"Did Churchill and Hitler Ever Meet?

 This was a "Quora" question, and yes it "almost" happened, but Hitler did a "No-show".  I thought it was an interesting question.

In late summer 1932, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler nearly dined together at a Munich hotel, until one blunt question caused Hitler to stand Churchill up.

At the time, Churchill was in his "wilderness years"—out of power and holding no official government office. He was traveling through Germany researching a biography of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, and settled into Munich's Hotel Regina.

Adolf Hitler (left), Hermann Göring (center), and Ernst 'Putzi' Hanfstaengl (right) in Berlin in 1932. Hanfstaengl served as Hitler's foreign press chief and attempted to arrange the dinner meeting with Churchill. Photo by Deutsches Bundesarchiv is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de.

Also staying at the Hotel Regina was Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, an eccentric, Harvard-educated German-American who served as Hitler's foreign press chief. Hanfstaengl recognized Churchill and introduced himself. Eager to bridge a connection between the rising Nazi leader and the famous British statesman, Hanfstaengl mentioned that Hitler was coming to the hotel that evening and suggested they meet for dinner. Churchill agreed.

Later that day, while having drinks with Hanfstaengl, Churchill probed his new acquaintance about the Nazi party's aggressive policies. Churchill remarked that he could understand being angry with people who have done wrong, but asked, "Why is your chief so violent about the Jews? ... What is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?"

Hanfstaengl, recognizing the danger of bringing such a critical stance to his boss, rushed off to relay the conversation to Hitler, hoping the Nazi leader would still see political value in the meeting. Instead, Hitler refused to join him. He reportedly dismissed the invitation entirely, asking, "What part does Churchill play? He is in opposition and nobody attends to him."

Hitler never appeared, standing Churchill up. The two men never crossed paths. Churchill later wrote in his memoirs that this near-miss in Munich was the only time he ever came close to speaking with the man he would eventually lead Britain against in the Second World War.

"Cellphone and Laptop Battery Catch Fire in airplane"

 

I get news from commercial airplane incidents from a 3rd party source.  No, I am NOT picking on American Airlines, this could have happened to any of them.   The crew did a bang up job handling it quickly and professionally, hats off to them.  I will see if I can get a more detailed report in several months.    I grabbed this for educational purposes only.

I pulled this from the FAA Website.

(This is a summary. Find full details in the FAA’s PackSafe webpages.)

Lithium batteries, which power everyday devices, can catch fire if damaged or if battery terminals are short-circuited.
Devices containing lithium metal batteries or lithium-ion batteries, including – but not limited to – smartphones, tablets, cameras, and laptops, should be kept in accessible carry-on baggage. If these devices are packed in checked baggage, they should be turned completely off, protected from accidental activation, and packed so they are protected from damage. Requirements vary based on the type of device and size of battery, and on the air carrier’s restrictions.

Spare (uninstalled) lithium metal batteries and lithium-ion batteries, portable rechargers, electronic cigarettes, and vaping devices are prohibited in checked baggage. They must be carried with the passenger in carry-on baggage and remain accessible. Smoke and fire incidents involving lithium batteries can be mitigated by the cabin crew and passengers inside the aircraft cabin.

If carry-on baggage is checked at the gate or planeside, spare lithium batteries, portable rechargers or power banks, electronic cigarettes, and vaping devices must be removed from the baggage and kept with the passenger in the aircraft cabin. Even in carry-on baggage, these items should remain accessible and be protected from damage, accidental activation and short circuits. Battery terminals should be protected by manufacturer’s packaging or covered with tape and placed in separate bags to prevent short circuits.

Damaged, defective, or recalled lithium batteries, or recalled devices containing lithium batteries, must not be carried in carry-on or checked baggage as they are likely to be a safety concern by overheating or catching on fire.

When in doubt, leave it out.

Check the FAA’s Pack Safe website for the rules on carrying different types of battery-powered devices, such as luggage trackers, mobility aids, or personal electronics, and other dangerous goods in baggage.

   On our planes we have special bags above the first aid/AED kits for the "runaways"  The crew places the device in the bag and seal it to cut off the oxygen and handle it in a similar manner.   

