Dad Joke CLXXV

I'm told that I can't use "Beefstew" as a password.

It seems it's not stroganoff. 

The first casualty of war is the truth

There's a lot of news coming from Ukraine right now.  I'm not sure what is fact and what is propaganda.  It looks like Ukraine is winning the propaganda war so far, for whatever that's worth.  I guess we'll know when the smoke clears.

In the meantime, this post gives you a grounding in Ukraine-Russia politics. 

Irving Berlin - Annie Get Your Gun

The Ukrainian government is issuing rifles to the population.  There's a song for that, from the 1950 musical Annie Get Your Gun which won the Best Musical Score Oscar.

 

Dad Joke CLXXIV

A book fell on my head. 

I have only my shelf to blame.

I still don't think that we have any business intervening in Ukraine

I wrote this a month ago and don't think any differently:

The ghosts of Stalingrad

Peter doesn't think we have any compelling national interest to get into a war with Russia over Ukraine.  I agree, and would amplify it like this:

Why on earth are we talking about getting into a war in Russia in the winter?

I mean, you could ask Napoleon how that turned out, or the German 6th Army.  Heck, you could ask the Afghani allies we just left behind how good an idea this is.  Since our military has such a good track record this century.

Peter's take is that the Powers That Be are getting desperate as the economy is mired in stagflation, the vaxx mandate is increasingly unpopular, and Biden's approval rating drops lower than any President in my lifetime.  A foreign adventure is often the prescription for what ails them - politics ends at the water's edge, right?

Except no - firstly, this is nothing but madness.  Bill Clinton at least had the good sense to bomb a Somali aspirin factory rather than Sevastapol.  Secondly, we've heard from Democrats for 20 years that politics does NOT end at the water's edge.

Quite frankly, it's time for Congress to step up as the Adult Supervision* and pass a resolution saying that we do not have a compelling national interest in NATO expansion into Ukraine, and we sure as heck don't have a compelling interest in Americans getting killed over that.  It sure would be something to see the Democrats filibuster that.

It's been a long time since I've tagged a post "Atomic War" ...

* This just goes to illustrate how weird things are.

UPDATE 22 January 2022 18:17:  J.Kb has a must read post about this.

I would expand on this, with several additional arguments: 

1. The Biden Administration has done terrible damage to our armed forces, which quite frankly may not have the capacity to respond meaningfully in a peer-to-peer shooting war.
2. There is quite a good chance that if we do engage with Russia that the Chinese will think that this is the best opportunity they will ever see to take Taiwan back.  The ability of our armed forces to simultaneously engage with two peer-to-peer conflicts is roughly between slim and none.  And Slim just left town. (UPDATE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 12:01: Aesop has some Pertinent thoughts on this topic, and is more pessimistic than I am.)
3. An actual shooting war involving the US and NATO will show that Donald Trump was right: NATO members have not been living up to their agreements on funding troop levels and readiness.  Quite frankly we all think that NATO is a paper tiger but a hot war will prove the point.
4. A corollary to #3 is that the EU will come under big pressure to do something - anything - about the conflict and any refugees.  The EU will be paralyzed (because it's always paralyzed) and will be exposed as not the "United States of Europe" but rather a paper tiger just like NATO.
5. Germans will begin to freeze in the dark.  They shut down a whole bunch of base load power (Energiewende) and now the Russians have them over a barrel.  Fuel Poverty is a real thing.

I'd like to digress in particular on #5.  We are seeing a fair amount of the usual jingoistic banging of the War Drum, with people not sufficiently enthusiastic about World War III being called "stooges" (or worse).  Quite frankly, I'd be more impressed with these attacks if they were also leveled at the greenie Watermelon crowd (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who are hamstringing our fossil fuel industries (both here and in Europe).  Nothing gives Vladimir Putin more leverage over the West than this.  No war for European oil, and all that.

This post is tagged "idiots" because, well, you know.

UPDATE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 12:01:  Stephen Green at Instapundit muses about why Putin pulled the trigger and invaded.  I think it's quite simple: he thinks he will get away with it.  Quite frankly, I expect he's right.

Dad Joke CLXXIII

Why do we pronounce "Queue" as "Q"?

Because the other letters are waiting in line. 

Happy blogiversary to The Silicon Graybeard

His place just turned 12 years old.   He's your go-to guy for Space news.

Twelve years is a long time in blogging.

Happy Twosday

Today is February 22, 2022 - a different way to write this is 2/22/22.

It's also Tuesday.  I don't know about you, but this seems like a sign. 

