Hats in the Ring

I read recently that John McCain had released a short list of vice presidential running mate candidates. Veep running mates rarely do much for a presidential candidate, and generally only in a bad way at that. However, of the names on the list I was intrigued by Bobby Jindal. Here is a guy who was governor of a state at age THIRTY-SIX!!!! He's also a minority (Indian), and son of immigrants. If ever there's a way to undercut Barack Obama, this is the guy. Additionally, he's a technocrat, really just a guy who works the levers of government, not really a rally the votes, kiss babies, and shake hands type. The Bush administration (as a whole, not just GWB), for all its clarity of direction and monolithic moral front, has bungled some of the technical aspects of government). So, this Jindal fellow could be good.

As usual, I have a better idea. Imagine if, instead, John McCain joined forces with the Master of Disaster, the AY-A-TO-LLAH of Rock and Rolla'.... Apolllllllllloooooo Creeeeeeeeeeeed!

Think about it, this is one smooth talking, shameless self-promoter who understood that all imagery (and we are in the epoch of imagery) was local. That's why he picked Rocky Balboa as the challenger for his bicentennial fight. When people say Pennsylvania is a battleground state, Apollo knows of what you speak. OK, I know Apollo Creed is a fictional character from 3 movies, but the actor Carl Weathers is none too shabby, either. Also a minority, he played briefly in the NFL. He was also part of the poly-sci/fi confluence witnessed in the movie Predator. That movie starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jessie Ventura, and Sonny Landham along with Weathers. That's 2 governors and a congressman, why stop there? Not only that, but Weathers participated (albeit on the losing end), in one of the greatest cinematic arm wrestling contest of all time (take that Over The Top!). C'mon, he would have beaten anybody except Arnold in that epic struggle.

Mr. McCain, I know you're hip with young culture and you read blogs. And if you read blogs, you DEFINITELY read my blog. If Bobby Jindal falls through, think about Carl Weathers. At least it would keep him working and off the streets.

Memorial Day

Celebrate this holiday. Don't celebrate by downing 15 light beers and 2 pounds of poorly cooked processed meat from the grill. Well, do that if you like, but do something else as well. Find a veteran and thank them for their service. Of course, the term applies to any current or former member of the U.S. armed forces, but the longer the service or more combat endured, the better. Thank them for:

• Defending our borders


• Defending our personal liberties


• Defending our nation's policies, right or wrong


• Putting themselves in harm's way


• Sacrificing time with their families


• Sacrificing better pay in other careers

Ask them questions. What did they do? Were they in combat? Where? If so, tell them that's amazing, and you're glad they made it back in one piece. Or not in one piece, whatever the case may be. They may not even be interested in talking about it, but it's got to be good to know someone cares.

Follow-up

See, this is exactly what I was talking about. The LCS, in and of itself, is not going to be a juggernaut. But the use of drones for targeting, communications, firepower, and maybe even decoys is going to be a serious combat power multiplier for ships like it as they sortie into enemy waters. I'm not saying this is the future, but I'm just saying...

Laying Down The Vocabulary

I've seen a great word used a few times of late. This word: layabout. There are many words for the lazy. But a couch potato finds a specific place to laze. A bum is known for hopping train cars or fighting other bums for meals. One who is sluggish, torpid, listless, or lethargic probably has a thyroid condition. Someone who is apathetic probably took too many philosophy courses in college and developed ennui.
The layabout has no such excuse. The word implies a perfectly healthy person who will cast their keester down in any place and position that requires no work to maintain equilibrium. The next time you see somebody slacking off, determine for yourself if this is a run of the mill idler or shirker, or is this the pinnacle of laziness, the layabout?

DHS=Paramilitary Force?

