Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Thursday, August 31, 2017

Some musings..

I have been working what we call the "RON Summer schedule".  RON stands for "Remain overnight" and we perform the service checks plus any other maintenance that demand planning loads on the maintenance package visit for that certain airplane.  Well we had our end of summer celebration and all the mechanics that worked the RON season got a present.
I open it up and it looks like this.
   We mechanics like flashlights, and this is a nice one.  This one will go on my shelf with all my airplane related knickknacks.
  Speaking of airplanes, this pic was making the rounds on Facebook and I spent a lot of time debunking this one...

    People were calling this pic the "Houston Airport" pic and they were complaining about the airplanes and the waste and that Delta did this to write off airplanes on insurance.  Really?   Airplanes are very mobile and any airline will not jeopardize their income stream.  Airlines park their old airplanes in the desert like Victorville  which is very dry and use them as a spare parts depository.

   The pic on top was at LaGuardia that showed the flooding was for a documentary in 2015 that was referencing climate change and it would show what would happen if the Atlantic Ocean rose 25 feet.  Also if you looked at the skyline of the city, it is New York, not Houston.
     Also speaking of Houston, I was pleased to see the people step up and help each other
The massive amount of people that have stepped up to help their fellow Texicans or people from Louisiana coming over to help out, this story has actually brought people together to help.  although there has been problems from looters
  This actually disgust me, people use the opportunity to rob their neighbors..

         Or this..
  This crap actually pisses me off, it reinforces the stereotypes.  We have millions of people that have stepped up  some reluctantly *Cough*Joel Olsteen*Cough* to help their neighbors from food drives, water drives, medical supplies, and many other things that people need.  Even all the government agencies were reacting quickly with the assistance. I saw the mobilization of the Texas National Guard, 30,000 of them to help out.  We have private companies and charities heading there to help their neighbors.  President Trump went there to visit the area and was very warmly received except some hack with the media made some comments about the FLOTUS shoes....Gotta keep it classy, Slate magazine.  

 And speaking of keeping it classy, you have left wing sites saying that this was Gods retribution to Texas for supporting Trump.  Really?   Y'all call out for an omnipotent being that you repudiate on a regular basis and mock believers.   And I saw some media hacks try to score points on Ted Cruz for not supporting the Sandy storm bills, and he pointed out that the bills presented for Sandy had 2/3rds of the stuff in there had nothing to do with the Sandy storm but were loaded with earmarks from the many politicians that loaded it down with pork.  They tried several times to hang Ted with this.   Again...keeping it classy Democrats.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

You guessed it......

I havn't been able to post anything the past couple of days and it will be tomorrow before I can post something of substance.  Yes...The Overtime bird called me....I heard the clarion call of $$$$$$.
Please read the people on the sidebar, they are really good...

Monday, August 28, 2017

Monday Music "Dreamtime" by Darryl Hall

     This song was from Darryl Hall, the half of Hall and Oates, the singing duo that has been singing since the 70's.
I heard this song for the first time in 1986 when I was stationed at Fort Devens in Mass going through school.  I thought it was a good song and it did make the MTV playlist that we would watch in the break room before we marched to class.   Later on in 1987 I was listening to American top 40 with Casey Kasim and somebody called in a dedication to his girl that ran off to the big city and disappeared.  For some reason I remembered this while driving down the autobahn near Trier.  Funny what you remember from the past.  And I do miss 1986.


Dreamtime is a single from singer/songwriter Daryl Hall (part of pop-rock duo Hall & Oates). Co-written by John Beeby, it was issued prior to the release of his second solo album, Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine.
It was his biggest hit as a solo performer, climbing the Billboard Hot 100 to peak at number 5 in October 1986 and reached #3 on the Radio & Records CHR/Pop Airplay chart on September 9, 1986 for one week and remained on the chart for twelve weeks. The hit helped drive its parent album up the charts to peak at number 29.

The album's lead single, "Dreamtime", was the most successful song of the album. It reached #5 on the Hot 100 on October 4, 1986, staying there for a week and remaining on the chart for 15 weeks; consequently it was an airplay hit, peaking at #3 on the Radio & Records CHR/Pop Airplay chart. The song went to number 11 on the Mainstream Rock Songs on August 16, 1986 to stay on the chart for 10 weeks. It was also a club hit, the remix version peaked at #36 on the Dance Club Songs chart on October 15, 1986 and remaining on it for five weeks. The single peaked at #24 on the Adult Contemporary chart as well. The song was ranked as the 53th most successful song of 1986 across contemporary hit radio in the United States by Radio & Records.

The original recording is 4:45 in length. The music video extends the track length to 5:12 Aside from some ad-libs near the video version's fade-out, there is little difference between the album version and the video.

Sunday, August 27, 2017

From the Past "I am TJIC"


I was going through some old pics on my blog and I ran across this Pic.
I remember this, it hit the blogging world right after I started blogging in 2011, and it was a big deal that somebody's political opinion was used to strip somebody of their 2nd amendment right without due process.  This came from Borepatch's Blog back in 2011.    I haven't found any new information so I don't know how this resolved itself or if anything changed since the story was "aired" in 2011.

I am TJIC
I've linked several times to posts over at the blog Dispatches from TJICistan.  TJIC is an outspoken (some might say extremely so) advocate of smaller government.  He's also a firearms owner in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.  While he owns guns, it appears that he's no longer allowed to possess any:
ARLINGTON (CBS) – A blog threatening members of Congress in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting has prompted Arlington police to temporarily suspend the firearms license of an Arlington man.
It was the headline “1 down and 534 to go” that caught the attention. “One” refers to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in the rampage, while 534 refers to the other members of the U.S. House and Senate.

Police are investigating the “suitability” of 39-year-old Travis Corcoran to have a firearms license
Let's ignore for the moment how many people were investigated for making similar comments about George W. Bush.  Let's look at the "logic" being exercised by the Arlington Po-Po, shall we?

They claim that Corcoran is so dangerous that, while he has done nothing more than put up a blog post, he must be restrained from possessing firearms.  However, it appears that it's not worth it for the police to follow him, or stake out his place, or arrest him.

Huh?

Look, guys, if you think that his speech rises to the level of an actual threat of specific harm to specific persons, he should be in jail.  If you're not sure, then do the leg work to establish whether it is or not.

So, what do we know about the Arlington Police Department?  We know that they're lazy - nobody assigned to watch over this "dangerous" suspect.  We know that they're biased - Arlington is a hotbed of George W. Bush hatred, and the last decade would offer a wealth of examples of similar or worse speech, none of which was investigated.

