The lone GS-1 running the National Weather Service must’ve lost her Magic 8-Ball and is reduced to winging it, calling for “a slight chance of snow showers” here before 8 a.m.
As that hour has come and gone, we will not be breaking out the cross-country skis anytime soon.
Still, the weather is finally more or less seasonal for a change, so I can probably leave the lawn mower in the garage for a while, too.
In other news: 92,000 jobs swirled down the Gilded Shitter in February; the unemployment rate is up to 4.4 percent; retail sales fell in January; stocks drop amid “uncertain outlook”; gas prices jump again to their highest level in a year and a half; and a senator who can’t do his job helps the coppers do theirs.
So. Much. Winning.
Who can we bomb now? Are we bombing everyone yet? There must be somebody left unbombed. If we have any bombs left. …
Mad Blog Media 
He wants to rule the world.
Can’t even run the executive branch and wants to run the world. Classic nepo baby.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the strategy of always fighting the previous war (or the one before that, or the one before that), the Pentagon has been pitching multimillion-dollar interceptors (gift link) at six-figure Iranian drones.
Ukraine knows how to intercept and destroy a Shad-136 drone for about $1000 with an AI equipped drone. They also have other methods to down drones, including laser weapons. They are currently the experts in this technology and are assisting our middle East allies with it right now. Shahed 136 drones cost about $20 to $30 thousand. Cheaper than the average car in the US.
Cheaper than my car, for sure. Last I looked it was good for about $1,500. We orter be tossing 2005 Subaru Foresters at the enemy. And by “the enemy,” I don’t mean Venezuela, Iran, or Cuba.
Oh yeah! Well I have a good old broken down ‘Merican jalopy sitting in my driveway that could use a good toss somewhere. If Petey boy wants to send a Huey over and drop a line I’ll let him have it as a 4400 pound gravity bomb. Smart it ain’t but it sure would make a purdy splat.
I trust hopefully all of you are speaking tongue-in-cheek or sharing/venting your dissatisfaction with our current administration’s fickle, ricocheting, vacillating, and ever-politicized-in-a-midterm election year whipsaw actions. Think US COVID responses in an election year!
Re your dated (if any) combat experience (and mine too… SEA …. Iraq …. Somalia …. Bosnia …. Kosovo) I’d suggest our military is daily consulting with all the other ongoing conflict participants (Ukraine et al) and incorporating their experience/expertise/lessons learned as quickly as possible. Why? Because our troops lives are at stake, our nation demands that, and to do less would be negligence …. even if the military/industrial complex can’t respond in the minutes you seem to desire.
At the tactical level, where people’s lives (not armchair strategists’ or bureaucrats’ or blog contributors’ lives) depend upon rapid and frequent adjustment, it’s incessantly ongoing. Been there … done that.
So … please rest assured that our warfighters (not REMFs/bloggers/pundits, et al) whose lives are at risk 24/7 are smartly using their creativity and intelligence to best accomplish their missions given the equipment they have NOW under the ROE and political guidance they have NOW.
Please read Michael Beschloss’s book “Presidents of War”. for perspective!
NOTE: It’s not an easy read, but nothing worthwhile is, eh??!! 🙂
JD, my sympathies are always with the troops and the working stiffs rather than the brass hats and C-suite boyos. I’d like to know why both are getting fed into the meat grinder. So far nobody In Authority has sold me a story I’m buying. As one of the taxpayers investing in this thing — if only treasure rather than blood — I’d like to see some deets. The United States ain’t BrewDog and I ain’t an “equity punk.” (See definition No. 3 at Merriam-Webster.)
If this war were something forced on us, rather that something we’re forcing on someone else, sure, you dance with the one what brung ya.
“Shit, lookit all them ten-cent drones headed for Cleveland. Whadda we got? Patriots? Fuck, fire for effect.”
The fabled Military-Industrial Complex — which, full disclosure, has employed at least three O’Gradys — has had a long time to learn about and prepare for a different type of war. Saudis with box-cutters. Shoe-bombers. IEDs. Drones. Who didn’t hear about Amazon’s plans to deliver packages by drone and think, “Man, what a great way to blow some shit up on the cheap!”?
