Thursday, August 31, 2017

Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie

We Take it back.

In an earlier post on westerns we said in regards to The Good, the Bad and Ugly that, 'We don't get it'.

We take it back.

We do get it.

You have Tuco (the Ugly), Angel Eyes (the Bad) and Blondie (the Good) vying for $200,000 big ones buried in a Confederate Cemetery.

Along the way everyone they encounter they kill.

This happens amidst the carnage of the Civil War. When this unholy trinity is not shooting people they are running into the war. Here they meet Confederate soldiers virtually abandoned by their government, Confederate POWs being mistreated by their Union captors, and finally a Union army kept in the field by the promise of alcohol.

Honestly its hard not to root for Tuco. He seems nice enough and has some sort of code. He crosses himself with each death. He's an honest thief.

The movie is long, it is slow and it is not pretty to look at. The overdubbing is horrible.

Throughout director Sergio Leone seems to be asking us to ponder one question: whose worse, the good, the bad and the ugly, or the soldiers slaughtering one another?


Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana

On the complete disaster that was the MTV Video Music Awards the indispensable John Nolte says it better than we can:

This is not science. No one needs a slide rule to figure what is going on here. MTV sucks. MTV has sucked for years. Today’s music sucks. Today’s performers suck. It is all a giant ball of suck desperate to cover up that suck with perversion and obnoxious politics.
Go read the rest of that piece younger reader(s). Mr Nolte (PBUH) tells us what MTV used to mean.

We learn that a 'rapper' named Logic took to the stage to talk about mental health. Mental Health at MTV, are the freakin' kidding. This. Is. Mental. Health:

Bang your heeeeeead! Metal health will drive you mad!

MTV has become a prog suck-hole.

You know what? MTV used to be for everyone. You like rap? No problem, MTV had Yo! MTV Raps!. You like dance music? No problem, MTV had Club MTV. You like Metal? Well of course MTV had Headbangers Ball so unbelievably appropriately on at midnight. You like comedy? Well then the MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour is for you. This is where we discovered David Spade and Dennis Leary, in the same episode if you can believe it. You like funny sketches, how about Liquid Television?

MTV was un-serious, but mostly it was fun.

Now, not so much.

Noah Rothman's Generation Unready

Over at Commentary, Noah Rothman talks about coming of age as a Millennial:
Perhaps most troubling, the next generation is generally unacquainted with great power politics and the zero-sum game that has typified adversarial dynamics and alliance structures since the Peloponnesian Wars. This would be a happy tale of societal evolution if it were a permanent figure of human existence, but it probably isn’t. Prohibitive American hegemony ain’t what it used to be. We saw the old ways reassert themselves in microcosm in the Middle East amid the Obama administration’s effort to extricate the United States from this thorny region. Amid Iran’s resurgence, alliances shifted as part of a predictable balancing act. Remarkably, the Sunni states have found common cause with Israel. Egypt and the U.A.E. are projecting power outside their borders with little concern for American objections. The United States is actively deterring its “ally” Turkey from securing a buffer zone through military deployments in Syria.

Of course totalitarian dictators were the fundamental fact of the 20th century. They even became celebrities in a way. One could buy 'Khaddafy Duck' and 'Ayatollah-Assahola' shirts, we did.

Back in our old professorial days we taught the kids all about the Cold War, even going so far as to explain MAD and nuclear weapons. We liked to open with this scene.

Of course the Cold War meant stasis. The dictators were always there. So were the grand armies and navies and of course the nuclear weapons. Every child on both sides feared nuclear war. We always debated whether or not it was better to live inside or outside the zone of destruction. On a clear day from our town one could see down the Hudson into NYC.

Even our cartoons had a sense of impending doom. The Smurfs were always watching out for Gargamel after all and GI battles Cobra.

But in our youth we never had anything like the shock of 9/11. We would think that alone would scare strait a Millennial raised on Barney and the Teletubies.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Stroock's Rules

Alert and appropriately named commenter  'Unkown' asks about my post regarding the Bundy Ranch, Sheriff Arpaio, and jury nullification.

We can't speak to President Trump's motivations. Basically a judge 'convicted' Arpaio of violating a court order that prevented him from 'profiling' Mexicans. As if the problem down their on the Rio Grande is Swedes, Burmese and Basques. Arpaio quite sensibly ignored the order.

We don't really care what the law here is. Arpaio and then Trump stuck it to the left. This is their bag, baby. This is how they operate, man. Pure will to power.

For further thoughts on the matter, we urge reader(s) to explore the works of the incomparable Kurt Schlichter who has gloriously declares, 'Liberals you're going to hate the new rules!'

Remember Alinsky's rule #4: Make the enemy live up to his own set of rules.

The Media hates Normal People

Via the intrepid Ace of Spades, this is why I refer to the media as communist sex criminals, perverts and deviants.

Never doubt for a second, my fellow normies, that the media hates your guts and wants you to die.
This abomination is from politico.

Writing Writers and the Writers who Write

So for several months now all we've been writing is fiction.

We've wrapped up ANZACs, we've completed the rough draft of the Austrian Painter, Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom is on the verge of completion.

In that time we haven't been writing any history. After all we spent years working on the Pershing in Command manuscript (see sidebar). In fact the last history pieces we wrote were in 2016. These were one article on Sherman's March and one on the Union Army's Grand Review. Since then, nothing.

We've decided its time to write some history again. We always found that writing history clears out and focused the mind for fiction writing. Our old system was to work on history the first few hours of the day, and then work on fiction the rest of the day. So we're going back to that.

We're working on a series of pieces on tactical actions of the American Expeditionary Force in the Great War. Our current project is the 42nd Rainbow Division crossing the Ourcq River in the Marne Campaign. After that we'll do the 3rd Division crossing the Marne. There's nothing we don't know about the AEF and its time to put that to work. We'll bundle it all into a book when ready.

Tentative chapters:

-Pershing's Tactics
-The 1st and 2nd Divisions at Soissoins
-The 3rd Division crosses the Marne
-The 42nd Division crosses the Ourcq
-The 82nd Division rescues the Lost Battalion
-the 42nd Division in the Meuse-Argonne
-Hunter Liggett in Command, the final push of 1 November

The Katrina-Harvey Nexus

Those communists and sex-criminals in the media have been chomping a the bit to turn Harvey into President Trump's Katrina, even going so far as to criticize the First Ladies' choice of footwear.

Of course President Bush's greatest mistake with Katrina was not anticipating that the sexually-deviant media would pin it all on him.

We watched it unfold in real time.

First they tried to blame Katrina on global warming. Meteorologists pointed out that Katrina was not an especially powerful hurricane. Then they tried to say the ensuing chaos happened because Louisiana didn't have enough National Guard troops available. The Louisiana National Guard said they had plenty of troops.



Finally Mayor Ray Nagin had a live on air freakout over lack of federal help (we can't find the clip) This one stuck. Voila! Katrina was Bush's fault.