And we know that they're idiots.  It's not like there isn't a ton of case law on how the First Amendment applies to threats of political violence.  Arlington will lose this, if it ever gets to trial.  Post Heller and McDonald, they'll lose even worse.  Idiots.

But this is, as JayG points out, an attack not only on the First Amendment, but on the Second as well.  An attack of this sort - groundless in logic, and arguably mendacious in nature - is an attack on all.  And so I have to stand with TJIC.


I am TJIC.  So are you.  If you blog, you are hereby authorized to use this image (created by your humble host, using The Gimp, not that it took any skill).  Please link back to this post.

It would be one thing if the law were applied equally to all.  It's not, and it will be applied disproportionately to us, because we hold views considered by some in power to be Double Plus Ungood.  Lefties in particular, this is your moment.  You say that you stand for good governance.  Prove it.

It was not a famous Massachusetts citizen who said We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately.  Benjamin Franklin was more circumspect than the men from Massachusetts, such as Sam Adams, who said this:
Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say 'what should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
Eliminationist rhetoric right there.  Clearly, the Arlington Police would have seized his firearms.  What a sad, degraded state for a once proud Commonwealth.  It seems that I got out just in the nick of time.



UPDATE 21 January 2011 8:40: Boy, this is getting some attention.

To CNN, I have absolutely no idea what you mean by saying I'm an "affiliate" of TJIC.  Other than a shared love of freedom and dislike of tyranny,  there's no connection.  I guess that Irony 101 is no longer a required course in Journalism School, but thanks for all the traffic!

To everyone who thinks the whole situation stinks, here's something that you can do to help (cut and pasted from my post here for your convenience):

-------------- Begin ---------------
We've all seen what happens when you combine crazy gun laws with possibly politically motivated government.  A bunch of folks took this kind of personally.  People have been asking what they can do.

TJIC himself has been pretty gracious about the whole thing, saying that he's in good shape (so far) and recommending that people toss another sawbuck in the plate on Sunday if they want to help the world out.  Fine advice for all of us.

But +5 Insightful to Top Of The Chain, who brings a wicked smaht idea:

So last night after I buycotted a graphic novel from Heavy Ink, TJIC commented on the previous post with this.

Btw, if comic books aren't your thing, I own and run a second business: SmartFlix.com.

Sign up for Combat Pistol University

http://smartflix.com/store/video/6303/Combat-Pistol-University


... or Gunsmithing University:

http://smartflix.com/store/video/6614/Gunsmithing-University

...or one of the others:

http://smartflix.com/store/universities
So instead of entertaining yourself with the latest Spiderman, Batman, etc., you can get yourself some practical knowledge from a variety of subjects.
The idea isn't a boycott, it's a buycott - support business that you like.  I look and see all sorts of shooty goodness there, including this:
oday the M1 is enjoying a resurgence as a long range match rifle through the DCM program and the recent availability of imported surplus rifles. If you own a M1 Garand or it's magazine fed brother the M1A you'll want this course so that you can truly understand how your rifle functions, be able to totally strip it and reassemble it down to the last part and perform basic repairs. You will even understand how that mysterious clip feed system works and how to adjust it. Improving accuracy is also discussed. The differences and similarities internally between the M1 and the M1A are shown in detail.

This video was added to our catalog on January 01, 2000 in Firearms::M-1 / Garand.
As you see, they're helpfully tagged for your browsing convenience.  Other tags include AK-47 and 1911 (by God).  And there's a nifty Amazon-like Wisdom-Of-Crowds thingie, which helpfully points out:

Customers who rented this DVD also rented

So take a moment to browse over to SmartFlix.  There may just be something there for you - if so, order it.  Post it on your site.

And to the point of this post - let's drive so much business his way that Governor Patrick will want to break ground at the new SmartFlix World Headquarters. --------------- End ----------------

Friday, August 25, 2017

Some Musings on the NFL and other thoughts...

This will be a short post of some musings that are running through my head on a pair of sneakers....Yeah interesting analogy but I am like that....

    Well first off, I decided to watch a preseason football game, I haven't watched much football last year except in post season when My Falcons went all the way to the Superbowl and played 3 quarters of excellent football, but then choking and blowing a 28-3 lead.  Oh well, I am an Atlanta Falcons fan...and we are used to getting our hopes crushed.
    But decided to watch a preseason game and it was the Seahawks and the KC Chiefs...and the announcers dwelled on a couple of players from each teams  sitting down during the national Anthem, and the social Justice aspects of it.  Well that pissed me off, this is the reason that I didn't watch football last year and apparently I wasn't the only one that was pissed about that.  The viewership of the NFL was lower last year.  People don't like having politics shoved into their face all the time.  I see another loser season for the NFL....again.
     So I decided to watch fake football, the movie "The Replacements".    I do like several aspects of that movie...
   There is a phrase in the movie that I like and it states..
                   "Pain is temporary
                     Chicks dig scars
                     Glory is Forever".
I will probably avoid watching the NFL again....something about overpaid entitled players moaning and groaning about "Oppression, racism, police brutality and white privilege."that really pisses me off.  Where else can they go, make a damm good living better than 99% of the rest of America and they feel the need to virtue signal.  Really?
     I then watched "Battlebots" on TV, something about machines beating each up in an arena....think of gladiator games for nerds.lol

  And finally watching "Forged in fire" on the History channel....
 The point I am making is that for TV and cable entertainment people will watch more than NFL and if they keep pushing the SJW crap on America as part of their virtue signaling, they will continue to lose audiences.

     Another musing...I hate reCAPTcha,

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Intelligence and the Battle of the Bulge...

I was in the intelligence field when I was in the service and we still talked about the failure of the Allies to realize that the Germans were coming and the damage it did.  I honestly believed that if Hitler had saved the forces used and utilized them against the Russians the Germans might have been able to hold off the Russians on their drive to Berlin and possibly forced an armistice.  I do admore the gutsy call to do an offensive and they had picked a great place to do it.  In 1940, the Germans came through the Ardennes forest to go around the Maginot Line that the French built during the interwar years to prevent the next German invasion.  The Germans just used Tanks and went around it, through Belgian country and attacked the line from behind or just left it as they raced for Paris leaving most of the French Army behind.  Well the Germans used the forest again, the Ardennes forest had become a "rest area" for wearied Allied soldiers and it was thinly protected by the 106th infantry division.  The German onslaught caught the allies by surprise despite warnings that it was coming, the perception was that "We will be home for Christmas", permeated the allied thinking and the Germans threw a spanner into the works as they say.