President's Day

This is my annual President's Day post - actually the 10th time I've posted this.  The rankings are based on a simple question: did the President leave the Republic better off or worse off?  This eliminates many fascinating people like John Tyler who basically infuriated his own party that they expelled him.  But he didn't clearly leave America better or worse off, so he doesn't make the list.  It also does not delve into bad decisions made by the best presidents or wise decisions made by the worst - it's only whether they left the Oval Office better or worse than they found it.  Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.

Also, it's not a real President's birthday (Lincoln was the 12th, Washington is the 22nd), but everyone wants a day off, so sorry Abe and George, but we're taking it today.  But in the spirit intended for the holiday, let me offer up Borepatch's bestest and worstest lists for Presidents.

Top Five:

#5: Calvin Coolidge

Nothing To Report is a fine epitaph for a President, in this day of unbridled expansion of Leviathan.

#4. Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson is perhaps the last (and first) President who exercised extra-Constitutional power in a manner that was unambiguously beneficial for the Republic (the Louisiana Purchase).  He repealed Adam's noxious Alien and Sedition Acts and pardoned those convicted under them.

#3. Grover Cleveland. 

He didn't like the pomp and circumstance of the office, and he hated the payoffs so common then and now.  He continually infuriated his own party by vetoing pork spending (including for veterans of the War Between the States), so much so that he was defeated for re-election, but unusually won a second term later.  This quote is priceless (would that Latter Day Presidents rise so high), on vetoing a farm relief bill: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." 

#2. Ronald Reagan

He at least tried to slow down the growth of Leviathan, the first President to do so in over half a century (see entry #5, above).  He would have reduced it further, except that his opposition to the Soviet fascist state and determination to end it cost boatloads of cash.  It also caused outrage among the home grown fascists in the Media and Universities, but was wildly popular among the general population which was (and hopefully still remains) sane.

#1. George Washington

Could have been King.  Wasn't.  Q.E.D. 

Bottom Five:

#5. John Adams.

There's no way to read the Alien and Sedition Acts as anything other than a blatant violation of the First Amendment.  It's a sad statement that the first violation of a Presidential Oath of Office was with President #2. 

#4. Woodrow Wilson.

Not only did he revive the spirit of Adams' Sedition Acts, he caused a Presidential opponent to be imprisoned under the terms of his grotesque Sedition Act of 1918.  He was Progressivism incarnate: he lied us into war, he jailed the anti-war opposition, he instituted a draft, and he was entirely soft-headed when it came to foreign policy.  The fact that Progressives love him (and hate George W. Bush) says all you need to know about them.

#3 Lyndon Johnson.

An able legislator who was able to get bills passed without having any real idea what they would do once enacted, he is responsible for more Americans living in poverty and despair than any occupant of the White House, and that says a lot.

#2. Franklin Roosevelt.

America's Mussolini - ruling extra-Constitutionally fixing wages and prices, packing the Supreme Court, and transforming the country into a bunch of takers who would sell their votes for a trifle, sending American citizens to concentration camps.  At least Mussolini met an honorable end.


#1. Abraham Lincoln.

There's no doubt that the Constitution never would have been ratified if the States hadn't thought they could leave if they needed to.  Lincoln saw to it that 10% of the military-age male population was killed or wounded preventing that in an extra-Constitutional debacle unequaled in the Republic's history.  Along the way, he suspended Habeas Corpus, instituted the first ever draft on these shores, and jailed political opponents as he saw fit.  Needless to say, Progressives adore him.

So happy President's Day.  Thankfully, the recent occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue haven't gotten this bad.  Yet.

Wolfgang's girlfriend is having a sleepover

Light posting because I'm chaperoning.   After all, Wolfgang isn't even ten years old and Spohie is even younger.

That's Sophie on the left and Wolfgang on the right.  

Garth Brooks - Wild Horses

 

So the Canadian Police have sent actual Mounties to break up the trucker's protest.  People have been trampled, including a disabled old woman.  The Mounties' "heroism" in this has been noted all over the world.  We'll see if these horses can drag the truckers away.

Wild Horses (Songwriters: Bill Shore, David Wills)

From a phone booth in Cheyenne
I made a promise to Diane
No more rodeos
I'd gone my last go 'round

The same promise that I made
In San Antone and Santa Fe
But tonight I saddled up
And let her down

Wild horses keep draggin' me away
And I'll lose more than I'm gonna win someday
Wild horses just stay wild
And her heart is all I break
Wild horses keep draggin' me away

She'll watch me drive around her block
Gettin' courage up to stop
To make her one more promise
That I can't keep

The way I love the rodeo
I guess I should let her go
Before I hurt her more
Than she loves me

Wild horses keep draggin' me away
And I'll lose more than I'm gonna win someday
Wild horses just stay wild
And her heart is all I break
Wild horses keep draggin' me away

They say it's not Fedposting

But it is.  Forewarned is forearmed. 