This is why one can never trust the lying sex-maniacs in the media.

Trump understands this.

The Austrian Painter is Done

The Austrian Painter is done.

That is we are declaring the rough draft complete.

We were writing last night and the moment just seemed to be there.

Of course tons of work remains to be done on the MS and we may even add a chapter or two as there are some events we have not shown and a longer gap than we like in the narrative.

So here's what the book looks like. We start in 1964 and see the Austrian Painter and his world. Then we flashback. 1964, flashback and so on.

These flashbacks are:

-1914, the beginning of the Great War
-1915, he Austrian Painter's time on on the Eastern Front
-1920, the Austrian Painter tours the United States
-1930, the Austrian Painter tours the German Congo

So right now we have 30 years where we don't see another flashback. If someone has an idea for that we'd be interested. What else is there to show?


Tuesday, August 29, 2017

In which modern life imitates Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea

From the Times of Israel:

Sinwar said that with Iran’s help, Hamas is accumulating military power in preparation for a battle for “the liberation of Palestine.”
Hamas is “developing our military strength in order to liberate Palestine,” Sinwar said, but he also stressed that it does not seek war for now “and takes every effort to avoid a war… At the same time we are not afraid of a war and are ready for it.”
“The Iranian military support to Hamas and al-Qassam is strategic,” he added, saying the relationship had “become fantastic and returned to its former era.”
This is not new necessarily. During Operation Cast lead in 2008 Israel worked very hard to annhilate Hamas' Iranian Unit, and did so down to the last man. One can read more about that in our own Israel at War.

There be urban warfare, there will be missiles as well, but these are just not very effective, especially given Israel's Iron Dome.

Anyhoo... We never thought we'd write a sequel to Israel Strikes. Then we got the idea for War of the Red Sea. Here Iran, seeking revenge for Israel's destruction of its nuclear program, smuggles missiles into Gaza. They set up a network through Sudan, which also happens to be hiding Hezbollah's deposed leader. Israel responds in kind.




Tuesday Tally

Western Edition

So we finally watched High Noon the other night. We liked it very much as a movie and as a work of art.

So here's a list of our favorite westerns:

The Searchers: Absolutely the greatest Western ever made. John Wayne plays Ethan, a former Confederate cavalrymen filled with darkness and rage, trying to find the Comanches who kidnapped his niece. How he didn't win an Oscar for this we'll never know. So Ethan hates Indians. Lemme tell you something, in this movie he pretty much hates everybody, including Marty, his nephew who insists on coming along the five your search. Along the way we meet shopkeepers, Yankee cavalrymen, white women rescued from Indians, Mexican horse traders.John Ford's greatest film. Just lovely to look at and perfectly paced. Word Bond is a gem as the captain of the local Rangers and Methodist preacher. We've read the novel too, and the movie is more or less true to the author's original vision.

Tombstone: Probably the best of the post Segio Leone westerns. A great cast with Powers Boothe and Michael Biehn as bad guys. Billy Zane is an English actor enjoying the whole scene. You get Sam Elliot playing Sam Elliot, and of course Val Kilmer in his greatest role, 'Wyatt I am rolling'. Kurt Russell holds the entire film together, literally as he took over directing duties. We'll talk more about this wonderful film in another post.

Rio Bravo: Take three men, put them in the sheriff's office with a high value prisoner, whose land baron brother is using his paid goons to lay siege to the town. Howard Hawks hated High Noon and decided to rewrite the story where the sheriff has to turn away people trying to help. That sheriff is of course John Wayne. He walks around the film with a long gun, and we wonder if this isn't a slight knock on Gary Cooper's character in High Noon, who looks at a rifle but puts it away. Here the sheriff is assisted by his drunken deputy played by Dean Martin, a man who climbed into a bottle after his heart was broke. There's also Walter Brennan doing Walter Brennan type things. Angie Dickinson...well what can we say? Ricky Nelson is fun as a cocky young gun.

*We made our self watch The Good the Bad and the Ugly twice now, and we just don't get it. Hard to look at and slooowwww.

Try Reading Books Instead of Burning them

Related to our previous post on Gone With the Wind, the mighty John Nolte, just returned to Breitbart (PBUH) notes this:

And then there is our corrupt national media that plays right along with the new book burners. Did you know, for instance, that 73% of black people rank Gone With the Wind as a good/very good movie? That is only 14 points lower than whites. Our media would never tell you that. Doesn’t fit the narrative.
Wow, turns out black people aren't overly sensitive children. Who knew?

Being Jewish, one occasionally stumbles on to something in a movie that seems motivated by judenhaus.

Our favorite western ever, the Searchers, has a ruddy, backstabbing, money grubbing shopkeeper named Futterman.  Of course there's always Shakespeare's Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern. We shrug and move on.

We suspect most blacks do the same.

How long before lefty book burners ban World War Two movies because the Marines say 'Jap'?

We really can't say things any better than Dr. Jones:


Monday, August 28, 2017

Gone with the Problematic

So a famous theater that shows Gone with the Wind will no longer be showing Gone with the Wind.

In truth the film is pretty 'problematic' as the communists say. In fact, Gone with the Wind is racist as hell. Its filled with black stereotypes too numerous to list here.

It doesn't matter.

Of course you'll see the same in any 'blacksploitation' sit-com,

This film is a work of art, one of the ten greatest films ever made.

For my money we don't think Gone with the Wind glorifies the old South. It treats the South more with irony as it opens with Scarlet flirting with two suitors. Later all the little bells have to retire upstairs for their afternoon nap while being fanned by slave girls. In truth, all those darling little belles lying around in their pantaloons is kinda hot.

[Really? Perv -Ed]

Two things about the slaves. First, after the war we see Scarlet lost in the woods. She finds a freedman's camp and a couple of her father's former slaves. She is relived to see them.

Second, and most obviously is Mammy. Actress Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for her performance, and rightfully so. Notice throughout the movie Hattie bosses Scarlet around and Scarlet acts like a child.




There's also a great line from Rhett where he says Hattie is the only person whose respect he ever wanted.

So don't show a great film, jerks. Gone with the Wind is more complicated than you think, and certainly more complicated than you.

Are we George Lucas?

In a previous post we remarked that we write what we want and no one tells us different.

Of course George Lucas films what he wants and no one tells him different. It shows, doesn't it.

Now, George Lucas came up with a great idea with Star Wars, but the movie is so good because he was surrounded by film pros, like editor Richard Chiu, who knew how to make films. Also, Lucas didn't have a lot of juice yet and there were people around and above him that could tell him no.

If only someone had been able to say, 'George, enough with the stupid flying cars'.

So why aren't we George Lucas?

Simple. We don't live on a yuuge ranch in California like Lucas.

We live in a nice four bedroom home in a pleasant New Jersey suburb. We are surrounded by real people, none of whom think we are a deity to our craft. When one lives with three precocious blondes and a corporate exec suit, one learns one's place.