On December 16, 1944, Allied troops were caught by surprise. A massive offensive by German forces struck west out of the Ardennes region, smashing into the Allied lines. For the first time since D-Day, the Allied advance was halted. In places, they were pushed back.
Throughout the war, the Allies had the advantage in military intelligence. So why did they not see the attack coming?

Signs of Trouble

There were plenty of reasons for the Allies to suspect such an attack. Months beforehand, as Hitler began preparing for the offensive, Japanese representatives in Berlin had heard rumors of the preparations. Their messages were intercepted and decrypted, giving the Allies their first clue.

Over the following months, the Germans moved troops, tanks, and planes west. They included powerful contingents of the SS, the politicized and vicious military elite of the Nazi war machine. Intercepted signals told the Allies those movements were happening, although not why. Aerial reconnaissance observations added to the evidence.
The pieces were not put together correctly. The same intelligence systems that had served so well during the Battle of Britain and the war in the Atlantic failed the Allies.

German Security

It was Hitler’s last substantial roll of the dice, and he was not taking chances on it. The German military took precautions to hide their plans from the Allies.
Hitler revealed his plans only to a select few. Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, the leader of the new Sixth Panzer Army, went for several weeks without knowing about the operation his army was created to do.
Note the Pistol that the German Soldier was using..
Radio silence was imposed upon the lower formations of the military. It was a sensible precaution, given that the Allies regularly intercepted and decoded German signals. It was undermined by the fact the Allies had broken the Enigma encryption used for top level messages, but it reduced the evidence emerging.
The operation had a defensive sounding cover name, but that turned out to be irrelevant, as the Allies never knew it.

More Immediate Concerns

One of the biggest distractions for the Allies was their success.
They had developed their intelligence operations during a defensive period. When they were concerned with fending off Luftwaffe raids on England and Panzer offensives in North Africa, the full focus of attention was on looking out for enemy attacks.
That changed as the Allies took the offensive in North Africa and then Italy. Then they advanced into Europe on an unprecedented scale in the summer and fall of 1944.
From the Canadian’s march across Holland through the British push toward the Rhine to the American strike toward Germany’s industrial heartland, they were involved in a series of massive attacks. Their focus was on looking for information that might hinder their progress, rather than a counter-offensive from Germany.

Over-Optimism

Over-confidence was clearly a factor.
The D-Day landings had been an extraordinary success, an achievement with no parallel in military history. Operation Cobra and Patton’s drive across France had been so swift and decisive that American tanks had run out of fuel before they ran out of space to maneuver. The closing of the Falaise gap had destroyed a German army, with 10,000 men killed and 50,000 captured.
It created a sense of euphoria and belief that the Allies were unstoppable. The Germans appeared to be on the back foot. In such an atmosphere, it was all too easy to overlook the enemy’s will to attack.

The Nature of the Ardennes

The terrain of the Ardennes forest created a sense of false security. Hilly and thickly wooded, it was terrible ground through which to make an attack, especially one using tanks. Not only were the Allies not looking for trouble there, but the area was poorly defended.
That would have been an understandable mistake if not for a vital precedent. Less than five years before, Hitler had launched a successful offensive through the Ardennes. The French delusion that it was not possible was a factor in their country’s swift defeat.
No-one considered that Hitler might repeat what had worked for him before.



American M36 tank destroyers of the 703rd TD, attached to the 82nd Airborne Division, move forward during heavy fog to stem German spearhead near Werbomont, Belgium, 20 December 1944.

Bad Weather

Hitler’s cunning and Allied shortcomings were important, but chance also played a part in hiding the Ardennes offensive.
Alongside signals interception, the other most important tool of Allied intelligence gathering was photographic reconnaissance (PR). From early in the war, the British had been developing techniques for photographing enemy bases and formations from the air, and for interpreting the meaning of what they saw. It allowed them to identify German troop build-ups and anticipate attacks.
The biggest limitation on PR was the weather. To safely photograph enemy formations, intelligence planes had to fly high overhead. Bad weather could easily block their ability to see the ground and what was happening there.
In the days leading up to the Ardennes breakout, the weather turned against the Allies. PR could not see what was happening. They were effectively watching the Germans with one eye closed.

Falling into the Firefighting Theory

Those problems led to and were aggravated by the Allied commanders’ expectations of the Germans.
Assuming they were on the run, the Allies expected enemy operations just to be firefighting – rushing to counter the blaze of Allied attacks rather than planning an offensive. When they heard German troops were heading west, they assumed it was for defense. The possibility of the Germans planning an assault was never seriously considered.
A combination of over-confidence, limited thinking, and missing intelligence kept the Allies from foreseeing the German attack. That failure mattered as it cost lives and slowed their advance.
Ultimately, their offensive came too late to save Nazi Germany from defeat.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

The Anti-Trump Burbons:

  I ran across this article from Victor David Hanson, whom is a conservative commentator and unlike most of the stuff out there, he doesn't hate Trump from what I can tell.  He brings up some salient points and something to think about in the 2020 election cycle.  The truth of the matter, He doesn't think Trump will fare badly and probably do well if he does what he did in the 2016 election.  Trumps appeal is to the "Middle class" the forgotten ones that form the bedrock of the society and their concerns are dismissed, they are called "Deplorable" or mocked for being "Bitter Clingers" remember this gem from the Messiah? This was said during a fundraiser for one of the democratic candidates by the 44th President of the United States. 

     You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

This attitude is where Donald Trump picked up so much support especially in the "Blue line states that traditionally went democrat.  You have Obama and then the 2016 democratic candidate Hillary trying to run coal out of existence for example, or destroy other industries because they are "politically incorrect".    The democrats have forgotten their base and are totally ate up with identity politics.  This will in my opinion will burn them in the 2020 election cycle.

Just seven months into Donald Trump’s administration we are already bombarded with political angling and speculations about the 2020 presidential race. No one knows in the next three years what can happen to a volatile Trump presidency or his psychotic enemies, but for now such pronouncements of doom seem amnesiac if not absurd.