In the Sixties I tried to create a dime-store V-2 using Estes rockets and cherry bombs. Results were inconclusive and I shifted my focus, first to amateur pharmacology, and then, later, to journalism.
My own industry has been slow to adjust to disruption, largely due to sloth, overconfidence, and a distinct lack of imagination. Fourth Estate, right? We’ll always be here, yeah? Price of liberty, eternal vigilance, etc.
But then they came for the Linotype operators, and next the pressmen, and finally, the whole shebang. Today, if you still have a “local paper,” your eternal vigilance and liberty are almost certainly in the talons of a vulture-capital zombie, a Gannett drone, written, edited, and printed hundreds of miles from its “hometown.” Just ask the good people of Salida, Colo., who didn’t get their Mountain Mail the other day because a fiery crash on I-25 near Raton prevented its delivery from — wait for it — Santa Fe, where the paper is now printed.
When the Mountain Mail actually makes it to Salida, some 340 miles from Santa Fe, it is delivered to subscribers by the U.S. Postal Service, which has its own well-documented issues with oversight, management, funding, and execution.
So, yeah. I’m critical of the Pentagon, for what I consider to be perfectly valid reasons. And, true, the U.S. military isn’t the only organization to be a little slow on the uptake. It’s just the one likely to get the most people killed when it cranks up its creaky “warfighting” machinery, and it should never be entrusted to the likes of the scary-ass clowns currently turning the White House into a third-rate North Vegas casino.
I mean, shit, these chickenhawks can’t even keep their lies marching in a straight line.
Where to start? I spent all of 1970 at Fire Support Base Buttons, III Corps, 1st Cav Division, 13th Signal Battalion, 2nd Brigade HQ Communications Platoon. I left the Army in 1972, and started a 31 Year Career as a Department Of The Army civilian in 1975 and retired in 2004 as a GS-14 Division Chief. During that time, I provided logistics support, to the unit level, on numerous deployments and spent more than a few nights in an Emergency Operations Center providing direct unit support. There are my bonafides.
What you say about the folks doing the actually fighting is completely true. The ingenuity, work arounds, and field expediency of active duty folks is amazing. You and I also know that direct communications with the soldiers in theater actually doing the fighting is essential for us folks above the corp level. Back channel communications with warrant officers and senior NCO during Desert Shield and Storm allowed me to move essential equipment and parts from the depot to the unit much quicker than using normal channels. I knew these folks and had met them face to face, especially the warrant officers. Is all this experience dated? Absolutely. But, the basics remain the same, then and now.
I have no doubt that back channel and unofficial communications between Ukraine and US warfighters are occurring about intercepting drones. But, the BBC, AP, and President Zelensky say there were no official requests for information or assistance on Iranian autonomous drone interception. Those requests should have been made before the first strike on Iran occurred. There was enough time. That, among many other things, is proof of a lack of leadership and planning at the highest levels.
Our intervention in Vietnam accomplished nothing. The Vietnamese had been fighting against foreign intervention for decades just like the Iranians. The current administration is simply making up shit as they go, much of it based on politics and ego satisfaction. It will not end well or soon.
PS: Fuck Israel. They have had 70 years to make peace with their own citizens and neighbors. The constant conflict with the Palestinians is the festering sore that is the source of this current fiasco. They could have fixed it decades ago with a ONE state democratic nation with Muslim and Jew living and working side by side. Pipe dream? I don’t think so. Lack of leadership, vision, and religious bullshit are the reasons it didn’t happen. We are on the same path.
PO’G: Thanks and spot on! Per usual! I actually believe we’re about 99% aligned.
I’m a big believer in the “What? So what? Now what?” method of addressing issues and affecting change. It’s the “Now what?” portion that’s always the hardest. Especially when working complex issues often made more so by behemoth organizations with highly convoluted and vested processes, incentives, and motivation. E.g. Congress; the Big Pharma/Healthcare complex; the Military/Industrial complex; geopolitics writ large; even smaller local Homeowner Associations/school boards/etc.
Now what? Vote …. the midterms are coming! Advocate! Be a constructive critic, not cynic! Get involved at least locally! Keep the faith ….. stay the course!