So we are firmly grounded in reality.

[Really, you think so?-Ed]

Ok, ok, Ed tells me no, but Ed is also the line editor. And I leaned a long time ago not mess with Ed. Ed can really punch.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Where we at; Write That

So here's where we are.

Bit by bit this summer we've wrapped up ANZACs, and have The Austrian Painter and Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom on the cusp of being done.

On those last two we've been alternating weeks, really, as the ideas, the inspiration, what we've always called the 'juju' comes and goes.

We think we can have the Austrian Painter done by 1 September and probably get it out in January. Its just a matter of cleaning up, which is to say making the text, sentences and paragraphs flow. Then comes the line edit part. There's not much more we can do on that end. It takes an editor. As far as content, I write what I want and nobody tells me different.

Bundy Ranch Nullified

We love this:

A federal jury in Las Vegas refused Tuesday to convict four defendants who were retried on accusations that they threatened and assaulted federal agents by wielding assault weapons in a 2014 confrontation to stop a cattle roundup near the Nevada ranch of states' rights figure Cliven Bundy.

In a stunning setback to federal prosecutors planning to try the Bundy family patriarch and two adult sons later this year, the jury acquitted Ricky Lovelien and Steven Stewart of all 10 charges, and delivered not-guilty findings on most charges against Scott Drexler and Eric Parker.
Here's part of the original Bundy Ranch standoff:

We don't pretend to understand Western land management issues but it seems to us the Bundy's are guilty as hell.

We don't care.

Back in our professorial days we used to teach about John Peter Zenger, the great 1730s New York newspaperman who published things that made governor William Cosby look bad. It was illegal to do so. The crown brought Zenger to trial and the jury, determining that Zenger was publishing true facts, nullified the prosecution.

We love jury nullification.

Here is what the great Professor Glenn Reynolds has to say on the matter:

If you are a member of a jury in a criminal case, even if you think the defendant is guilty of the crimes charged, you are entirely free to vote for acquittal if you think that the prosecution is malicious or unfair, or that a conviction in that case would be unjust, or that the law itself is unconstitutional or simply wrong. And if you do so, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Judges and prosecutors know this. But they don’t want jurors to know it, which is why we occasionally see cases like this one, in which jury-information activist Mark Iannicelli was arrested and charged with “jury tampering” for setting up a small booth in front of a Denver courthouse labeled “Juror Info” and passing out leaflets. Putting up a sign and passing out leaflets sounds like free speech to me, but apparently Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey feels differently.

We welcome more of this and say so proudly, which is probably why we never get called to jury duty.

Trump Washingtoned

It certainly seems that way, doesn't it?

Priebus is gone, he could never run things. So's his man Spicer. So's Bannon. So's Gorkha.

The Alt-Right narrative is that Washington is taking over the White House from the Bannon types.

That remains to be seen but it certainly seems like Kelly is asserting control. Maybe a White House with Trump and Washington grownup types will work better than Bannon's White House.

That's the hope anyway.

And it doesn't mean MAGA is finished.

Trump pardoned Arpaio didn't he? That's certainly a MAGA move.

Word his he's about to kill DACA. Personally I'd trade DACA for ten billion toward the wall.

But if DACA dies that's fine too.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Tear it Down!

Bill De Blasio (S-Nicaragua) is reviewing statues in NYC and the 100+ year old statue in Columbus Circle is in his cross hairs:

Bill de Blasio, the New York mayor, has said he may order the removal of the city's landmark statue of Christopher Columbus amid national soul-searching over the removal of Confederate-era monuments.

The statue, which is the centrepiece of the city's famed Columbus Circle, was commissioned in 1892 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the Americas.It has been suggested by local government officials in several US cities that monuments to Columbus should be taken down because of the explorer's brutal treatment of indigenous communities.
Word has it the Hebrews are coming after statues of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam because he was an anti-Semite. They also want to dig up Grant. Don't ask.

Of course Christopher Columbus was a lost sailor.

But let's point out something else.

We went to high school about half an hour north of De Blasio's cesspool. At Hendrick Hudson one was usually either Irish, Jewish, or Italian.

We had every Columbus Day off. He's kind of a big deal to the local eye-talian community. Don't believe me?

Good luck with that, Blas.

Friday Flag

That's our Kek flag:

Praise Kek. Kek is supposed to be the semi-ironic god of the Alt-right.

The other day a neighbor complained. We took Kek down. Our flags are never meant to be offensive or controversial. Too bad, because we think the whole Cult of Kek is hilarious.

Heck, I live in Chindia, if I really wanted to offend some people I'd fly a Pakistani flag.




Friday Updates: Updating on Friday

The Austrian Painter is so close to being done it is unbelievable.

Made a deal to write a couple of pieces on Pershing for a Limey mag.

Speaking of Pershing, we've begun work on a series of articles on tactical-operational actions; the 42nd crossing the Ourcq, the 82nd rescuing the Lost Battalion and such. We'll sell 'em and eventually bundle 'em together.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Robert Lee go Home

This is the world we live in:

ESPN confirmed Tuesday night that it had decided to pull an announcer from calling a University of Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee. This Robert Lee is Asian. 
“We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties,” reads the ESPN statement posted at the popular Fox Sports college-football blog Outkick the Coverage.
Of course Robert Lee is an Asian man, or we should say his ancestors came from Asia.

Its difficult to quantify the stupidity on display here, and we're no mathematician anyway [I'll say -Ed]. Let's just say the stupid hurts.

ESPN really knows how to alienate viewers, that's for sure. Hey I know, more Kaepernick! That'll bring back the viewers.

Of course, while Asian Americans are a visibly minority they've committed the unforgivable sin of working hard and succeeding. As such the left isn't very much interested in Asians as they disprove everything the BLM types say about racist white America.

We live in Chindia and the raw IQ power on display here is breathtaking. One neighbor works for big pharma. Another is a chemist for Exxon-Mobile. He was at Tienanmen Square. Another is a nurse and owns a hair salon. One couple owns a pharma consulting business. The husband travels to Asia a lot on business. Living in Chindia is kind of like living next door to the Jewish frat in Animal House.

In all my years of teaching at Raritan Valley Community College I had four Asian students. One was an adult, one was adopted, one worked at her mom's salon, one was truly a screw up.

Bad job there, Robert Lee, having kind-sorta the same name as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. How insensitive of you. Your middle name doesn't being with 'E' does it?

We should investigate right away.




Trump'n Phoenix

What we saw last night, folks, as Trump called out both John McCain (whom we voted for twice and against once, you figure out which times) is the beginning of the break up of the Republican Party.

Trump gave the base red meat, that's for sure, slamming the media again and again. What, he's just supposed to stay by and take it while they try to destroy him?

Outside, Antifa and the rest of the left rioted.

And they wonder why they have Trump.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Begun the Civil War Has

We're not kidding.