American A319 at Atlanta on Sep 29th 2026, laptop and cell phone caught fire

Last Update: October 2, 2026 / 19:51:22 GMT/Zulu time

American Airlines N749US, Airbus A319 (Photo credit: TDelCoro / Flickr / License: CC BY-SA 4.0)

Incident Facts

Date of incident
Sep 29, 2026

Classification
Incident

Airline
American Airlines

Flight number
AA-1400

Departure
Miami, United States

Destination
Atlanta, United States

Aircraft Registration
N749US

Aircraft Type
Airbus A319

ICAO Type Designator
A319

An American Airlines Airbus A319-100, registration N749US performing flight AA-1400 from Miami,FL to Atlanta,GA (USA), was descending through 15000 feet towards Atlanta when the crew declared emergency reporting a laptop and a cell phone had caught fire in the cabin. Cabin crew contained the devices in a galley cart, the flight crew requested emergency services to meet the aircraft in case the device re-ignited. The aircraft landed on runway 09R about 15 minutes later.

The aircraft returned to service about 10 hours after landing.

"The Camp Of The Saints" Parisian Edition

 

I'm sure y'all have seen the pics and video's of the rioting and looting and other mayhem of the activities going on in Paris.  I saw a bunch of migrants chasing a French police women and I felt bad for her because I was having images of the captives from October 7 From Israel.  The French Prime Minister could call in the troops and tell them to put down the rioters with extreme prejudice (shoot them, as a warning to chill the Fvck out) but he don't have the stones or the backbone to do it,  he might be called a meanie.  So his capital burns and the citizens are attacked by the recent arrivals and nothing is done.  It will be covered up as in the past.  Same as it is done in other western European countries.  Poland and the Eastern European nations have the right idea.

   For those that are interested, "Amazon has the book"   And no, I get nothing out of the plug.  I ain't that smart to figure that out yet.   

      And yes I shamelessly ripped this off from Michael Smith.

I don’t care if I am called a racist, a bigot or a xenophobe for this for one primary reason: I don’t care what color a savage is, my concern is what the savage does when he encounters a permissive, free, civil society, one far more productive, successful, and far softer than the savage is programmed to accept.

I am as concerned about how that permissive, free, civil society reacts when it comes into direct contact with the savage.

There are savages of all colors, races, ethnicities and national origin – both foreign AND native born. It is a description of an ethos and culture, one that rejects moral and intellectual advancement and invokes the idea embodied in the ancient right of conquest, that anyone has a right to something they have the power and the will to take.

Might makes right. I keep what I conquer. Only the strong survive, the weak are to be subjugated or destroyed.

Our peaceful existence (rooted in Western civilization) has been a relative aberration of history, mankind has been significantly more visceral and violent in the past – and we have taken the peace and security for granted for so long, we no longer recognize the risks to it - or even understand how to fight the enemies of it – and as I have said many times, there are no innocent bystanders this time around, the fight is coming to us, the same way it is coming to the people of Paris.

Here is something I believe is an irrefutable truth: any civilization that ceases to believe it has a moral right to exist will eventually become incapable of defending its existence.

There is no better illustration than these two stories, one from Sweden, where a woman was raped by an Iraqi asylum seeker on a train and initially resisted involving police because she felt sorry for him, fearing he would be deported, and the other from Germany in which the rape victim allegedly concealed her attacker’s refugee/ethnic identity because she feared appearing to perpetuate racism.

The global left has been doing two things for the past 50 years, 1) they have been working to delegitimize the moral right to exist for every country in the West and 2) they have been allying with savages, in some cases bribing them with welfare programs to act as mercenaries to fight in their stead when countries refuse to defend their people and culture.

I’ve been urging people who haven’t read The Camp of the Saints (Le Camp des Saints), the 1973 dystopian novel by French writer Jean Raspail, to look it up, get a copy, and read it.

Because the 53-year-old novel is playing out in real time in Paris.

The plot begins in India, where an enormous fleet of decrepit ships sets sail for Europe carrying roughly one million impoverished migrants. The flotilla eventually heads toward the Mediterranean coast of France.

The French government knows it is coming and possesses the military capability to prevent the landing. The real conflict of the novel, however, isn’t military. It is moral and psychological.

As the fleet approaches, France becomes paralyzed by arguments over humanitarianism, racism, colonial guilt, Christianity, human rights, and Western responsibility for global poverty. Journalists, intellectuals, clergy, activists, and political figures increasingly portray resistance to the migrants as immoral. Government officials fear that using force will make France guilty of atrocities.

Raspail depicts this as a kind of cascading loss of confidence. Soldiers ordered to defend the coast begin questioning whether they have the moral authority to do so. Civilians evacuate southern France. Political leaders hesitate. Institutions that theoretically exist to defend the country become incapable of acting because the society no longer agrees that defending itself is morally legitimate.

Eventually the migrant fleet lands essentially unopposed. The French state begins to collapse, and similar migrations occur elsewhere. By the end, Raspail presents Western civilization as being overwhelmed less because it lacked military or economic power than because it lost the will to preserve itself.