Things are supposedly not going well politically with Donald Trump lately, after a series of administration firings, internecine White House warring, and controversial tweets. A Gallup Poll has him at only a 34 percent positive rating, and losing some support even among Republicans (down to 79 percent)—although contrarily a recent Rasmussen survey shows him improving to the mid-forties in popularity. Nonetheless, we are warned that even if Trump is lucky enough not to be impeached, if he is not removed under the 25th Amendment or the Emoluments Clause, if he does not resign in shame, even if he has the stamina to continue under such chaos, even if he seeks reelection and thus even more punishment, he simply cannot win in 2020.
In answer to such assumed expertise, one could answer with Talleyrand’s purported quip about our modern-day Bourbons that “They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
Namely, Trump’s enraged critics still do not grasp that he is a reflection of, not a catalyst for, widespread anger and unhappiness with globalization, interventionist foreign policy, Orwellian political correctness, identity politics, tribalism, open borders, and a Deep State that lectures and condemns but never lives the consequences of its own sermonizing.
In particular, the current conundrum and prognostications ignore several constants.
Do Americans Really Believe that Pollsters and the Media Have Reformed?
One, despite the recent Gallup poll, most polls still show Trump’s at about a 40 percent approval rating—nearly the same level of support as shortly before the November 2016 election. That purported dismal level of support is pronounced to be near fatal, when in fact it is not.
Since a) pollsters likely have not much changed their methodology since 2016, and since b) it is fair so assume that the media and those who poll for them continue to despise Trump, and since c) Trump’s exasperating eccentricities continue to make his supporters cautious about voicing their support (even to anonymous pollsters and political surveyors), we can conclude that his actual support could be about 45-47 percent—or close to the percentage of the popular vote he won in 2016.
Given that Trump’s base in the key swing states of the Midwest (the so-called Democratic “blue wall”) has not weakened, there is no real reason yet to think Trump could not win the Electoral College again in 2020 in the same fashion as 2016. In 2004 and 2012, we were told respectively that an unpopular George W. Bush and a sinking Barack Obama might lose reelection; instead they both were re-elected largely with the same election calculus and an even stronger base of support that carried them to victory four years earlier.
Do Americans Really Believe the Messenger Nullifies the Message?
As in 2016, many of those who voted for Trump would prefer that he curb his tweets, clean up his language, sleep eight instead of five hours, and follow all the conventional-wisdom admonitions offered about his misbehavior. But that said, nearly half of the country is probably still willing to overlook his eccentricities for several reasons.
Trump now has a presidential record of eight months. Despite the media’s neglect of it, one can sense changes by just getting out and traveling the country. Even in rural central California, one can feel that it really is true that there is a 76 percent drop in illegal immigration, and immigration law is being taken seriously as never before.
It was no accident that the National Council of La Raza without warning dropped its racialist nomenclature and is now UnidosUS (“Together, US”). Why is the Democratic Party now feigning a focus on class, not racial, issues with its new “Better Deal” FDR/Truman-like echo?
The same pragmatics about changed attitudes are reflected in dozens of local roadside canteens in my environs that have taken down their showy Mexican flags and are now waving even larger American ones. Cement trucks and construction cranes are ubiquitous on the roads in a way not true over the prior eight years. Talk to business people, and they are citing new projects and investments, not voicing anxieties about higher taxes and more regulatory hostility.
The point is not just that no one can know the ultimate fate of the Trump agenda, but rather that so far media hysteria and congressional calcification have not stopped perceived conservative progress. The bottom line is that Trump did prove to be far more conservative than Republican establishmentarians had forecast.
Much of Trump’s success so far comes despite congressional ossification and is clearly psychological: people with money to invest or to build things prefer to do so when the head of the regulatory state urges them to create jobs, make money, and help their country get richer, not when he warns them that it is not the time to profit, that they need to share and spread around their wealth, that they must calibrate when they have made enough profits, and that they should concede that  the state built their businesses as much as their own daring and talent.
Despite congressional failure so far on reforming Obamacare, conservatives are delighted not just with the Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court appointment, but also with literally dozens of conservative lower federal court appointments, who are both youngish and judicially restrained. Would they have preferred to let Hillary Clinton decide the trajectory of the Supreme Court for the next two or three decades?
Does anyone think a President John McCain or Mitt Romney would have pulled out of the Paris climate change accord?
Trump’s team is reinventing the Environmental Protection Agency, giving clean coal a second life, opening up natural gas and oil exploration on federal lands, building pipelines, and exporting energy. The crash in world oil prices is bankrupting exporters like Russia, Middle East autocracies, and the Gulf States, whose influences are now pruned back by a dearth of cash.
The major cabinet officials are competing to deregulate the deep state and free up individual initiative.
At home the economy grew at a 2.6 percent annualized rate last quarter, and corporate profits at are record levels. So is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Unemployment is lower than at any time in an over a decade.
The trade deficit is even shrinking and lots of companies have announced relocations to the United States, in reaction to record cheap energy costs and a perceived favorable business environment. And all this comes at a time when the United States is neither seeking optional military interventions nor backing away from thuggish aggression, but is trying to thread the needle in restoring deterrence along the lines of “principled realism.”
The point is not just that no one can know the ultimate fate of the Trump agenda, but rather that so far media hysteria and congressional calcification have not stopped perceived conservative progress. The bottom line is that Trump did prove to be far more conservative than Republican establishmentarians had forecast. To his supporters, Trump’s message is usually distinguished from Trump, the messenger. Politically that means pragmatist supporters can focus on his agenda not his tweets, while Trump’s die-hard voters like his Twitter combativeness, viewing it as a long overdue media comeuppance.
Trump himself is less rather than more likely to keep running a chaotic White House. Appointments like John Kelly as chief of staff, or H.R. McMaster as national security advisor and James Mattis as defense secretary are not symptoms of a sell out to the Deep State, but evidence of Trump’s own acknowledgment that for his populism to be effective, he needs structure and focus.
In sum, lots of Americans support what Trump is doing rather than agreeing with what he sometimes is saying and tweeting—and even more of his base like both.
Do Americans Really Listen to the Conservative Elite Establishment?
Third, Trump does not run in a vacuum, but always in a landscape of alternatives. The Republican Party is split, but so far the NeverTrump establishment is smaller and less influential than the returning Tea-Party/Trump/Reagan Democrat conservative base that in part sat out in 2008 and 2012 or once voted Democratic.
One of the strangest ironies of the present age is that Trump’s populism (e.g., “our farmers”, “our vets”, “our coal miners”, “our workers”), which saved the Senate and House for Republicans and delivered the greatest Republican majorities on the local and state level since the 1920s, is either ridiculed or ignored.
What Trump loses to elite Republican and conservative disdain expressed in op-eds and news show round tables or to Lindsey Graham and John McCain-like denunciations, he has more than made up with new populist Republican support in small towns and communities nationwide. For now, it is hard to imagine any other potential Republican nominee rallying a crowd like Trump or appealing to the losers of globalization in such dramatic fashion.
That we are, once again, being advised that Republican grandees are looking for a new version of Evan McMullin, or that a cranky John Kasich will reenter the primary race in 2020, or that Jeff Flake insists that he is the moral superior to those who stooped to vote for Trump, to be honest, means nada.
More than 90 percent of Republicans voted for Trump before he had a political record, and about the same will do it again based on his conservative agenda as expressed and enacted so far. If the economy hits 3 percent economic growth, with near 4 percent unemployment, the Dow does not crash, and if the Russian collusion charges end up only with symbolic scalps (and all that is possible if not likely), Trump will win over half the independents, solidify his base and likely take the Electoral College.
One of the strangest ironies of the present age is that Trump’s populism (e.g., “our farmers”, “our vets”, “our coal miners”, “our workers”), which saved the Senate and House for Republicans and delivered the greatest Republican majorities on the local and state level since the 1920s, is either ridiculed or ignored.
Yet the more the economy picks up, the more the administration prunes back the regulatory state, and the more the United States restores deterrence, the shriller will be the argument that Trump’s tweets and behavior nullify solid achievement. Just watch.
Will the New Democratic/Progressive Party Really Rebuild the Blue Wall?
Fourth and finally, the less publicized split in the Democratic Party is probably worse than that of its Republican counterpart. The latter did not stop Trump’s victory in the Electoral College, the former helped ensure Hillary’s “Blue Wall” collapsed.
Truth is, the party mortgaged its soul to the identity politics lobby, and thereby embraced a number of fatally wrong assumptions.
The current head of the Democratic National Committee, Thomas Perez, is best known for his profanity-laced tirades; his more unstable subordinate Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) recently claimed that Kim Jong-un was a more responsible actor than the president of the United States, while Justice Neil Gorsuch was an illegitimate Supreme Court judge. The former DNC head, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is facing myriad bizarre scandals. Her replacement Donna Brazile became most famous as a CNN talking head who leaked debate questions to the Clinton campaign. With disreputable icons like these, who needs opposition research?
Almost any of Bill Clinton’s 1990s talking points on government, immigration, race, taxes, or law enforcement could not be voiced today by any mainstream Democratic politician. In 2008, Hillary drank with boilermakers; in 2016 she smeared the lower middle class with taunts of “deplorables” and “irredeemables.”
Truth is, the party mortgaged its soul to the identity politics lobby, and thereby embraced a number of fatally wrong assumptions.
First, record minority registration and turnout for Barack Obama were not automatically transferable to other Democrat grandees. Obama pushed the party hard leftward with a new strategy of uniting previously feuding minority groups under an us/them binary of anti-“white privilege” while at the same time soothing liberals with his Ivy League pedigree, his exotic hip multicultural name, and his mellifluent banality. It is hard to see too many other candidates recreating such political gymnastics.
Democrats are finally worrying that they have lost the white working class; they should be even more terrified that they might lose 40 percent of the traditional minority vote if the economy keeps growing and Trump keeps talking about protecting low wage-earners from the dual threats of globalization and illegal immigration.
Second, if Obama did not bequeath an upside legacy, he certainly left a downside. Tribal obsessions with identity politics were implicitly an attack on the white working class. Those in Ohio and Pennsylvania were not just angry for being written off as bitter clingers, irredeemables, and deplorables, but also furious to be scapegoated for having “white privilege” by those who alone enjoyed it. A party run by Pajama Boys, half-educated media talking heads, Middlebury-prolonged adolescents, Bay Area billionaire techies in t-shirts and flip-flops, Hollywood gated grandees, Al Gore green elites, and Black Lives Matter activists is not going to win easily back Michigan and Wisconsin.
Finally, the Democrats failed to see that class-based populism is a far more inclusionary and thus dynamic phenomenon than is racial tribalism—for both whites and non-whites. Democrats are finally worrying that they have lost the white working class; they should be even more terrified that they might lose 40 percent of the traditional minority vote if the economy keeps growing and Trump keeps talking about protecting low wage-earners from the dual threats of globalization and illegal immigration.
In sum, the Democratic Party has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. It is doubling down on exactly what lost it the Blue Wall.
Ditto the Republican NeverTrump establishment that seeks to recapture relevance by reemphasizing exactly what lost it influence in 2016. The argument that Trump, the man, is so beyond moral redemption that Trump’s agenda is irrelevant will not fly with those who feel that they are already better off than in 2016. And the idea that conservative populism is a temporary deviation from a winning and properly orthodox Jeb Bush conservatism is delusional.
Trumpism is not an eponymous political movement per se. It was merely an adjective for the reification of far greater preexisting political realities