Big tech is blacklisting conservatives. California has an ever increasing list of states its employees can't visit. If you ask me we're getting the better part of that deal. Conservatives are founding their own tech platforms like Gab. Blue cities openly defy U.S. Law. Californians plot secession. Leftist professors openly call for violence. Riots in Berkeley. More riots in Charlottesville. Statues removed by authorities or defaced by terrorists (Yes, when you try to plant explosives on a statue you're a terrorist). A maniac Bernie-Bro shoots up a Republican softball game.

The Great Sundering has begun and John Derbyshire's Cold Civil War has gone hot.

Based Neocon gets his new War...

...or the old one, anyway.

So the president has had a change of heart. It sounds like about 4,000 troops are going to Afghanistan to supplement the 8,400 we already have there.

The good thing is that the strategy has changed from one of nation building, this was always stupid in Afghanistan, to counter-terror.

Personally I hope they revive the practice of daily enemy body counts.

Look, folks, no one gives a crap about Afghanistan or Afghanistanis. No one. But the simple fact is when we cut and run chaos follows.

Don't believe me? Look what happened when we bailed out of Vietnam, or Somalia, or most recently Iraq. Barry's early withdrawal from Iraq was a disaster. Talk about a paying a penalty.

We also liked the talk about India. We think they're our long term strategic partner. Besides, we live in Chindia.

At some point it comes down to trust, we suppose. Do you trust President Trump?

Monday, August 21, 2017

The Real American Taliban

In Boston they've covered up a small placard honoring dead Confederate POWs. They've removed same in Madison Wisconsin. Robert E. Lee statues have or are coming down at University of Texas and Duke. The next target, the great Confederate carvings of Stone Mountain:

This goes way beyond a placard of even a statue. The left is now destroying works of art. Heck, Vice has already called for the destruction of Mount Rushmore.

In case anyone is wondering, lemme show ya'll the company you're keeping.

(courtesy NBC News)

That's what's left of the the great Bamiyan Buddha after the Taliban blew it up. Great company you're keeping, guys. 

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Will's Good idea for the week of 8-20-17

Putin's War

Meet General Sin Chiu Lu, commander of the air mobile division tasked with taking the town of Blagoveschensk on the River Amur. Behind the general wait tens of thousands of men and thousands of vehicles of entire Chinese army which will cross the river Amur and branch out north to the Trans-Siberian Highway. He must take the town, and its crucial bridge intact.

Ratels of the South African Bush

We've done a lot of publishing on the old South African military and have come to admire it very much. The old South African Army deployed a variety of interesting vehicles including the Casspir, a kind of APC  and  the Ratel, a wheeled armored vehicle with a 90mm gun. They also deployed Ratels armed with missile launchers.

An FB friend, Mr. Bruce Allen sent along this Youtube clip of a ZT3 armed Ratel fighting Angolan tanks during the Lomba River phase of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale:


By the way, the third book in the World War 1990 series takes place in Africa with the SADF fighting the Angolans and Cubans. Plenty of Ratels in that one,





Saturday, August 19, 2017

The Deep Night Part IV

Personal Recounting:

I went into high school with an attitude made bad by the events of the previous year. Those events made me sullen and introverted.

And I really didn't give a crap about school. So I did as little as possible and I have the report cards to prove it. [Again with the report cards?-Ed]

I still had rebo room, by HS this was basically jut study hall, so that's where I did my home work. Rarely did I actually bring HW home. I figured I gotta do this stupid thing for six hours a day and at 2:06 this stupid thing is over. What happens in school, stays in school.

Basically I'd do ok in the 1st quarter, do almost nothing in the 2nd and 3rd and come roaring back in the 4th quarter for an overall grade of 70.

I did a few fun things, drama mostly and my senior year I was Captain Bracket in South Pacific. I still know the lines and still sing the songs, 25 years after the fact.

But overall HS was dull, boring and I did as little as possible. I graduated 104 out of a class of 136.  It was 25 years ago right now that I was waiting around to go to college. Its a time we remember with darkness and foreboding actually. We'd never left home before.

The first half of that summer was glorious, though, and one gets a taste of it in A Line Through the Desert.

From there it was Wesley College, where we joined a frat, did out best Delta House impression, learned to drink and do pot and met our wife. After that an undisclosed, non-Jesuit Washington D.C. University from which we eventually dropped out.

We were 23.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Trump and Pershing

So the president tweeted something to the effect that Pershing had his men dip bullets in pig blood before executing Moro prisoners.

Alert readers will recall that we have written widely on General John J. Pershing.

A bit of background is in order.

Mindanao is the mountainous southern island of the Philippines. The violently Islamic Moro tribe lived in the central highlands. When Pershing took command of the island he inherited and Islamic insurgency.

Pershing waged classic COIN. He made a show of strength against the Moros defeating them in several battles. Once he made his point he met with Moro chieftains and made it clear he didn't care what they did so long as they didn't make trouble. But when they did:

 'These Juramentado attacks were materially reduced in number by a practice the army had already adopted, one that Muhammadans held in abhorrence. The bodies were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig.
John J Pershing, Pg 285, on his dealings with Moros, Pershing's memoirs, My Life Before the Great War, pg 285.

So far I can't find anything on the pig blood, bullet thing.

European Terror

The terrorist attack in Barcelona puts one in mind of the horrific Madrid bombings all those years ago. Spain was punished for supporting the Iraq campaign. Three days later Spain learned its lesson and voted out the pro-Bush government.

America is under pretty regular Islamic assault.

Of course, Israel is under regular Islamic assault.

Britain is with us in Iraq, Afghanistan and host of other places and is under regular Islamic assault.

France notoriously stayed out of the war against Islamic terror and is too under regular Islamic assault.

Bush. Was. Right.

Now all of Europe is under the threat of Islamic invasion. There will probably have to be a civil war in most European countries before this situation is put right. We don't mean a civil war between white Europe and Islamic Europe, but a civil war within white Europe. This pits the effete elite against the burly soccer hooligan types. This is happening now, politically we mean, in Britain with the Brexit.

Of course Eastern Europe, led by Poland has refused Muslim immigration. There is no terror in Warsaw.

Poland. Is. Right.


Friday Updates, Because we Update on Friday

Both Jake and Patricia and the Austrian Painter have entered their final chapter.

There is a next and clever, if I do say so myself, plot twist on that last one. Who knew the Austrian Painter was such a good speaker.

An editor has ANZACs.

We are negotiating with a British magazine to do some writing on the AEF.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Stars and Bars and Statues Forever

We're a blue-belly. Born and raised in the formerly great state of New York, we hold no truck with the Confederacy or secession and we're mighty glad for the biblical onslaught William Tecumseh Sherman wrought through the South.

Everyone has their heroes. To millions down south those heroes are Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson. That's just fine by us. Lee was a brilliant general and was smart enough to say to Jefferson Davis that the South had lost and it was time to pack it in. He told the Army of Northern Virginia to go home.

