Bob Sykes: As late as the 1950′s, Methuen, Massachusetts had a bonfire festival, but I believe it happened on July 4. Methuen then was a heavily French-Canadian Catholic town. The bonfire was huge, an immense stack of old lumber, railroad ties, etc.
Altitude Zero: Yep. Lots of “Civil Rights” measures are just old-fashioned Tammany Hall corruption dressed up in moral drag – and of course, as pointed out above, that’s pretty much what it was intended to be. History will record that the constitutional order and the demographic make up of the US was destroyed so that a few politicians could win elections. And to think, I used to view the politicians of late-Republican Rome as being petty, corrupt, and venal…
Bruce: Affirmative Action is patronage politics. ‘We will have the n———— vote forever’ said D-LBJ, and no voting block eligible for Affirmative Action has voted against the D for sixty years.
Wang Wei Lin: “The purpose of government is to interfere.” — Frederic Bastiat
Steve Doc 22: After regaining the throne, Justinian II betrayed Tervel of Bulgaria by invading his land, but was soundly defeated. He ruled as a tyrant. His reign was ended when his own army, sent to suppress a rebellion at Cherson, instead joined the rebels, captured and killed him. The new emperor also made sure to kill his young son as well, ending his line. So, he was not actually a ruler to be emulated.
Contaminated NEET: War with China? What a fantasy. They wouldn’t even have to fire a shot. If they stopped sending us products, we’d be begging for mercy inside of a week.
Altitude Zero: Our war plans with regard to China would seem to fall into the category of “Not particularly well thought out”.
Gavin Longmuir: “The Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept envisions small numbers of Marines managing to operate undetected from islands, from which they can fire anti-ship missiles …” Maybe the marines can remain undetected — until they fire the first anti-ship missile. Then it is Goodnight, Eileen. But what is the big picture plan? The marines are going to cross an ocean which goes almost half-way round the world, land on the shores of an arguably technologically...
Roo_ster: I sure hope every jarhead so deployed has directional satellite commo so Chinese EW doesn’t detect emissions on the “uninhabited” ; island and turn them into chum with one of China’s many thousands of short & medium range ballistic missiles.
Joseph A.: “If I spare a single one of them, may God drown me here.” Will we see the likes of such men again?
Jim: This is why Shakespeare recommended to kill all the lawyers.
Jim: “Many of these officers — all aware that Lind had no actual military experience and that the Germans had lost both world wars — went on to become colonels and generals.” That’s true. Those American colonels and generals were so right. The Germans had lost both world wars. Barely… While fighting on two fronts against adversaries cumulatively ten times their number…
David Foster: I don’t think it’s necessarily true that because the DC service continued to be provided, then the original DC conversion equipment continued to be used. Some of it may have been replaced with other rotary converters, some of it with solid-state converters. Maintaining the service for as long as they did was a business and probably also a political decision.
Altitude Zero: I’ve always found the “Wehrmacht-worship ” of many military analysts likr Lind simplistic, misleading and off-putting, but after tracking down the Lacey article in Small Wars Journal, he's at least as off base as Lind. Lacey's attitude seems to be "The US military is the bestest and coolest and baddest-assed fighting force in the world – Hoo-ah! Ignore the fact that we've won exactly one war in the last sixty-nine years, because…reasons...
Lucklucky: The USA is good with the stick, but not good with the carrot. You can’t win a war only with kinetic action if the objective is to democratize Afghanistan, since that is not a kinetic objective. You need ideology, propaganda, and education. You need to change the people of Afghanistan, if you want to change Afghanistan.
Goober: Hoyos; Excellent. As a non-military man (4-f and then some), I always feel like I’m doing a Dunning Krueger when I speak on all matters military. However, in this one case, I feel like I’m pretty correct when I say that I agree with you. The overriding failure of the US military since 1945 has been a failure to clearly articulate an achievable goal. And ultimately, without that, you cannot have a strategy. Without that, you get in-fighting amongst the higher ranks because nobody seems...
Goober: Bob Sykes, You said it yourself: IF. The longest word in the English language. Yes, there was a study about reaction time that lead to a statistically significant conclusion that IQ had dropped. However, there are other studies using different metrics indicating that IQ is rising. Evolutionarily speaking, the “IQ is dropping” hypothesis seems dubious, as well. While I would accept that there are likely less evolutionary drivers towards intelligence now than there were, say, a couple...