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

"The Night of Digital Long Knives"

I had commented a couple of days ago about the purges and blocking of websites that are not "Politically Correct", and the purges continue.  This is not a 1st amendment issue because they are private companies doing this, not the government.  But the danger is still the same, these companies either through the leftist beliefs of their CEO's like "Google" or other companies that are being pressured by activists to dump websites that the "activist" don't agree with.  Either way this is censorship and it is a problem.  I have start researching ways to backup my blog.  I am not overly political...most of the time, there is a lot of aviation, or history stuff on my blog along with whatever I feel like posting.  But eventually I and other smaller bloggers will run afoul of the "thought Police".
      This is also dangerous because there is no standard involved except what someone believes, and that is a moving goalpost of emotions.  Logic and common sense have no bearing, just pure emotions.  Also the alt left is publishing names, addresses and employers of people that they consider "Nazi"'s which is pretty much anybody that isn't as pure as they are.  So if people have a different thought, they have to worry about getting harassed or fired from their job and to the antifa and their ilk, this is perfectly acceptable..".well because you are a Nazi and you are a bad person and you deserve it."
     This is pure suppression of thought, this is a danger to a free society.  In the former eastern block, especially in East Germany 1 out of 7 people were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police.  The citizens of those countries would not talk about anything for fear of being overheard and having the Stasi pay them a visit and if you were lucky, you just went to prison, or more likely they gave you their version of "due process" which was a bullet in the head and your family being billed for the disposal of the body. 
     The Alt-left have the support of the government, especially the democratic run cities, the alt Left are the foot soldiers of their cause. which is to guarentee power to the 1% and their apparachiks that will keep them in power and we are just sheep to be shorn for our wool and occasionally slaughtered.
 There will be push-back against the left if they keep pushing, the average American tries to be easy going but after a while, they will get tired of it and it will get real nasty.  
    I cribbed this off ROK

As the fallout from the failed Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend continues, leftist-controlled tech and social media outlets have started mass censoring right-wingers and banning them from their platforms. While sites such as Twitter have been hostile to the right for a long time, the events in Charlottesville—where alt-left agitator Heather Heyer was killed by rally attendee James Alex Fields, Jr.—have given leftist-run sites the excuse they need to ideologically cleanse their websites.
As of this writing, numerous right-wing websites and personalities have been banned from PayPal, Twitter, Paypal, Stripe, Facebook, Instagram, Mailchimp, Soundcloud, Uber, and countless other platforms. To make matters worse, domain registrars and website maintenance companies such as CloudFlare and GoDaddy have no-platformed The Daily Stormer, keeping the site offline since Sunday. It’s clear that ideological dissidents are going to have to change their tactics in order to keep their websites and other platforms online