As the President asked, 'Where does it stop?' And he's right, Jew haters like Al Sharpton are already calling for statues of Washington and Jefferson to be removed. Of course Al Sharpton got a bunch of people killed at Freddie's Fashion Mart and he was a regular guest at Barrack Hussein Obama's White House.

Let's play this game.

FDR kept Jews out of the country.

Truman was once in the Klan.

Of course Bill Clinton is a rapist.

Progressive icons like Jackson and Wilson? Ahhhhhahahahahah! Oh don't not get us started on them!

The left today takes its own values and runs the past through them.  This is the worst kind of history. Because let me tell you something, the past is another country, they do things differently there. In 50 years your grand-kids will be baffled by something you believe right now.

Count on it.

We just hope that in 2067 they'll be a little more respectful.




Build that Wall!

Not sure about the logistics, but this seems wise:

KIBBUTZ NIRIM, Israel (AP) -- Israel is pressing ahead with construction of an underground barrier along the border with the Gaza Strip in an ambitious project meant to halt the threat of attack tunnels built by the Hamas militant group.
I guess one just digs a trench and fills it with concrete mix and a hell of a lot of water.

The terror tunnels of 2014 only made sense. Since the disastrous Hezbollah war Israel has made great strides in shooting down short range rockets. See Iron Dome, Arrow. Amphib efforts by Hamas proved, ineffective:


So let us assume that the tunnel threat is at least heavily neutralized, we don't believe the Israelis can stop all of them. What's next? There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Israel you know.

By the way, if you like stories about Israel shooting down missiles and fighting terror tunnels you'll love


Wednesday, August 16, 2017

The Deep Night Part III

Personal Recounting:

The formative years shape a person I guess, they shaped me. One year in particular was the foundation for my general world view. That was 8th grade.

A couple of things happened. First puberty. Fourteen seems a little late in retrospect, maybe that's why, also in retrospect, puberty hit me very hard.

A second thing happened, in that I got involved in a knock down, slobber-knocking fight with the rebo room teacher. We're talking trench warfare, here. I mean Verdun and the Somme all rolled into one. We clashed heads over my notebooks, over math, over the living history program in which I was not allowed to participate because of said clashes.

 Every day in the rebo room it was a fight about something. Who could take it more, that was the question. I had lunch detention every day.I got in school suspension, I got out of school suspension. You see ISS was supposed to be really tough. Just like in The Breakfast Club you just sat there all day. Hah! They didn't count on this brain. I sat there for hours, the battle I imagined, the girls I fantasized about...It was easy.

But it was a war of attrition. My grades went from a solid B or B+ to a D, I kid you not. By the end of the year I couldn't have cared less about school. I did nothing in class. I didn't do any homework. I just sat there. Just look at the report card:

[Why do you have a 30 year old report card?-Ed]

Good question.

That year sticks with me, 30 years later its still there. And it set the stage for a lackluster HS career.

White Man the Hebrew is Not

This article from Israelycool touches on something that was self-evident a hundred years ago, fifty years ago and even 25 years ago. Jews are not white:

Let’s get rid of a modern myth that plagues the Jewish People. Jews are not white. Jews come in all colors and every shade from dark to pale and being Jewish has absolutely nothing to do with skin color. We are not Anglo or The White Colonizer. We didn’t colonize Europe or the United States. The Jew isn’t the White Man who discovered or conquered America and we certainly didn’t lead the genocide in Africa or the slave trade either. Jews didn’t discover America or colonize any region.
And
Where do Jews come from and what is a Jew? According to any dictionary, a Jew is defined as:
-One of a scattered group of people who traces its descent from the Biblical Hebrews or from post exilic adherents of Judaism; Israelite.
-A person whose religion is Judaism.
-A subject of the ancient kingdom of Judah.
We are blessed that our 94 year old grandfather (the old bastard) is still around and remembers people who came from the olde country. His maternal great grandfather, Morris Neuberger, came out of Westphalia, in the 1850s, while the Stroocks came out of Amsterdam at the same time.  We have family photos of them all and they have a distinctly Mediterranean air about them. My father looks reliably middle eastern so much so that when we'd visit my mother's Kentucky relatives people knew instantly he wasn't from around there. Think about that. Because of family DNA tests my father is 90 recent Ashkenazim Jew. The blood lines remained pure through two millennia

Because my old man shacked up with a gentile by the name of Thompson, fifty years ago I could have used the front entrance of any country club. But my father could not have, nor could my grandfather. Jews were long excluded from the old Prod establishment. By the mid 1960s my grandfather was a fancy advertising exec (think Madmen) who actually worked in the Johnson Admin a bit with Sergeant Shriver. When the Scarsdale country club ask him to join my grandfather told them to stick it.

So I'm not white. The ultimate proof? Hitler didn't think so.

Writing Hitler

Writing The Austrian Painter been a little a weird in that these days when we think of Hitler, we think of the character we've invented. That is, we think of the nice old man down in the hall in The Austrian Painter's 1964.

As noted in a previous post, we have not read Mein Kampf. That Hitler does not exist in this universe.

There's little that we (meaning I) do not know about the man prior to 1918.

Hitler was a mama's boy. Hitler could be a difficult student. Hitler was an art and architecture enthusiast. Hitler liked neo-classical design. By 1914 Hitler was actually supporting himself as an artist and cranked out four or five paintings a week. He was a Vienna bohemian and a loner, happy to go to museums and read by himself. He liked the philosophical works of Schopenhauer and the Westerns of Karl May. Hitler was an excellent soldier.

The bizarre thing about the man is he left nothing to indicate that he had strong feelings about Jews or anyone else before the war. In fact the family doctor was Jewish. he served with Jewish soldiers in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment.

The war transformed Hitler [obviously-Ed] and fifteen years after being a discharged soldier with no place to go he was Chancellor of Germany.

The tyrant of World War Two simply did not exist before World War One.


Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The Deep Night Part II

Personal Recounting:

Dyslexia Dyslexes.

About 1981 a bunch of doctors and teachers were telling me I was stupid.

This had come after a series of tests in school, and some fancy-pants medical type place (I dunno) on the Hudson in Terrytown. It looked like a college. My parents took me there a bunch of times.

Back then they didn't really talk about Dyslexia, but  they talked about LD: Learning Disabled.

From then on I spent significant portions of everyday at the Resource Room. This is where I got extra help. Come on man, you couldn't think of a word other than 'Resource'? Did you not realize what this would be warped into? It took five fucking minutes. We later shortened it to Rebo Room. I'm not sure how we got Rebo from Retard. I might as well have walked around with a giant 'R' tattooed on my head.

This was a hard, unhappy time, 1981 through about 1986.