I was recently sharing some stories my father passed down from his days in the police academy with my co-workers. We worked our way to the topic of personal presence, or the image you project to others. At this point, one of the group piped up "In the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it was all about intimidation."
Say what?
There are two possibilities here. One is that he is correct, and DHS is in fact all about investigation through intimidation, setting aside all potential for establishing long term relationships within communities. This would really result in DHS being a paramilitary, rather than law enforcement organization. I would find this particularly alarming, because any American who takes his rights seriously should question a quasi-military organization whose sole mission is to attack inside our borders. On the other hand... I think this guy is full of crap. Intimidation is the poorest way to handle questioning a fellow citizen. If you're dealing with a real tough character, trying to show what a bad dude you are is going to backfire, because he's going to look forward to his first chance to crush you. Believe me, I grew up in Michigan Militia country, and I don't like to see individual liberties overrun either. Even worse, if you're dealing with a typical citizen, your intimidation ploy is likely to work too well. You will scare them, and scared people get that adrenaline rush, and then you have no idea how they are going to react. It's not likely to be good. At best they will lie, at worst they will panic and you, the citizen, or a bystander is going to get hurt.
I'm not a police officer. My father was, though, and I spent my young life around him and other officers. They could sniff out lies with ease, their grasp of body language (and the finer points of fried food) was breathtaking, and they always projected the right personal presence. One of authority, not intimidation. They were in control of the situation, but had no interest in humiliating anybody, least of all the weak. Well, except for the case that I heard of a few snowmobile riders vomiting all over a country bar, but that was quite an exception. Of course, that's likely why Mr. Fullofcrap didn't last a year with DHS before crawling back to his old job. Let's be glad he's behind a desk where he belongs.

Many Thanks, Ladies

• My father's mother delievered 17 children, saw 16 reach adulthood, and had to bury 3 before their time
• My mother's mother overcame a rough early life to deliver and raise 4 children who are all wonderful people, and who SPOILED ME ROTTEN
• My mother worked her way through nursing school, carried the family through the year my father was laid off by the state, never missed a single event of my childhood, and SPOILED ME ROTTEN
• My childrens' mother, setting aside how good she is to me, is bringing up two of the biggest, healthiest, smartest, sweetest kids you've ever seen. On top of that, she took their father from "I've never held a baby" to being able to manage pretty well with them both at the same time, and even making them cry much less frequently

I Tell You What, that's a fine job those ladies have done

Keeping It Real On the Fraction Front

Our little family sat down to a turkey dinner recently. Cranberries from a can were a side dish. Wifey served Sweetness 3 of 4 equal pieces from a circular slice. Sweetness's reaction:

"It's three quarters! One, two, three." (Pointing each one out in turn)

We've never shared the concept of fractions with her directly, I think she picked it up independently from Blue's Clues. I guess it's time to funnel some more savings into the college fund.

Coolest. Comments. Ever.

A reader recently passed along this comment from a recent post:

"I didn't want to sound like a complete dork for actually having a preconceived opinion on the ship before even having read your stance so you get the email. I agree in your assessment that this ship provides a valuable service in taking away money from the DDG1000, a ship with no true purpose (one can argue this for most destroyers, as their principle purpose in life is to get hit by the first missiles instead of the carrier). I also like that you call it what it is, a corvette instead of a frigate. But I think your assessment of it being the kick-ass version of light naval warfare may be a bit overstated. Mostly this occurs in one place, armament. There is no doubt that it is a good hull design, vastly superior to the Northrup designed ship. But the choice to use SeaRAM launchers (we call those matchbox launchers) befuddles me, besides the fact they are cheaper. That is what they back fit the early Ticonderoga class cruisers and Iowa class battleships with, the integrated VLS MK41 system in a 1 or two module configuration (a good example is the Turkish Navy frigates, based on the German MEKO design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEKO)) with the ESSM package packs alot more flexibility and punch. Also, why they use the Bofors gun (besides bofors sounding cool and being built by BAE) when we have MK 45 5" guns laying around the country with their 30 mile range guideable projectiles, seems the weapons guys in either the Navy or GD missed the ball on this one. I can't see a ship this lightly armed making a serious defense against a well equipped brown-water navy on their turf, they will need that speed to stay out of the punching range. But the tri-maran is pretty cool, and the flexibility in mission will make this a pretty awesome ship, somewhere between the Virginia class submarine and my kayak! "