Even before the Charlottesville rally, right-wingers had been targeted for no-platforming by leftist-converged social media and financial platforms. Since Donald Trump’s election, we’ve witnessed a flurry of attacks from Silicon Valley, from the mass demonetization of politically dissident YouTube videos to the banning of individuals such as Hunter Wallace, Davis Aurini, and ROK publisher Roosh Valizadeh from PayPal.
In the lead up to Unite the Right, Airbnb began cancelling the accounts of right-wingers that it suspected were renting apartments in Charlottesville to attend the rally. On the day of the rally itself, alt-right media outlet Red Ice was hacked by antifas, along with the personal Twitter accounts of hosts Henrik Palmgren and Lana Lokteff; the site is still offline. Baked Alaska and James Allsup were also banned from Uber after they were kicked out by their driver for supposedly being “racist.” This was all a prelude to what came next.
The first wave of the assault on right-wingers came on Sunday, when several of the major rally attendees, including Pax Dickinson, Mike Enoch, and Levi Smith, were banned from Twitter. Dickinson’s ban came not long after he revealed how local police had deliberately set up the rally attendees to be overwhelmed and attacked by antifas.
Over the next few days, PayPal and Facebook announced a major crackdown on right-wingers. Facebook has banned the pages and personal accounts of numerous right-wing personalities and sites, including American Renaissance, Christopher Cantwell, Pax Dickinson, and the Traditionalist Worker Party. PayPal has also banned Cantwell, Richard Spencer, Jason Kessler, American Renaissance, VDARE, and countless others from using their services, cutting them off from a vital source of funds. In the latter two cases, AmRen and VDARE were banned even though neither they nor their leadership had any involvement with Unite the Right.
Additionally, Mailchimp has purged numerous right-wingers from using its mailing list services, including Christopher Cantwell and Pax Dickinson’s Counter.Fund. Cantwell was also banned from YouTube permanently and may be completely ruined due to his involvement in Unite the Right. Discord has also banned alt-right servers.
To make matters worse, leftists have begun attacking web hosts, domain registrars, and other infrastructural services that right-wingers rely on to keep their sites online. Rootbocks and Hatreon, two free-speech alternatives to GoFundMe and Patreon, respectively, have been forced to switch domains and webhosts after being banned due to their unwillingness to ban right-wingers. Free speech Twitter replacement Gab has been subjected to several DDoS attacks for the same reasons, and the Alternative Right blog was deleted from Blogger last night.
But no site has suffered as much as The Daily Stormer. After they published an article on Sunday mocking Heather Heyer, they were forced off their domain registrar GoDaddy after alt-leftists complained. They switched to Google Domains, only to have their domain seized in violation of Google’s terms of service. The Daily Stormer is currently only available on the deep web and may not be able to return to normal operations.
What’s astounding is that alt-left-controlled tech organizations aren’t even hiding their desire to purge right-wing organizations. For example, anti-DDoS service CloudFlare banned The Daily Stormer solely because their CEO woke up in a “bad mood,” which he admitted in a company-wide email:
"Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what I’d talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. I called our legal team and told them what we were going to do. I called our Trust & Safety team and had them stop the service. It was a decision I could make because I’m the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure company."
The purge has swelled to the point that Lauren Southern—who is completely unaffiliated with the alt-right and was not present at Charlottesville—was nearly banned from Instagram, despite her account there being completely apolitical. As Hamish’s Tweet above shows, these are far from the only examples of right-wingers being purged, no-platformed, censored, or merely harassed. Others, such as Social Matter’s Ryan Landry and AltRight.com/Arktos’ Jason Reza Jorjani, have chosen to leave the alt-right altogether.

Where do we go from here?

While the purge of right-wingers from mainstream financial and social media platforms appears to be slowing down somewhat, it is clear that the right can no longer rely on these services to promote or finance their operations. The fact that previously neutral platforms such as domain registrars and DDoS protection systems such as CloudFlare are also booting right-wingers is a chilling development, because it means that alt-tech platforms such as Gab, Rootbocks, and Hatreon are at risk of being no-platformed as well.
While I believe that nationalism will ultimately triumph over globalism, it is clear that right-wingers will need to take drastic measures in order to safeguard their First Amendment rights. In addition to minimizing or eliminating their dependence on mainstream platforms, right-wingers will also need to eliminate their use of Nazi imagery—even as a joke—and tone down their criticism of Jews. Much like how Roosh was able to maintain his relevance despite no longer being able to talk about rape, the dissident right can maintain its relevance without turning into Hollywood Nazis.
Additionally, the dissident right cannot look to President Trump for protection from the alt-left. While Trump has made his displeasure at the alt-left publicly known, his lack of action against them—and against the no-platforming of his right-wing supporters—indicates that he either doesn’t understand the problem or doesn’t care. For the moment at least, we are on our own.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Monday Music "You don't want me" by Steel Breeze

I remembered hearing this group on MTV back in the early days when MTV played music video's.  I had forgotten this song until my Sirius/XM Played it and it jogged my memory.  Well I almost went with Johnny Horton "Sink the Bismark" but decided to roll with an 80's song.  I will probably go with Johnny Horton next week though. 

Steel Breeze is an American rock group that had a popular video on MTV with "You Don't Want Me Anymore" in 1982, followed by "Dreamin' is Easy" the following year.

Taking their name from a phrase in Pink Floyd's song, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", the six-member band from Sacramento, California comprised- in its "classic" lineup- of Ric Jacobs (vocals), Ken Goorabian and Waylin Carpenter (guitars), Rod Toner (keyboards), Vinnie Pantaleoni (bass guitar), and Barry Lowenthal (drums) released their self-titled debut album in 1982 on RCA Records. "You Don't Want Me Anymore," the first single from the album, quickly jumped into the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 supported by a video that was a favorite of early MTV, and peaked at #16. The next single, "Dreamin' Is Easy" also made it into the Top 40, but could not go higher than #30.