One of the reasons why I don't talk about it [until now-Ed] or write about it [also until now-Ed] is its really difficult for me to do so. That is, there are people suffering in the world in unhappy in unimaginable ways then and now and to put my own little troubles up against that, well, let's just say I've always had some perspective on the thing.

But don't tell me something wasn't wrong. School was a struggle. Homework was a struggle. To this day I hate the end credits of M.A.S.H., because that always meant it was homework time. Just as I love the sound of an air conditioner because it means summer.

You know those meme's you see about the worst part of Sunday being you know in 12 hours you'll be back at work? Preach it, brother.

Friday nights were glorious, just glorious. Sunday nights miserable.

Second grade was tough. Fourth grade I got into a lot of fights with that bastard John E., who seems un-findable even in this day and age. I once hit him in the head with a chair, motherfucker. Lots of time in the principal's office. Fifth grade wasn't bad so much as...accepting for me. Like NYC in the 80's simply accepting the fact that it was rundown and crime-ridden and that's just all there was to it. The year 1984 (4th-5th grade) just gives me the willies and it has nothing to do with George Orwell.

For some reason 3rd grade was the happiest of my childhood, we'll have to delve into that in another post.


Tuesday Tally

Austrian Painter Edition

So we're 55,000 words into the Austrian Painter and we're basically just waiting to write the final chapter. Honestly, we do't know what that chapter is.

Anyway, to that end here are the five most important books we've read for this project:

Volker Ullrich, Hitler Ascent: 1889-1939: This is a new bio of Der Fuhrer and its fascinating with a lot of great work on Hitler's early life. Ulrich has a great chapter called 'Hitler as Human Being'.

Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics: This very interesting book talks about Hitler's neo-classicism, his artistic tastes and his love of architecture.

Thomas Weber, Hitler's First War: In Weber's book we learn not only about Hitler in the Great War but about his unit, the 16th Reserve Bavarian Infantry Regiment from top to bottom.

Despona Stratigakos, Hitler at Home: Literally about Hitler's decorating tastes and preferences. What kind of chair's did history's greatest killer like?

Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A short history of how Germany ran its colonies. Hitler takes a jaunt through the German Congo and I wanted to know what that might have been like.



*No, we haven't read Mein Kampf. There is no need to. That Hitler never existed in The Austrian Painter.


Monday, August 14, 2017

The Deep Night Part I

Personal Recounting:

Military Heritage, a magazine it will be noted we both write for and advertise with, runs a deeply personal to me piece on Patton and his dyslexia:

Historians will inevitably examine the past through the lens of their own time; likewise, historical figures present themselves to their contemporaries according to the knowledge and prejudices of their epoch. Patton, who was always concerned about shaping his public image according to his own lights, did not care to call attention to his dyslexia; nor did those who wrote about his swashbuckling exploits as a tank commander in the aftermath of World War II care to investigate the subject, despite such red flags as the frequent symptomatic idiosyncrasies in his spelling and punctuation. Given the state of medical science in the 1940s and the postwar era, Patton could not have been aware that he may have also suffered from an affliction known today as attention deficit disorder (ADD), which afflicts many dyslexics; nor could historians have identified the condition until recently. Even the importance of Patton’s early family life, which led him to valorize war and model himself as the heir of his heroic Confederate ancestors, was neglected until recently.
 SNIP
Other ADD symptoms include poor impulse control, extreme mood swings in response to events, and short excessive tempers, all of which Patton displayed as a commanding officer, sometimes notoriously, as with his infamous slapping incidents during World War II in which he was accused of abusing enlisted men. The frustrations experienced by a person dealing with either dyslexia or ADD can be overwhelming and can often lead to serious self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, bouts of uncontrollable anger, and emotional hypersensitivity. 
Dyslexia, which is often characterized by difficulty reading and by the transposition of letters or numbers, is considered to be a learning disorder. Having dyslexia, however, does not mean that a person lacks intelligence. Quite the contrary, many dyslexics are extremely intelligent and struggle mightily with the symptoms of the disorder. The dyslexic often has a different or unique mind-set, is often gifted and productive, but learns and perceives in a way different from others. 
Both dyslexia and ADD have a genetic component. They are hereditary and run in families. In this light, perhaps George Patton’s genealogy is more important that even he imagined.
SNIP
Dyslexia is not simply a matter of reversing letters or numbers but is a complicated disorder whose symptoms include hyperactivity, obsessiveness, mood swings, difficulty in concentrating, impulsiveness, and compulsiveness. Because of their effort to overcome difficulty in reading and writing, dyslexics can be driven by a compulsion to succeed. Yet, they often harbor feelings of inferiority. Virtually every common symptom of dyslexia can be found in the adult Patton. “I am either very lazy or very stupid or both for it is beastly hard for me to learn,” he told his future wife, Beatrice Banning Ayer, while still a cadet at West Point. This was despite his prodigious intellectual powers and ability to recall enormous bodies of text and information.

See that last excerpt there. Yes, oh god, yes. Every last word of it. It's kind of like that Agent K line from Men in Black, 'Think of a cockroach with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex and a real short temper.'

I was dyslexic. I was ADD. Or am, really. Family lore has it I didn't sit still until I was four years old and my parents took me to see Star Wars.

Let me vouch for a couple of things. The mood swings, the bluster, [this blog is mostly bluster-Ed]. My father had it, he thinks after seeing me diagnosed, about 1981, and it's pretty obvious my grandfather had it too.

This article goes on to talk about Patton's somewhat unusual upbringing with a doting, suffocating, ever present aunt. Let's just say I grew up with doting, suffocating relatives and it does weird things to the family dynamic. When I was 14 and Blue Mountain Middle School packed me off to a shrink [I knew it?!-Ed] half the time he wanted to interview my dad about his childhood.

The dyslexia put me behind the class till about 13 or 14. I've always credited a trio of novels I read, 10 pages at a time, during the summer of 1986.

But the dyslexia wasn't gone. Not even close...

WIll's Good Idea for the week of 8-13-17

Putin's War:

Meet Colonel Vasilly kranarkovski (I made that up), he commands the 255th Motor Rifle Regiment garrisoning the town of Blagovenschensk (don't hold me to that spelling) and he knows he has to stop the Chinese aerial assault on the city no matter what. Because if the Chinese break into Russia, then Putin will have only one option left.

Punch What you sow



We now know, via the Beast, the Virginia ACLU and the NYTs that the police were ordered to stand down and herded the protesters into the counter-protesters. This was basically the authorities MO at the Battle of Berkeley. This was an op, run by a Democrat mayor and governor. The progs have been bragging for months about punching nazis, or anyone else they disagree with, and they finally got their chance.

We've been watching this for over a year:

The Berkeley anti-Milo riots:


Good Morning Baltimore:


The Barry-CNN approved Ferguson Riots:


Our personal favorite the Third Battle of Berkeley:


Which kind of makes one wonder:


Here's the WaPo talking about how cool it is to be a leftwing anarchist.

Reap it, motherfuckers.