“Our democracy is not self-executing. It depends on us all as citizens.” — Barack Obama
Well said, JD. Yuuuuuuuge orgs are like aircraft carriers, yeah? You don’t turn or stop one of those on a dime.
I think the core issue with the Military-Industrial Complex is that it has tentacles in every state in the Union. When you start to think, “Hmm, maybe a nip here, a tuck there,” some senator rears up on its hind legs and bleats all like, “Oh, no you don’t. Not our jobs!”
I seem to remember that the Navy once had a presence at Prospect Lake in Bibleburg. For what? A rubber ducky? Also, that Ent AFB — Col. H.J. O’Grady’s last station — was the only U.S. Air Force base without a flight line (you wanted to touch the face of God, you had to motor over to what then was called Peterson Field out east). The old fella split the difference and bought his first house just east of Academy and north of Constitution.
Somebody thought that whole setup was a fine idea.
That was when the B-burg had two daily newspapers, with multiple daily editions, which was a fine idea, but one that didn’t last. Now it’s just the Gazette, with its smallish offices in a bank building downtown and the actual printing of the paper handled by The Denver Post.
And Ent AFB, of course, is now an Olympic Training Center.
So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut observed.
• Addendum: Democracy can be self-executing, as we have seen to our dismay. Mao noted that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Just be sure it’s aimed at something other than your own foot (or head).
Thus Herself has been a Donk ward chair and propagandist, and remains active in the party, sort of a minister without portfolio at the moment. I continue to argue with the Voices in my head, a bad noise that occasionally spills out onto this blog.
I am suffering from SAD, a severe alcohol deficiency. Where’s Herb and a good porter when I need ’em?
I can recommend the Deschutes Black Butte Porter, the original from memory and the non-alcoholic version from recent experience.
Meanwhile, “Fury?” “Shield?” Marvel should sue these people.
There are six Black Butte porters in the beer fridge right now. Who knows? Maybe some day we can all share another barley pop together?
Meanwhile, your comment just caught me wrong JD. I just react strongly when incompetent people get our service people killed. As you, I have been there and done that, although I do my best to forget it.
It’s good that we have people in the ol’ Dog House who “have been there and done that,” especially since all The Proprietor has ever done in that arena is read about it. Keeps the joint from floating away into the stratosphere, full of its own hot air.
Herb’s toasting you all with Short’s Bellaire Brown-a fine old school beer. As for the current war moves our Asshole in Chief is doing, it’s clear that in his cabinet and in Congress, the number of their family members in the military must be very low. Would love to put Baron in a foxhole with enemy fire overhead. Pack up all the legislators kids of military age and deploy their asses overseas. Ya think that would slow down this Might is Right bullshit?
I always liked Jim Harrison’s thoughts on the matter, from his false memoir “Wolf”:
* Congress used to vote on whether to declare war. It’s in the Constitution and everything. Feature that, if you can.
** Jimbo clearly foresaw the Rise of You Know Who, even if he was off by a few decades, agewise
Jim and George are probably enjoying a porter together right now. One of them says, ” Can you believe this shit? We tried to warn them.”
PS: No Kings demonstrations all over the country are happening again on March 28th. Be there or be square.
Yup. We’ve got one just down the road a ways. We’ll be attending with some friends and neighbors.
For anyone else who’s in the mood to make themselves seen and heard, the deets on your local No Kings rally can be found here.
Jim was more of a wino — not the rotgut, the high-priced French tonsil polish — but I expect they’ve found each other and are swapping stories with Jimmy Buffett, John Prine, Bill Hicks, and Richard Pryor.
Speaking of war, this just in.
Awwwww, shit. I guess we are all gonna die. …
You learn something new every day. I had no idea he was named after Uncle Joe Stalin, or that his parents were members of Gus Hall’s old Communist Party, or that the “Fish” came from Mao’s advice that revolutionists should “move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.”
Same here. Had no idea he was named after The Other Joe, or where the “fish” part came from, either. Or his commie parents. Pretty good obit for those of us clueless about Joe McDonald other than his famous Woodstock appearance.
Now, if we can only mess with the lyrics of “fixin to die” a little to correspond to current events….
I think it’s been done already. Could be a brain fart, but I seem to recall one of the lefty bloggers I read posting something along those lines.