Racist America

From Larry Elder's piece in today's Town Hall:

In 1911, former slave Booker T. Washington prophetically wrote about "black leaders" like Cleaver, Jackson and Sharpton: "There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

The Big Dog

For the projection of power ashore in a littoral conflict, nothing beats naval air. It gets there fast, and pounds the hell out of the enemy before he knows what hit him, and today’s navy has sophisticated electronics packages that puts ordinance right on target and causes SAMs to bite the hand that fed them.

Nice.

But what if your enemy is, say, a mujahedeen who don’t have a SAM system, and couldn’t use it if he did? Naval air still rules the battlefield, but a fifty cal machine gun shooting straight up into the air will rip the belly right out of a F/A 18 coming in hot to lay down ordinance in support of besieged grunts.

A 16” shell, on the other hand, is impervious to a puny 50 cal round. Even if it did somehow succumb to a low tech weapon, it wouldn’t have a pilot punching out to be caught by an enemy who would use him for political and propaganda purposes. Nor would it give up secrets like a downed Predator.

In political parlance, a 16” shell is as PC as you can get. It don’t care who it blows up, and it ain’t gonna roll on its brothers if it falls into the wrong hands.

Viet Nam, a political war as much as anything else. The generals and admirals running things all gambled on their service being the one that could whip the enemy better than any other service. In the navy, the conventional forces had little to impact. Sure, the brown water navy was there. Swifts and PBRs and LCUs, mikes and zippos all did their part, but there were no naval battles to win, no dramas on the high seas to write home about. That’s not to say that the SEALS didn’t do their part, but SEALS terrorizing some terrorist VC didn’t win big dollars in the defense budget sweepstakes.

Enter the New Jersey. Able to reach 90% of targets in North and South Viet Nam without coming within range of a shore battery, it was a beautiful thing in the surface navy’s thinking.

But not so fast. Airdales (only half a word in the black shoe world – brothers you know what I mean) were running the show.

New Jersey deployed to Viet Nam to support combat operations. North Viet Nam was off limits. A 16” round isn’t Precision Guided Ordinance. The first few rounds are fairly accurate, but as the guns heat, the accuracy gets worse. You could aim at the Hanoi Power Plant and take out a hospital, school, or POW camp. (The brass hats wouldn’t fund radar guided RAP rounds – no, they’d rather risk a multimillion dollar A-6 and a pilot who cost Uncle Sugar untold sums to train – but who am I to tell them what to do?) So NJ found herself supporting Operation Market Basket, gunfire support for troops under attack.

She slipped into the op area unannounced.

A FAC called for a fire mission from a small boy off the coast. A platoon of Marines was under attack from a mortar squad. The FAC had the mortar squad’s coordinates.

“Alfa Whiskey, this is Tango Golf two six. I have a fire mission. Coordinates Bravo Bravo Two Eight, Xray niner eight Foxrot. Over”

On Alfa Whiskey, the bridge to bridge circuit snapped, “Alfa Whiskey, this is Big Dog we’ll take this mission”. Then on the fire support circuit, “Tango Golf, Bravo Delta, roger. Confirm coordinates ‘Bravo Bravo Two Eight, Xray niner eight Foxrot’”.

“Bravo Bravo Two Eight, Xray niner eight Foxrot, roger. Fire one salvo for effect.”

“Bravo Delta, roger salvo.”

Well, a salvo from a Battleship is an entirely different thing than a salvo from a small boy with some 5”/38s.

Nine 16” HE rounds whistled over the small boy’s head from 20 miles away. They impacted the target area with such force that the mortar squad’s position was reduced to a smoking hole. The pressure from the impact spun the FAC’s plane around. He examined the effect of the navy’s effort once he reoriented himself for just a minute.

“Jesus Christ! What did you use? Target destroyed”, the FAC reported in a high pitched, girlish scream.

“Bravo Delta, Target destroyed. Roger, out”

Who really needs Naval Air in a littoral war?

Tomorrow, another victory for BB power over air power.

“Fire Power For Victory”.

Battleship Tales

It's been said that a soldier with fixed bayonet has a certain calming effect on belligerents. Well, the same can be said for a capital ship sitting at anchor in a belligerent nation's harbor.

An aircraft carrier with all those airplanes looks bad, but what's it going to do sitting there? It's got to go to sea, turn into the wind, and launch the sortie, which, a flotilla of fishing boats can cause a CANC EX without too much trouble.

A Battleship is another thing entirely. Even the duty dog catcher can envision that serenely anchored bad boy turning those three turrets with the nine 16" guns in his direction and letting loose with a salvo of baby killer sabots or HE rounds that would ruin his and his town's day for an eon or two.

A battleship has a certain calming effect on petty despots when it is detected off said depot's coast.

The Iowa class BBs were built to take a direct hit from the Japanese navy's biggest guns, 18 inchers on the Yamato which fired one ton shells. The class A armor in the Iowas' 'citadel' was 18" thick, and if the bridge got blown away, the CHENG could run the ship the ship from main control.

While the Yamato never came up against an Iowa class BB, it's worth mentioning that US Naval Air sent her to the bottom, dooming perhaps, all the big capital ships as effective surface combatants.

Or did it?

Stay tuned. Just as a note, the Jersey took a direct hit on her number one turret from a shore battery during her tour off Korea. While the round's shrapnel killed one of the crewmen, the damage to the ship was cleaned up during evening sweepers.

Liberals We Can't Stand

Look who's on the list:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWvtlut8izs

The Real BHO

Another American speaking truth to the racists:

Ken Blackwell

(Image from nogw.com)

By Ken Blackwell, 2-14-08, Opinion, NY Sun, here.

"Civilizational War is real, even if political leaders and polite pundrity must call it by another name," Robert Kaplan, here .

It's an amazing time to be alive in America. We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.

We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender. Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics..

It's time America takes a closer and deeper look at Obama.

Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts.

Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.

So why is Obama not behind in the polls?

Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant. Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial "beauty."

Then what about the issues? Like security?

Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s.

Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.

Then what about economic policy?

Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on "the rich." How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes.

How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.

What about social issues?

Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium ra lly by saying, "All praise and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" - hijacked - Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction.

In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban - ban - on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.

Look beyond the eloquence and veneer to the issues.

Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of "bringing America together" means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.

But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent a speaker he is and - yes - they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton.

It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let's first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.

Ken Blackwell was formerly Secretary of State of Ohio, and unsuccessfully ran for Ohio Governor in 2006. He was the first black candidate for governor in Ohio.

Dusty Reid: Redefining Stupid

Please watch this video. This is a leader in the Democrat party.

http://www.freeliberal.com/blog/archives/003277.php

Campaign Ad

Over on the Taxman blog there is this very slick video. It's done by the Dems!

Ouch!