Monday (really not) Metal

Via Hot Air

So an idiot DJ (David Mueller) groped Taylor Swift. Ms Swift, as is her right, reported said idiot DJ to his boss, who promptly fired him. Mueller,  thinking of a quick payout sued Ms. Swift.

Hot Air tells us the trial is not going well for Mr. Mueller:

The attorney facing off against Taylor Swift in court appears not to have learned rule #1 in cross-examinations and/or hostile direct interrogation: Don’t ask questions without already knowing the answers. Yesterday morning, it appeared that the lawsuit filed by a DJ against Taylor Swift would backfire. The cross-examination from David Mueller’s attorney, reported by the New York Times, removes all doubt. At least from this telling, it appears to be an object lesson in everything that can go wrong for an unprepared attorney in open court.

Look folks, we are the proud father of three blonde little girls, at least one of them will no doubt one day ride on the back of a dragon.  This means we get bossed around a lot. It also means that we know all the words to all of Taylor Swift's songs.

We have two rules in life: never get involved in a land war in Asia and never, ever mess with Taylor Swift. You want to end up in a Taylor Swift song? I know I don't.

Here's Mr. Mueller's bio, also the photo showing the grope in question. Ok its not really in question.

We suppose that's one way to get famous.

A career DJ it would seem. We did a little DJing in college. It was fun.

But honestly, are these not the most useless people in the music industry? What does the DJ do? Talk over the opening of the song. Talk all day long about meeting David Bowie in '74 (anyone who grew up listening to rock radio in the NYC area knows to whom we're referring to here).

Just shut up and spin the record, pal.

Oh, and now the lawsuit has been dismissed.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Charlottesville or that's Why we don't fly the Stars and Bars

Ok, not really.

We don't fly the Stars and Bars because we just don't want to our flags to be controversial.

Well, we have an old story. This White Nationalist types came to Charlottesville to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee Statue. Antifa showed up too. The White Nationalists came ready to fight and as usual it looks like Antifa couldn't stand up to them. This reminds one of the Battles for Berkeley. Here too Antifa got its ass kicked.

At least according to the ACLU of Virginia, were told to stand down. Remember, Virginia's governor is a Clinton lackey.

Which is exactly what happened in Berkeley.

The President has a tremendous opportunity here to investigate this fiasco.


Saturday, August 12, 2017

Fun with Nuke Map

Nuke map is a fun and macabre website that allows the user to nuke the location of his choice with the nuclear weapon of his choice and then shows him estimated casualties, radioactive fallout, etc etc.

For example, we just nuked NYC with the 100 megaton Tsar Bomba, the most powerful weapon ever built. We killed eight million people and flattened everything in NYC and half of Long Island and Westchester. The fireball alone has a radios of 6 kilometers.

So we did the next obvious thing and detonated a Nork 10 kt bomb of Guam's capital of Hagatna and killed 7000 and wounded another 14,000.

We then drooped a W-87 Minute Man III warhead of 300 kt on Pyongyang, just for fun. The result is 700 ,000 dead, 1,000,000 wounded.

Try it!

Friday, August 11, 2017

Friday Updates, because that's what we do on Fridays

The Austrian Painter is 55,000 words.

We''re a bit stuck here because we don't actually know how this novel is supposed to end. That said everything else looks good.

The editor is getting ANZACs, today.

The deck will soon be cleared to start editing WW1990: The Final Storm.

The Neocon gets Based

So Kim is threatening to launch four missiles into the waters off of Guam.

Look folks, this is an act of war.

No Great Democracy in history would tolerate what the Nork's are doing. Athens would have sent Themistocles and the navy. Rome would have called up four legions. The Swiss Cannons would have called out the free-pikes. Palmerston would have sent a gunboat.

At this point it comes down to pride, doesn't it.

Something else. The great M Steyn points out that every third world  craphole wants to get its hands on nukes. It's about time we set a precedent that no one can have nukes unless we decide they can.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Dread-nought!

Over at The National Interest, talk of reviving the old battleship:

In laying the groundwork for battleship modernizations, there four things that must happen for any successful update. The Iowa-class battleships were designed in the late 1930s, and a lot has happened in the last eighty years. First, the ships must be highly automated. The ships originally sailed with crews of up to 2,700 personnel, later reduced to 1,800. The U.S. Navy is no longer a draftee service, and personnel costs in the all-volunteer Navy are major expenses. Prime candidates for automation are older mechanical systems, such as the three sixteen-inch gun turrets, each of which has a crew of over a hundred, and the power plant and engineering.
Why not? Those things are damn near unsinkable and would be a perfect platform for a battery of electromagnetic rail guns. What a simple of pure firepower. It worked in To Defend the Earth:



You talkin' to me?

Mark Steyn, as is his habit, makes a great point, basically saying that President Trump's bellicose rhetoric vis-a-vis the Norks is wholly appropriate.



Indeed this is the Template. All these other tinpot, busted arse nations are watching for what happens next.

Look, at some point when someone talks smack at you, you gotta talk smack back. Maybe its a New York thing?



Tiger's Tail...

...Looks like its about to be overtaken by events.

So we're setting it aside.

At some point we'll put all the posts together and finish it up, but not now.

So you have President Trump promising biblical level destruction and Kim saying bring it on. The closest analogy I can think of is Kuwait in 1990. Frankly, we've never really seen anything like this. We do recall during a similar crisis  with the Norks in mid-90's Bill saying, 'It would be the end of their country.'

We take this seriously.

We have one principle when it comes to situations like this. We ask ourselves, WWRD?

Four Legions.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Battlestar Galactica: What's right

So we have binge watched our way through most of Battlestar Galactica and we must say we are highly impressed.

That is, the impression we took away from our last viewings in the late 1990's was incorrect.

First, we remembered a crisis of the week television show. Instead each episode was linked to the last, with references to past events like finding Kobol and Commander Kane.

Second  we recalled the fleet travelling through unknown space so it could encounter said crisis of the week. Actually at least through half the season the fleet is still in known space or at least just over the other side of their known universe.

Third, the writers really got down some things about humanity. The scenes where the crew of the Galactica watches the TV reports of the destruction of the Colonies is spot on. Let's just say it looked real familiar. There's also a scene were Lt. Omega is showing Colonel Tye a damage report on what looks like a Tablet or kindle. Their robotics are about where our robotics are now. And of course the bridge relies upon computers, though we laugh at those green graphics.

Coming soon...thoughts on improvement.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Monday (not) Metal

From the Atlantic, and via Kathy Shaidle, this is too delicious not to re-blog:

Do you like prog rock, the extravagantly conceptual and wildly technical post-psychedelic subgenre that ruled the world for about 30 seconds in the early 1970s before being torn to pieces by the starving street dogs of punk rock? Do you like the proggers, with their terrible pampered proficiency, their priestly robes, and their air—once they get behind their instruments—of an inverted, almost abscessed Englishness? 
And..