If that sounds familiar, it should. We have been witness to about three decades of exactly that plot.

The enduring influence and notoriety of Camp of the Saints is largely because of its prophetic foretelling of mass migration, the resulting European demographic change, and the conflicts that arise.

Critics regard it as racist, xenophobic, and dehumanizing because Raspail frequently portrays the migrants collectively and grotesquely rather than as fully developed individuals – but as they say, “if the shoe fits, one must wear it.”

It isn’t racist because, as I noted, savagery isn’t dependent upon race. It is cultural.

I think it was Ann Coulter who said that in the fight between the civilized man and the uncivilized man, side with the civilized man.

There is an interesting connection to the line of thought I’ve been exploring around Popper’s paradox of tolerance because The Camp of the Saints is essentially an extreme fictional thought experiment asking what happens when a society decides that virtually every act of self-preservation is morally suspect.

Its deeper question isn’t simply “What happens if millions of “migrants” and “refugees” are imported?”

The real question is what happens when a civilization can no longer articulate why it is entitled to say no to the invasion that is being sponsored by its own governments.

Monday Music "Streets Of Fire" Soundtrack.

 

 I decided to go with a 4fer today. (Because I am a caring individual, at least that what I tell my VA councilor 😁. I decided to roll with the "Streets of Fire" soundtrack.  I had bought the movie as a VHS and the soundtrack on CD.  I would up dubbing "What it means to be young" and I can dream about you" on a cassette tape that I would play in the Mustang

                      Looked like this one, but not this one.

while I was stationed in Germany.  To me the movie got a short shrift by the critics, the movie was pretty good and the soundtrack was awesome, and "Diane Lane" was really hot, I was a G.I. and the movie had a lot of action, shootemups, and other things, This was the 80's and the soundtracks could make or break a movie.  I do wonder what kind of lever actions they used in the movie.  They don't look like regular Winchester 1894 series rifles. to me....Found out...Marlin 336 Lever action in Stainless....Now I really want one...

I did a bit of research, it will have to be the 1894 version for the .38/357 magnum version I want, because it shares calibers with my wheelguns.

Streets of Fire is a 1984 film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross. It is described in its opening credits and posters as "A Rock & Roll Fable".The film is a mix of musical, action, neo-noir, drama, and comedy, with elements of retro-1950s and 1980s. It stars Michael Paré as a soldier of fortune who returns home to rescue his ex-girlfriend (Diane Lane) who has been kidnapped by the leader of a biker gang (Willem Dafoe). Some of the film was shot on the backlot of Universal Studios in California, on two large sets covered in a tarp 1,240 feet long by 220 feet wide, so that night scenes could be filmed during the day.

Jimmy Iovine produced five of the songs for the film and the soundtrack album. For Ellen Aim's singing voice, he combined the voices of Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood, billing them as "Fire Incorporated." The Attackers were the real-life (Face to Face) bandmates of Sargent, who provided the lead vocals on Ellen Aim's songs "Nowhere Fast", "Never Be You" and "Sorcerer", and supporting vocals on "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young.^" The version of "Sorcerer," written and composed by Stevie Nicks, that was featured on the actual soundtrack album was performed by Marilyn Martin. The version of "Never Be You" that was featured on the soundtrack album was performed by Maria McKee.

Two songs written by Jim Steinman were part of the soundtrack: "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" and "Nowhere Fast", both performed by "Fire Incorporated", with Holly Sherwood providing lead vocals on the former and Laurie Sargent on the latter.

     In this song, the girl that you see they focus on was the same girl played in "The Warriors", you know the movie in the late 70's that became the cult classic.  yeah that movie, speaking of the Warrior movie, when I watch it, I was listening to the slang and I knew what all of it meant as soon as I heard it,   She plays in this movie also.

The title of the former was used as the tagline on some promotional materials for the film. Dan Hartman's selection "I Can Dream About You" is the most successful song from the movie, and became a Billboard top 10 hit in 1984 (also from his studio album of the same name). In the movie, the song is performed on stage at the end of the film by "The Sorels," a fictional doo-wop style group consisting of actors Stoney Jackson, Grand L. Bush, Mykelti Williamson, and Robert Townsend. However, the song was actually sung for the film by Winston Ford, whose vocals were lip-synched by Jackson in the movie. While there are thus two versions of the song, only Hartman's version was released commercially.
Steinman later recalled thinking the script was "terrible", but he thought the film was going to be a big hit, in part because of the enthusiasm of Joel Silver:

[He said] this movie is about visuals. It's about excitement, it's about thrills. Don't worry about the script... I remember mentioning it to six or seven people that the script was trashy and I always got the same answer... The script doesn't matter. This movie is about visuals... Then we go to the first edit, the first cut of the movie in the screening room and it's [Jimmy] Iovine and me and Joel Silver... And about 20 minutes into the movie Jimmy turns to me and he goes... this movie is really shitty isn't it? It's really bad. I said, yeah, it's a really bad script. Why didn't anyone notice that the script was bad? It stinks. I can't even watch it... Joel's on the other side going, what am I gonna do next? There's gotta be a next project, and they're sitting there and there's so many lessons I learned during that movie. It went $14 million over budget, I think and I kept saying to Joel, how are they allowing this? 'Cause they kept screaming at us, it's over the budget. I said, how, and they, you've gotta understand, they built all, Walter Hill didn't want to go to Chicago. The story took place in Chicago, so they built Chicago in LA.

Steinman has said the filmmakers were convinced they would have the rights to the Bruce Springsteen song Streets of Fire, and filmed an ending using it. However, when they realized they would not get it in time, they asked Steinman for a song, which he wrote in two days. The song was "Tonight what it means to be young"

 Two music videos accompanied the song. One does not feature Hartman and consists of scenes from Streets of Fire, intercut with footage of the Sorels miming the song as part of a live performance. The lead singer was played by Stoney Jackson, with Grand L. Bush, Mykelti Williamson, and Robert Townsend as backing singers. In the second video, filmed at the Hard Rock in London, Hartman appears as a bartender trying to charm a young woman (played by Joyce Hyser), singing to her as the Sorels' performance plays on a TV set hanging above the bar. In a 2010 interview with Hyser for the blog Old School: Back to the 80s, she was asked how she came to feature in the video. She replied, "I knew Dan's manager and he asked me if I would do it. We shot at the Hard Rock in London. I honestly remember very little about it, but Dan was very nice and I absolutely love that song. I did another music video for ZZ Top's song "Pin Cushion" which I really like. It was directed by Julian Temple."
While recording a mimed TV performance of the song, Hartman explained why one music video featured actors: "The producers and directors of Streets of Fire wanted the best of everything, so they hired the best singers, the best dancers and best actors to play the parts in the film. So the singers in "I Can Dream About You" who are the Sorels are actually actors, and I wrote and sang this song."

                                                                    
                                                       The Dan Hartman Version of the song

"Why Did the M4's 5.56 round require multiple rounds to incapacitate an enemy and what did the Army do about it.

 

This question was on Quora and I snagged it and I added some pictures.  I thought it was a good explanation.

In Iraq, U.S. troops realized enemy fighters could take multiple 5.56mm rounds to the chest and keep shooting. The culprit was just 5.5 missing inches of rifle barrel.

Unlike larger calibers that rely on sheer mass to crush tissue, the 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge relies on velocity. When the standard M855 "green tip" round hits soft tissue at speeds above 2,500 feet per second, the bullet destabilizes, yaws, and violently fragments. This fragmentation creates a massive temporary and permanent wound cavity that causes rapid incapacitation.

The military originally optimized the M855 round for the 20-inch barrel of the M16 rifle, which launched the bullet at nearly 3,100 feet per second. But for urban combat and vehicle mobility, troops needed a shorter weapon. The military transitioned to the M4 Carbine, which has a 14.5-inch barrel.

The shorter barrel drastically reduced the bullet's muzzle velocity. Fired from an M4, the M855 shed speed quickly. At ranges beyond 100 meters, it often struck targets below the 2,500 fps threshold necessary for fragmentation. Additionally, the M855 round was highly "yaw-dependent"—its fragmentation relied on its exact angle of attack upon entering flesh. If it struck straight-on, it could pass through five inches of tissue before tumbling. On thin fighters, the bullet often passed straight through without fragmenting, a phenomenon troops called the "ice-pick" effect. The target was left with a neat puncture wound that, while eventually fatal, did not immediately stop the threat.

The military ultimately fixed this with a metallurgical redesign of the bullet itself, developing the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR).

Instead of the M855's lead core and internal steel tip, the M855A1 features a solid copper core beneath a much larger, exposed steel penetrator. This three-piece construction (jacket, penetrator, core) is designed to act almost like a hollow-point upon impact. It aggressively yaws and fragments within the first two inches of tissue, independent of its initial angle of attack. The M855A1 maintains reliable fragmentation at much lower velocities, allowing the shorter-barreled M4 Carbine to inflict consistent terminal damage at nearly double the range of the older ammunition while simultaneously providing better barrier penetration against windshields and cinderblocks.

The M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round features an exposed steel penetrator and a solid copper core. Source: Wikimedia Commons.