Friday, October 27, 2023

Defeating mass shooters

It seems apparent that no one successfully fired a single round to stop/suppress the Maine shooter during his attacks. We need to do better at teaching ourselves how to defeat such attacks before they can escalate. 

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

70

 Never really expected to get this far.

Friday, September 29, 2023

RIP Diane Feinstein

 Now, let's see how long it takes Gavin Newsom to appoint himself as her replacement.

Monday, June 12, 2023

The Trump Indictment #2? #3?

 

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

Thursday, April 6, 2023

2024

 So, as announced earlier today, it looks like the 2024 US Presidential election choices will be Trump/? vs Kennedy/?. No matter who gets elected, Americans are gonna be the winners.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

TRUMP/TRUMP 2024

 Given Ron DeSantis' recent self-defenestration politically, I think we need to begin taking a serious look at this potential political ticket.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Chyna Balloon

 On the China balloon thing; this event strikes me as being a "proof of concept" demonstration of lighter-than-air lifting body control technology development. Granted a classical balloon isn't at all "cutting edge" lifting body design, but the control software and hardware to tack and jibe to deliberately maneuver the balloon into and across the prevailing wind is (tacking and jibing a vessel is well understood conceptually; doing so autonomously is less so). This strikes me as being the most easily achievable means of extending the overhead observation time window over a given geographic region.

As to not shooting it down over land, while it's always possible the Chinese chose to just bleed off hydrogen from the balloon to power an on-board generator, the Chinese space program has almost certainly acquired/developed "nuclear battery" technology (which is technically neither; radioactive material creating heat as a by-product of its decay rate and converting that heat directly into electricity isn't nearly as easy to say though and is technology that is at least as old as Voyager 1) and would likely regard this as a good test platform for their latest development efforts in that technology. Having some hunter/hiker find one of those cracked open on the ground somewhere is not an eventuality to casually take a risk over with the open ocean off America's coastline being such a ready-to-hand option instead. It should be noted that the USN has extensive undersea recovery technology immediately at hand along the US eastern seaboard. As long as the device came down on the US continental shelf (and since the shoot down was filmable from land this seems virtually certain), recovering objects from less than 100 fathoms depth isn't all that technologically challenging for a well-enough heeled private citizen these days (Hello James Cameron!). Remember that Challenger went down well beyond the depths to be expected from this shoot down and that wreckage was closely examined in situ as well as partially recovered back onto land.

The more interesting question to me is, how did the Chinese receive whatever data was collected by the device? What did the (alleged!) surveillance device record, and to what did it transmit that data (in what spectrum?)? All of this can be ascertained from any wreckage that is recovered from the sea bed, if only by analysis of the components used in its manufacture.

An interesting event. Mostly not even remotely well reported on. Hopefully that part of things will be improved upon sooner than later.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Me Quoting Me


As indictment does not equal conviction, neither does prosecution equal guilt. Conviction without guilt may be the greatest tragedy known to humanity, and the ultimate reason sentence should always be filtered through the lens of mercy.

Me

Friday, November 4, 2022

Beating a Silver Lining out of the political clouds

Visiting with my buddy Mike a few minutes ago, in response to my noting the most recent predictions for the mid-terms being House R's 250ish and Senate R's at 54, he asked what they could do to force a policy change from the Biden admin. I suggested a 2 pronged strategy; first, if the new Speaker (presumably McCarthy) and the Senate Maj Leader (McConnell) can dig around deep enough to find the courage to refuse any funding legislation unless and until Pres Biden revokes all of the EO's he signed restricting US domestic oil production and "stop stealing the gas from American fuel tanks", along with initiating impeachment proceedings beginning in January, 2023 against every member of the Biden Admin subject to such actions, would result in a much greater willingness to negotiate honestly within the House and Senate. By initiating 25th amendment proceedings against Biden himself at the same time, the next 2 years should offer an entirely different domestic political discussion if nothing else.


My belief is that it isn't really necessary to "defeat" the Biden Admin so much as it is necessary to force the secondary and tertiary levels of federal government to operate in an unambiguous (which is to say legally attributable) fashion by tying up the Cabinet-level appointees and their immediate subordinates in defending themselves before numerous Congressional committee hearings. This potentially allows the subsequent administration obvious constitutionally sound political grounds for "corrective" legislation starting in 2025 aimed at those levels of government (not to say the Deep State :)) who expose themselves during this period of time.


Surviving the next 2 years if not a single penny more gets shoe horned into the economy will be challenging, so economic hard times are indeed at hand, but the only way to defeat an entrenched opponent is to structure events such that the opponent has no time to design and mount active opposition for long enough to effect substantive change (in classical strategic terms, by changing the ground upon which their efforts are predicated). One immediate tactic to facilitate this future effort would be to organize a letter/email campaign directed at all US Senators to vote "no" on any further monetary legislation during the current term of Congress. At all. No exceptions.


Final note; if the election predictions hold up, there is a plausible possibility for the 2024 election to empower a sufficiently numerous Republican majority at the federal government and state Governor's levels sufficient to impose Constitutional Amendment(s) in 2025/6, but it is necessary to design and organize that effort beginning now.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Tulsi Gabbard - American

 My only comment about Tulsi Gabbard's political and philosophical journey is to note that no one's single step is ever "enough". The journey is the thing of consequence and must be judged in that context.

I've already stated my personal position regarding Lt. Col. Gabbard's political choices on these pages. That said, lets all just see what the future brings.