Dad Joke CLXXII

I went to buy some camo pants but I couldn't find any. 

Rest In Peace, Candy Bomber

Col. Gail Halvorsen, the "Candy Bomber" from the Berlin Airlift has taken off on his last flight. If you haven't heard his remarkable story, I'm reproducing a post from autumn 2020.  As I said in that post, Col. Halvorsen represents the best this country has to give to the world.  He is a man who made the world a better place.

Rest in peace, and may flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

The Candy Bomber turns 100: Sammy Davis, Jr. - The Candy Man

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field.  Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

- Matthew 13:31-32

This is a little unusual for the regular Saturday country music, because it's not country music.  But stick with me - folks who like country music will like today's story which starts with "Happy 100th birthday, Col. Gail Halvorsen".

He was a kid who liked to fly, joining the Civil Air Patrol in 1942 and then the brand new US Air Force when he was old enough to sign up.  He missed World War II because of his age but found himself in the left hand seat of a C-54 in Germany, 1948.  That's when Stalin cut Berlin off from the Free World and the Berlin Airlift started.

Lt. Halvorsen was at Tempelhof Airport one day when he saw some kids standing on the other side of a chain link fence.  They told him not to worry if the weather was bad and he couldn't bring in food.  You see, they said, they could live on very little food but if they lost their freedom they thought they would never get it back.  Smart kids.

Halvorsen wanted to do something for them and told them that he'd drop some gum from his plane.  They'd know it was him because he'd wiggle his wings.  He and his co-pilot pooled their candy rations for the next day's flight.  Because it was heavy, they made little parachutes out of handkerchiefs.  Over the next weeks the number of kids waiting for his flights grew and grew.  He tells the story about when his Commanding Officer found out about it:

On his return from Berlin, he was told that Col. James R. Haun, the commanding officer of Rhein-Main Airbase, wanted to see him in his office.

Here, Halvorsen, sitting in his Provo backyard and wearing the same uniform he wore back then, picks up the narrative.

“‘Halvorsen,’ the colonel asked when I came in his office, ‘What in the world have you been doing?’

“‘Flying like mad, sir,’ I told him.

“‘I’m not stupid. What else have you been doing?’”

Here, Halvorsen pauses for effect.

“That’s when I knew they knew. I got chewed out real good,” he says before flashing his trademark smile. “But at the end, the colonel said, ‘That’s a good idea. Keep doing it. But keep me informed.’”

The Berlin Candy Bomber had the clearance he needed to carry on.

They called him the "Candy Bomber" and when the word got to the Press it became a sensation back in the States.  School children and candy manufacturers donated candy for the children of Berlin.  In just a few months Lt. Halvorsen couldn't keep up with all the candy and handkerchief parachutes that were arriving in the mail.  Pretty much everyone in his unit was now a Rosienbomber (as the German kids called them - "Raisin Bomber".  Halvorsen himself was known as "Uncle Wiggly Wings" because of his signal that he was about to drop sweets.

Operation "Little Vittles" dropped 23 tons of candy in a quarter million handkerchief parachute loads.  Halvorsen was awarded the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany's highest award.  He also got some marriage proposals via mail from adoring fans back home, but he went home and married his College Sweetheart.  They had 5 children and 24 grandchildren.

In a very real sense, he represents what is best with America.  Three years before we had been mortal enemies of Germany, now we were trying to take care of their kids because, well, kids.  I'm not the only one who thinks this - he retired to his native Utah and in 2002 for the Winter Olympics there the German team asked him to carry their national standard into the stadium in Salt Lake City.  Bravo Zulu, Colonel.

Like I said, Col. Halvorsen, happy 100th birthday.  You make me proud to be an American.  This song is for you because you've earned it 100 times over.  Sammy Davis.Jr. didn't like it initially because it was too sweet.  It became his signature song, and I think he's approve of it being played for your 100th birthday.  Here's Sammy singing this song in Germany, back in the 1980s.

The Candy Man (Songwriters: Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley)

Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew
Cover it with choc'late and a miracle or two
The Candy Man, oh the Candy Man can
The Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good

Who can take a rainbow, wrap it in a sigh
Soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie
The Candy Man, the Candy Man can
The Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good

The Candy Man makes everything he bakes satisfying and delicious
Now you talk about your childhood wishes, you can even eat the dishes

Oh, who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream
The Candy Man, oh the Candy Man can
The Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good

The Candy Man makes everything he bakes satisfying and delicious
Talk about your childhood wishes, you can even eat the dishes

Yeah, yeah, yeah
Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream
The Candy Man, the Candy Man can
The Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
Yes, the Candy Man can 'cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good
a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man
Candy Man, a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man
Candy Man, a-Candy Man, a-Candy Man

Like I said, it's not country music.  But I think the community can take a day to salute a veteran who represents the best of this country.  Here's what looks to be an early 2000's documentary of Operation Little Vittles.  It's long but well worth a view.  If you aren't looking for a kleenex between 15:00 and 18:00 then I'm sorry, we just can't be friends.  And the last line in the video hits the nail on the head, spoken by a now grown German kid who remembers catching the parachutes and knows that it meant that someone who didn't have to care, cared anyway: The world needs more Halvorsens.  Amen, and amen

Like I said, Col. Halvorsen represents the best this country has to give to the world.  He is a man who made the world a better place.  Happy birthday, Uncle Wiggly Wings.