 
They had originally gotten together a few years earlier in a different lineup and had enjoyed some local success with "You Don't Want Me Anymore" with the hard work of manager John Wiseman, before catching the ear of producer Kim Fowley and attorney David Chatfield, who recorded the band's first album at Rusk studios in Hollywood and got Steel Breeze their recording contract with RCA. Casey Kasem, on the March 12, 1983 edition of American Top 40, describes how Fowley discovered Steel Breeze while going through approximately 1200 demo tapes that were about to be discarded by a local Hollywood night club, Madam Wongs. Chatfield and Fowley flew up to Sacramento and signed the band after Chrysalis Record executive Tom Trumbo told Chatfield he was looking for a band like Journey. Chatfield left Trumbo's office and went to Fowley's home where Fowley pulled out the Steel Breeze demo of "You Don't Want Me Anymore," which they both knew was a hit. 
 
The band's lineup has shifted considerably since the release of the debut album, with keyboardist Rod Toner remaining in the band the longest of anyone from the classic lineup days. In 1984, Steel Breeze (now with ex-707 vocalist Kevin Chalfant and keyboardist Loren Haas as members) released their second album, Heart On The Line on an independent record label, but the record went unnoticed despite guest appearances by Bruce Springsteen's saxophonist, Clarence Clemons and Santana's vocalist, Alex Ligertwood. Five years later, a third Steel Breeze album, Cry Thunder came out with Bobby Thompson on vocals, Rick Lowe and Robbie Bickford on guitar, Toner on keyboards and Paul Ojeda on drums. In 1991, Still Warrior was released with yet another lineup, just as Chalfant had a small hit with a similar act, The Storm. In 1994, Peace Of Mind was issued.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Google Retaliation....or Censorship..?

I check out a bunch of blogs every day or every couple of days and several of them all of a sudden are not functional.  They have the "Permission denied" unless I contact the blog owner and there is no link, or they are just "gone".   I am wondering if I need to start looking for another platform because there is a purge going one in blogger?   I blog because it is therapeutic and it allows me to concentrate the scattered neurons called my though pattern... Yes I am concerned...

    


Saturday, August 19, 2017

Air Attack on the Bismark

I am taking a bit of a break from the stupidity going on from the Charlotteville stupidity and the resulting fallout.  I had watched a show on netflex last weekend and it was talking about finding the H.M.S Hood and it talked about the cruiser and the effect the sinking had on British Morale.  Well anyway the show also had them looking for the S.M.S Bismark.  They had touched about the Fairey Swordfish finding the Bismark and the torpedo attack that jammed the rudder and forced the Bismark back to the British ships that were trying to catch them.


The German battleship, Bismarck, was one of the biggest vessels ever built in the first half of the 20th century. A marvel of advanced engineering and technology, it was the most powerful ship in the world – yet a single shot by an antiquated biplane took it down.
At 792’8” in length, and with a beam of 118’1”, it displaced 49,500 tons of water. It was also deadly with eight 15” SK C/34 guns in four twin turrets, twelve 5.9” L/55 guns, sixteen 4.1” L/65 guns, sixteen 1.5” L/83 guns, and twelve 0.79” anti-aircraft guns, as well as four Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplanes.



Bismarck in 1940 (Bundesarchiv, Bild 193-04-1-26 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 / Wikipedia)
Bismarck in 1940. Photo Credit.
Its function was to destroy Allied convoys in the Atlantic, the lifeblood of Britain. On the 18th of May 1941, it set off under Admiral Günther Lütjens and Commander Ernst Lindemann, accompanied by the light cruiser, Prinz Eugen. Three days later, they were spotted near Bergen, Norway.

The British sent out the HMS Hood. Launched in 1918, it measured 860’7” in length and 104’2” at the beam. It had been upgraded in 1939, but not enough. More had to be done, but the war’s outbreak forced the Hood to patrol Iceland and the Faroe Islands to keep the Germans at bay.




HMS Hood (By Photographer: Allan C. Green 1878 - 1954Restoration: Adam CuerdenPlease credit both - State Library of Victoria, Public Domain / Wikipedia)
HMS Hood.
When first commissioned, it was the biggest and fastest warship in the world, securing Britain’s grip over her colonies. The Hood, therefore, represented the height of British technology, naval power, and imperial might – making it a beloved icon.
With it went the HMS Prince of Wales (PoW), which was more up-to-date. Unfortunately, the technology was so cutting-edge that much of it was untested. It had ten 14” guns, but eight were housed in malfunctioning turrets. The Royal Navy knew this, but the Bismarck’s sighting had forced their hand.
The Hood and the Bismarck were almost evenly matched. Both had eight 15” guns that could shoot 1,700-pound shells over 15 miles. But the Hood could only fire two shells a minute compared to the Bismarck’s three. The latter was also more heavily armored, while the Hood was less so because it was designed for speed.
The British tried to reach the Denmark Strait before the Germans so they could “cross the T” before them. This strategy requires positioning the length of one’s ship to the front of an enemy ship, since ships have more guns at their sides than they do at the front. The one who crosses the T can then fire more salvos than the one who gets crossed.





Aerial reconnaissance photo taken by Flying Officer Michael Suckling shows Bismarck anchored in Norway (Wikipedia / Public Domain)
Aerial reconnaissance photo taken by Flying Officer Michael Suckling shows Bismarck anchored in Norway.
But the Hood and the PoW got there too late before dawn on May 24, so it was the Germans who crossed the British T off the western coast of Iceland. The Hood was sunk at a little past 6 AM and the PoW had to retreat after suffering extensive damage.
Before it did, however, it managed three solid hits puncturing the Bismarck’s fuel tanks and flooding its front lower decks with seawater. So the Bismarck headed toward Nazi-occupied France for repairs and since the Prinz Eugen could do nothing more, it headed off toward the Atlantic. Despite the damage, the Bismarck was still heavily armed and the captain felt  confident about reaching France by dawn on May 27th.
Twenty-one British destroyers, thirteen cruisers, six battleships, and two aircraft carriers gave chase… but the German ship had vanished.
On May 26 at 10:30 AM, the Bismarck was found a mere 700 miles off the French coast. In another 500 miles, the sea and air would be filled with German ships and planes – so a British fleet closed in from the north, while another came in from the south.





Bismarck firing her main battery during the battle (Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1968-015-25 / Lagemann / CC-BY-SA 3.0 / Wikipedia)
Bismarck firing her main battery during the battle. Photo Credit.
At 7 PM, fifteen Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers took off from the HMS Ark Royal and split into three groups to attack. Lieutenant-Commander John “Jock” Moffat flew one of them. As he broke through the cloud cover, he was awed at the sight of the German behemoth.
The Swordfish plummeted at 115 miles per hour. The Bismarck desperately filled the air with flak, so the pilots dived even lower, hugging the water and hoping the ship’s guns couldn’t aim that low. In a worst case scenario, they might just survive a sea crash.