To which I reply: Too late, you do sound like a dork. But this blog is a safe haven for our kind.
There are a lot of people who agree with you regarding the DDG 1000 program. Admittedly, the LCS program has already had enormous overruns on both ships from separate contractors. I sometimes wonder if the high military expenditures of the Bush administration (they've been enormous, even excepting troops in Afghanistan and Iraq) are a dual purpose recapitalization of the military. First, the Clinton administration let the military run on existing equipment for almost a decade without buying any replacement ships, aircraft, vehicles, whatever. Say you have a business with a dozen identical vehicles. If you refuse to replace any of them until they are all completely broken down, you are facing buying a bunch of new vehicles at once instead of a gradual, rolling replacement. Secondly, by tying up massive sums of cash in long-term defense programs (F-35 Lightning II, Missile Defense, DDG-1000, CGN, Future Combat Systems...), it's not available to push a liberal agenda for following administrations. For all the talk about reductions of defense expenditures, even if a Democrat is elected president they are going to face an uphill struggle to trim any of this money to free it up for things like socialized medicine, or whatever they are calling for.
Meanwhile, I also call the USS Independence a corvette because that's the name of the sweetest sports car in history. I'm referring especially to the Stingray line of the 70's. That's some bad steel. Anyway, I'm sure that the firepower of these ships pales before the might of the Iowa Class or a carrier air wing. If we had a serious tilt with a regional power, we would try to quickly get carrier battle groups involved to remove that country's capital ships from the water or force them back into port within 24 hours of the carrier's arrival. That's not the point, though. The concern is the use of "asymmetric" forces to tilt the matchup back in the bad guys' favor. They flood the water with very small attack craft, or they assault oil rigs to drive up world gas prices (hurting developed nations), or they park a dozen diesel-electric submarines in the path of our carrier group. The LCS corvettes are meant to establish a network of eyes, ears, and measured firepower where the bad guys are trying to do the same thing. You end up with a high number of discrete assets to sink small subs, protect oil rigs or convoys, or smote fast attack craft. To carry an AEGIS capability like the Ticonderoga cruisers you need a world-beating radar, tons of space for surface to air missiles... and that wouldn't leave room for anything else in a small hull. Anyway, I think that the capacity for many unmanned vehicles will provide over-the-horizon targeting information on air, surface, or submarine contacts to maximize use of the weapons that the ships do carry. Think about it, it the ability to find and accurately deliver firepower (and then evade a counterattack with speed and stealth) far outweighs the overall firepower a ship is packing. See also: The Battle of Midway.

I AM IRON MULE

Before going any further, please check out the video at this web site. Go right now. Seriously, proceed no further until checking out the link. Welcome to the revolution.


The word awesome, properly used, is reserved for precisely this sort of thing. The control systems work, the navigation ability (really shown well through videos for some of Boston Dynamics' other 'bots), the rugged hardware, the responsive hydraulics... all make this thing incredible. I have a vision for this thing.

• First, we put a muffler on it and let it be a pack mule and carry things for our infantry. Things like mortars.


• Then we give it nunchucks and and a blood-curdling battle cry and send it on a Chuck Norris style vigilante crime fighting spree through run down neighborhoods.


• Then we give it a flamethrower to clear entrenched enemies. Because sometimes you need people over there to be on fire, and a way to get that fire over to them.


• Then we give it a gatling gun to end global hunger... by turning terrorists into hamburger.

All semi-joking aside, this technology certainly has obstacles to overcome before becoming tactical hardware, I'm sure, but in our lifetimes we will see things like this used as pack mules, kicking in doors, and other things we cannot even imagine.