on the cover of Time tearing a copy of the budget in half.

How'd all that work out?

All our think tank opinions didn't mean jack against 'you want to cut taxes for the rich, and starve children!'

Ahh, the fall of 1995 where it all came apart.

We had no answer for Bill Clinton, and none for Barrack Obama, not really. The best description of the experience I know of is Jim Gerhaty's 'Weed Agency". It really struck w chord with me.

You can see this with Jennifer Rubin, whom I've taken to this space to bash before. She demands policy positions on pro-growth tax rates, comprehensive immigration reform, the Pacific Pivot. Paul Ryan is her man, another Young Conservative Gun whose my age. He and I both love AC/DC. I don't blame her, I mean who doesn't get lost in his dreamy blue eyes. I know I do.

What have all us policy wonks, man are we welcome at the Heritage Foundation, accomplish? What's changed in the last 20 years? Nothing.

Now all those working stiffs who've listened to us for 20 years while we said, 'Na, you're gonna love NAFTA, you're gonna love immigration reform,' they're all getting behind Mr. Trump. They have no use for Cruz and even less for Rubio. Ryan? Whose that?

We've been respectable for decades now, it worked, hadn't it. We all recall the Dole, McCain and Romney Admins.

Maybe the whole thing needs to go through the fire of destruction that President Hillary! will bring.

Or maybe Mr. Trump will win. Who knows, 'cause we sure won't.