A Swordfish returns to Ark Royal after making the torpedo attack against Bismarck
A Swordfish returns to Ark Royal after making the torpedo attack against the Bismarck.
At 2,000 yards, Moffat prepared to launch his only torpedo, when he heard a voice, “Not yet, Jock! Not yet!”
Moffat jerked and looked around. It was his Observer, Flight-Lieutenant JD “Dusty” Miller. The man was standing on the right wing with his butt in the air, head somewhere below the plane’s belly.
Moffat understood. The sea was rough. If his torpedo hit the crest of a wave, it could veer off course. Miller wanted to make sure it fell into a trough so their only weapon had a chance. But the longer they took, the greater their chances of getting hit.
“Let her go, Jock!”





The Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber LS326 built in 1934. It has been refurbished and was photographed in flight on 1 July 2012
The Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber LS326 built in 1934. It has been refurbished and was photographed in flight on 1 July 2012. Photo Credit.
Moffat released his torpedo.
“We’ve got a runner!” Miller screamed.
The Bismarck turned left sharply – a mistake. The torpedo hit the left rear, tearing a hole through the hull and causing rivets to pop off the bulkhead. The ship’s twin rudders, angled for the turn, jammed. Power died, forcing the engineers to restart everything. Mechanics tried to fix the rudders, but too much water was rushing in.
With rudders stuck at 12° to port, the Bismarck turned around and headed back toward the British fleet. Within minutes, it was turning around in circles. Lütjens informed Berlin and vowed to die fighting.






Map showing the course of Bismarck and the ships that pursued her (By Citypeek - Own work based upon the map Rheinuebung_Karte2.png, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikipedia)
Map showing the course of Bismarck and the ships that pursued her. Photo Credit.
The British showed no mercy. They surrounded the Bismarck, forcing it to fire in all directions. Unable to maneuver, it became a sitting duck and ran out of ammunition at 9:31 AM the next day. Despite the lack of return fire, the Royal Navy kept up their barrage till it sank at 10:39 AM.
They did try to rescue survivors, but a U-boat scare forced them to retreat with only 115 Germans (out of 2,092). The rest were left to their fate. Germany only found out about the sinking from a News Network at around noon. By the time they reached the scene, only five more men were alive to be retrieved. But not Lütjens. He kept his word, as did Lindemann.
Thanks to an outdated biplane, the Bismarck’s only combat mission lasted a mere 215 hours. From that moment on, naval warfare changed forever. The plane was now as important as the ship in naval warfare.





HMS Dorsetshire picking up survivors (Wikipedia / Public Domain)
HMS Dorsetshire picking up survivors.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

My Take on what happened this weekend at charlotteville

Many of my blogger friend already had posted great articles about what happened, like Old NFO, Peter and Irish among many others have already posted a lot of good material.  All I can do is touch on what they have said and give my own thoughts.  I had to calm down for several days before I could put my thoughts on the computer.  Several days ago, it was a bunch of adjectives.
     President Trump is getting lambasted by both conservatives and liberals for blaming the fracas that happened this past weekend on both the Alt Left and the Alt right.  Man people lost their mind, they wanted  Trump to repudiate only the Alt right and give the Alt left a pass like they have been getting in the media for the past several years.  President Obama and his sycophantic media gave them a pass no matter what they did. 
     I did a post on the Antifa Movement last week and I had commented, "Don't estimate them".   I was correct.  I will be bouncing around like a ....
well anyway..
      The "unite the right" got played...bad,   they got maneuvered into what we call in the Army a "Killbox".  They had to permit to march and have a rally, the ACLU forced the city to grant them one. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports that Jason Kessler, the organizer of last Saturday’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is rumored to be a former Occupy Wall Street activist and supporter of Barack Obama.
The left-wing SPLC is often partisan and overzealous in targeting hate groups, lumping legitimate conservative organizations together with actual extremists. Therefore its identification of Kessler’s left-wing roots is significant.
MORE
 Well the Antifa didn't have permission, but they showed up anyway.  Remember Antifa mission is to deny anybody whom they call "Nazi"s" their right to have rally and meet...well because they are "Nazi's".  Well anyway from what I had seen, the VSP(Virginia State Police) maneuvered the 2 groups together, so the Antifa people can use sticks, clubs and urine and shower the Alt-right with abuse and punishment.  Remember to the Antifa, Nazi's deserve bad things because they are bad people.  And speaking of the VSP, they took forever to break up the fighting, makes me wonder of they had orders from MacAuliffe(the governor and hardcore Clintonite) to drag their feet.  And finally when they forced the rally to close, they corralled the 2 groups together.  I honestly believe that the antifa had the tacit support of the .gov.  I believe that this is a warmup for the 2018 mid term election and the 2020 presidential election.  Remember the people that were attacked at Trump rally's, well it will be much worse in 2020 because all trump supporters are "Nazi's" and they deserve to get hurt, beaten, humiliated, and run off.  A lot of the big cities are run by democrats and the power blocks will assist the antifa and other alt-left groups to harass the people.  This is what happens to people that forget their history.  In the 1920 and the 1930's the brownshirts attacked other political rally's to runoff the supporters of the other candidates.

    Speaking of forgetting their history, the same people that brought the antifa and the BLM have made a concerted run on anything confederate, from statues, plaques, and I read somewere that some people tried to dig up General Forrest remains to desecrate them.  It is funny how things are working,when cops are shot by BLM supporters, there is a concerted effort to hush any stray thought and push the narrative.  I have never heard President Obama denounce the BLM or the antifa groups while he was president.  But all these people are expecting Trump to denounce the alt-right.  President Trump blamed both sides and people lost their mind.  What the hell? 
     And the dumb bastard that drove his car into the crowd, well here is a link that shows that his car was attacked and he acted out of fear and drove the car into the crowd to get away.  the problem is that he is already tried in the court of public opinion and I doubt that he will get a fair trial. 
      Here in Georgia, there is a female "women of color" that is running for governor named Stacy Adams, well apparently she is making a push to have the image on Stone Mountain sandblasted off...
This is the same women who had her supporters heckle her fellow democratic opponent at the netroots convention in Atlanta last week
And nobody called her on it.   Democrats are totally ate up with identity politics and wonder why they are having problems connecting with the average voter.  And the GOP ain't doing any better, they are so afraid of their shadow, they spend more time kissing up to the media and the democrats rather than work the agenda that we elected them to do.

I am seeing on the news that so many congresscritters are bailing on Trump, they are more concerned about keeping their spot in the trough so they can live large rather than doing what the voters have asked them to do and elected them to do.  With democrats, they are very monolothic, the establishment GOP have no loyalty.