Who knew that there was a country music song about ADM Zumwalt's Z-Grams?

I had never heard this before: 

For Haywood County native Richard Hurley, his time in the U.S. Navy is marked by a single event that outshined all the others.

While serving his country, Hurley wrote a song about then Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Zumwalt — an action that prompted a direct response from the admiral. Not only was it an honor, but it was something rarely seen by a lower enlisted man.

... 

In total, Zumwalt sent out 121 Z-grams. Hurley said he also enjoyed the Z-Grams, the first of which Zumwalt sent out on July 1, 1970, when he took over as CNO.

In fact, Hurley, who is still well-known in the area as a singer-songwriter and performs regularly at local events, enjoyed them so much that he wrote a song about them called “The Ballad of the Z-Grams.” The song expresses a deep appreciation for both the Z-Grams and Zumwalt himself.

“When Admiral Shepard heard about the song, he called me in, and said, ‘I understand you wrote a song. I’d like to hear it,’” Hurley said. “So I went in and borrowed a guitar from some guy and sang it for him. He lit up.”

Next time Hurley was home on leave, he stopped by his hometown radio station, WPTL, where he was a DJ prior to joining the Navy, to record the song on a reel-to-reel. From there, Shepard, who initially loved the song, passed it on to Zumwalt, the highest ranking member of the Navy.

Click through for the whole story including when Hurley met Zumwalt.  Sadly, it doesn't look like the song is anywhere on the 'net (at least that I can find).

Also, it seems that Z-Gram #1 did not read in its entirety: "Cut the crap."  I first heard this in the early '70s, and it's kind of like learning that Santa Claus is actually Dad ...

Why Joe Biden is in trouble

John Michael Greer looks at the bumbling and incoherence seen from the current Administrations and ponders how they can be so incompetent.  It's the Soviet Union all over again, where ideology is everything and results nothing:

The more tightly you focus your educational system on a set of approved abstractions, and the more inflexibly you assume that your ideology is more accurate than the facts, the more certain you can be that you will slam headfirst into one self-inflicted failure after another. The Soviet managerial aristocracy never grasped that, and so the burden of dealing with the gap between rhetoric and reality fell entirely on the rest of the population. That was why, when the final crisis came, the descendants of the people who stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, and rallied around the newborn Soviet state in the bitter civil war that followed, simply shrugged and let the whole thing come crashing down.

We’re arguably not far from similar scenes here in the United States, for the same reasons: the gap between rhetoric and reality gapes just as wide in Biden’s America as it did in Chernenko’s Soviet Union. When a ruling class puts more stress on using the right abstractions than on getting the right results, those who have to put up with the failures—i.e., the rest of us—withdraw their loyalty and their labor from the system, and sooner or later, down it comes.

We've seen this play out before.

I got yer Canadian "Emergency" right here

Man, it sure looks like Canada is in dire danger ...

Anyone remember that old poem from the 1960s?

"I'm not afraid of A-Bombs,"

says Khrushchev, and he knows it.

He's not afraid of anything -

except, perhaps, a poet.

Holy cow, Justin Trudeau sure is a putz.

Tagged "fascists" because, well, you know.

Dad Joke CLXXI

What did 2 say to 3 when they saw 6 act like an idiot?

"Don't pay any attention to him.  He's just a product of our times." 

Lalo Schifrin - Theme from Mission: Impossible

Classical music is alive and well, it's just given up the concert hall for the cinema.  Sometimes, it's gone to the Television Set.  Lalo Schifrin wrote musical scores for both films and television, blending classical, jazz, and themes from his native Argentina.  This won him five Grammys and nominations for six Oscars and four Emmys.

You will remember his music from the Dirty Harry films and Cool Hand Luke, but this is his most famous composition.

The Queen Of The World suggested this song for today, and pointed out that Peter Graves (from Mission: Impossible) and James Arness (Marshall Dillion from Gunsmoke) were brothers.  I had not known that.

And speaking of Peter Graves, this is perhaps his funniest scene:

It Feels Like Hope

 I haven't felt much of it lately. But here's some.