Money rained down upon the proggers. Bands went on tour with orchestras in tow; Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Greg Lake stood onstage on his own private patch of Persian rug. But prog’s doom was built in. It had to die. As a breed, the proggers were hook-averse, earworm-allergic; they disdained the tune, which is the infinitely precious sound of the universe rhyming with one’s own brain. What’s more, they showed no reverence before the sacred mystery of repetition, before its power as what the music critic Ben Ratliff called “the expansion of an idea.” Instead, like mad professors, they threw everything in there: the ideas, the complexity, the guitars with two necks, the groove-bedeviling tempo shifts.

For me Genesis means that nice, poppy Invisible Touch album, and Peter Gabriel, well, Sledgehammer. During the first season of That Metal Show, I wondered what the hell Rush's Geddy Lee was doing there. Not metal, guys, not even hard rock.

Rush is nerd rock. Which is fine. You can see them at mom's kitchen table, locks of hair hanging over the game board, Dungeon Master's guide open, dice at the ready, an empty pizza box and coke cans strewn about. 2112 plays in the background. I say this from experience, people.

For the record we like Rush's first album, 'Yeah! Ohhhhh-yeah! insert cool riff.

Also for the record we can recognize precisely one ELP song. This one:

We saw it once on MTV the summer of 1986. That synth riff could be metal. Why not?

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Return of Sick Hillary!

Via my friend WIlliam Katz we learn that Sick Hillary! is hiring some campaign lackeys. Bill's remarks:

I don't think Hillary will fade away.  She may try to run again as the compromise candidate between the two warring wings of the Democratic Party – the irrational wing and the absolutely nutty wing.  She might run into Joe Biden, who's reported to be serious about exploring a presidential race in 2020.  

The Clinton's are never going away. Never. But Sick Hillary! won't be running in 2020. She'll be dead by then. If the syphilis she contracted from her sex-addict husband doesn't get Hillary! the Parkinson's will.

Happy Hiroshima Day!

We love Hiroshima Day, the meaning, the celebrations the deployment of biblical level firepower....

To that end, here's your Hiroshima Day reading list:

Blankets of Fire, by Kenneth Wirrell: Chronicles the 20th Air Forces strategic bombing campaign, Curtis LeMay, (PBUH) figured out that most Japanese structures were made of wood, hello incendiary bombs. By March of 1945 the 20th Air Force was taking out two or three cities a week and by the end of the war they had annihilated 50% of Japan's Urban area.

Neptune's Inferno, by James Hornfishcer: Chronicles the naval battles around the Solomon Islands in excruciating detail. Just an excellent book. There will never be better book on the subject.

The Fleet at Flood Tide, by James Hornfischer: Begins in 1944 with the Saipan campaign. By this point in the war the Pacific fleet is massive, battle hardened and has the momentum of a steamroller. Just a great title.

MacArthur, By Arthur Herman: fifty years after the great man's death a biography free of the biases of the time. Well worth the read.

Oh, might we also suggest:


Will's Good Idea for the week of 8-6-17

Putin's War:

Meet Alexandre Alexandriev, citizen of Zebalykalsk on the River Amur and anti-Chinese street hooligan. He resents Chinese encroachments in Siberia and the ever expanding Chinese presence in Zebalykalsk. He really hates it when Russian women marry Chinese men and is not afraid to show it.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Friday Flag

Das Reich

Friday Updates, Because its Friday

We are wrapping up the 2nd to last chapter in Whatever Happened to Jake and Patricia Bloom.

Actually this all takes place when Jake is back home from his 2005-6 tour. Lots of talking about things over there and a lot of transitioning back to home life.

The Austrian Painter did not move much this week but we've had a couple of intellectual breakthroughs.

Super most defiantly final work on ANZACs.

Our Pershing's War game has been accepted.

We are looking into having a booth at some conventions. We'll see.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Battle Extraordinaire

Ahhh....the Bridge at Remagen.

There's a lot going on here. You got Krauts on one bank of the river, you go the Yanks speeding down the other bank blowing the crap out of everything on the far bank. Its a race to get to the bridge, which of course the Krauts dynamite.

Movie sequences like this have stayed with me my entire life, and elements of them make it into my writing. From World War 1990: Castro's Folly:

The Ratels got going. In column they advanced at about ten KPH along the south bank, turrets traversed north. En mass the Ratels fired, delivering a volley of 90 mm shells to FAPLA positions. Henceforth they fired at will. A torrent of fire kicked up great cascades of fire and debris on the far bank and beyond. Every second, the air was punctured by the rip of a 90 mm gun. Jenry doubted they were hitting much. But the fact that no fire was returned from the far bank was good enough. The Ratels were keeping FAPLA heads down.          They watched until the last Ratel drove past the position and they could only hear the noise deluge beyond. Then they heard more engines. One of Didi’s men ran at a crouch over to their position and pointed west. Didi and Jenry crawled over to the edge of the copse and saw what he was pointing at. A column of South African Caspirs making their way north, northwest.          ‘Heading toward the bridge, no doubt.’          Jenry scanned the riverbank again.          ‘No more South Africans,’ he said to Didi.          ‘Why?’          ‘They no longer feel that they need that patch of the river bank, I would guess.’          ‘Does this mean we can try to cross there?’          The C-130s flew back over their position.          Jenry looked at Didi and then back toward the river bank. He thought for a moment.          ‘Everyone will be too busy at the bridge, no?’ asked Didi.          ‘Good thinking, Lieutenant,’ Jenry said.          ‘Then let us go now.’          ‘Yes.’

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

On Putin's War

We are developing the Putin's War novel now. This will pit Russia against China. For a time we thought a Russian invasion of Poland would be interesting. Via Michael Totten here is one of the reasons why:

Just days after the Russian government accused the United States Congress of violating international law by imposing sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin is threatening Poland with sanctions if it pulls down Soviet World War II memorials. Vladimir Putin ought to be grateful that the Poles have let them stand as long as they have. Moscow built them to glorify and whitewash its brutal conquest in the ashes of the Third Reich, yet Warsaw has been free of Russian domination since 1989, more than a whole generation.
Being an American we admire the Poles. Being a Jew we hold no truck with the Poles. I actually got into a FB brawl a few weeks ago with a Polish woman who was trying to tell me that Poland was so tolerant and a good place for Jews.

...oooookaaaaaayyyyy.

That said we like the Poles for their pluck and courage. Just wait till you read World War 1990: The Final Storm. 

Of course if war did ever break out between NATO and Russia, yeah, yeah I know it was written up a few years ago, Poland would be the bulwark of any NATO effort against the Bear.

Speaking of Russian invasions, Vox Day warns us against getting to close to Georgia. We like Georgia too, and are glad W took steps to save them 2008. We don't want Georgia in NATO though, we just don't see any compelling interest.

We'll take the Hungarians and the Poles, but we don't want the Georgians!