Respectfully, Jessica, I am of the opinion (however right or wrong ) that U.S. college campuses were where the United States lost the Vietnam War.

The way history tends to repeat itself for people who don't learn from it, so perhaps this is the best place to talk about it.

(Unless, of course, it's deemed to be too deep in `Gator Swamp Territory...)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, May 23, 2025 - 12:15 pm: Edit

National Security is a broad subject, and Harvard, for right or wrong, is a significant part of the national educational system that determines if the United States is, or is not competitive internationally.

If the Nation’s Educational Institutions can not be kept safe for Students or faculty, then our nations investment in Real World Military is meaningless, just as much as defund the police crazies have crippled local law enforcement in keeping our local communities safe.

Bottom line, if protestors on American college campuses can target a specific religious group, who is next? How about librarians who decide not to shelve particular books that a Hamas or pro Palestinian might not like? Or Civil Engineers who determine safety margins for public safety…should engineers be targeted because they keep the public safe for all groups equally? What if a group of crazed college students demand separate (but equal) side walks and pedestrian tunnels and bridges in a apartheid program isolating a single group of students from Petricktopia?

Might be a reach, but if targeting people because of their national origin or their religion is acceptable, where should the line be drawn?

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, May 23, 2025 - 02:08 pm: Edit

Students have been a problem for centuries, it's par for the course since the beginning a millenia ago. What is more worrisome for these institutions is when the authorities start taking an interest in their doings.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 23, 2025 - 03:37 pm: Edit

Back in the day, Jessica and I were members of SWINE, Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything.

(Bonus prize for identifying the reference.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 23, 2025 - 04:13 pm: Edit

The topic of "research grants to universities" is complex, and confused by deliberately misleading reporting. Some of it is actually useful, and some of it is absolutely worthless and just a means to funnel money to political cronies. Every year, various groups post lists of worthless research grants that were just a waste of money but intended to give somebody's buddy a check. I can remember as a teenager reading such a list and one grant was to study which moose calls were better at getting a young bull moose to crash through a barrier. I can remember asking my dad what that was all about and he explained then that a lot of grants are just a way to give somebody a paycheck. It might be a congressman's brother in law or nephew, a political donor, or some professor who was being recognized for brainwashing his students into who to vote for. Defenders say "how can you be against research?" and the answer is obvious, we're for worthwhile research but against wasted money. There was a big scandal about the time I got married about millions of dollars going to do research that sounded perfectly reasonable and worthwhile (something to do with cancer) when in fact that particular specific research had already been done years earlier and this was just paying some professors to do useless busywork to give them a paycheck. On the surface it looked legit and without checking previous research no one would know it was wasted money. I don't trust any donations to uber-political elite colleges. So far as I'm concerned, every dollar given to Harvard was done for fraudulent purposes, probably an overreaction, but not far from the truth.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 09:29 am: Edit

Whilst not part of the protest scene per se, I did join an "anti-fraternity/sorority" club which was dubbed "Alpha Eta Potata"; it quickly became the largest student club on campus, and had a dandy old time roundly mocking TKE et al.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 11:56 am: Edit

I was in Alpha Phi Omega, a service frat for guys who had been Boy Scouts, although we had members who had never been scouts. We were always doing projects for the campus and community. The Pan-Hellenic Council fought tooth and nail to stop us from being recognized as one of them.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 12:37 pm: Edit

As you all may know, the DoD civilian force has had to submit five "what did I do" bullets every Monday. Because I'll be on leave next week, I drafted up my list ahead of time. And this week, I actually had three new bullets that weren't recycled copy/paste from previous weeks. So, last night I logged into my government email from home to upload them, only to find an email stating that instead of five "what did I do" bullets, they want everyone to upload one suggestion for how to cut government waste specifically within our unit / on our base. This will be fun.


Garth L. Getgen

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 12:41 pm: Edit

Suggestion on how to cut government waste: Don't make your people waste time submitting "what did I do" bullets every Monday.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 02:06 pm: Edit

It sounded like this weeks submission will be that last one for DoD.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 03:10 pm: Edit

Don't know what to call it; tragedy or farce? Both? In any case it would give me a headache out of frustration.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 03:14 pm: Edit

Ryan,

Maybe, but I'm not convinced. I strongly suspect there is someone in the heirarchy who still thinks that kind of thing is a good idea and will try to reinstate it at an opportune moment.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 09:50 pm: Edit

Steve: Mizzou (where I work) hosts the Beta Eta chapter of your old frat; they're co-ed and thoroughly helpful on campus (unlike the "traditional" Pan-Hellenic outfits, which continue the "tradition" of dangerous hazing and alcohol poisoning). They're also regular volunteers at the local food bank.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 12:52 am: Edit

I have worked at a couple of places (decades ago) that required "what did you do to make us money" memos every week. They took about 5 minutes if you just jotted notes on your desk calendar. For a couple of years at my engineering job I had the "extra duty" of spending an hour a week prowling the warehouse looking for stuff that hadn't been used in decades and was just gathering dust. I found that I could do the prowling about once every six weeks and come up with a list of stuff I could "knock off" once per Monday. There was one whole section of "obsolete" stuff that we didn't even use any more (and the last of it in use had been replaced). I found that during one prowl, pulled a list of it, and spent a couple of hours calling around to see if any other gas company still used it. I found a small company in Kansas that did, and for a while I would call them once a week and sell them something from that section and send a memo to the warehouse to ship it to them. After a few weeks the boss caught wind of my plot and called me to his office, instructing me to quit farting around and make them an offer on about six tons of that stuff. I even got a decent price for it, exceeding the "on the books" price since there was no source for the other company to get that stuff. When I presented the boss a check for a quarter million he excused me from doing the weekly bullet memo for the rest of the year.

Not all jobs have the kind of work to score such a system. I suspect that my cousin the high school teacher would be hard pressed to name accomplishments other than "followed the lesson plan."

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 01:19 am: Edit

Good to hear, Jessica. I can remember many hours walking neighborhoods asking for "one can for the food bank". Had a guy give us $20 (serious money then) as he wasn't sure what his wife would agree to give away if she had been home at the time. The food bank said we could just drop off the money or we could go to the grocery store and buy cans of meat, since they never got such things. We got a whole sack of stuff for that money. I heard later that many families said they had been living on rice, macaroni, and beans and were glad to get a can of chicken chunks or vienna sausages.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 01:20 am: Edit

Command and control vs Auftragstaktik.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 04:56 am: Edit

Germany has announced it will permanently deploy a mechanized brigade of 4800 troops including tanks to Lithuania, the first time German troops have been permanently deployed outside of Germany since 1945.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 12:42 pm: Edit

Russia made enormous drone and missile strikes on Ukraine the past two nights. Over 300 missiles and Shahed or similar drones each night.

The damaged targets include 80 residential buildings. The dead include three children.

I'm unaware if any of the Shaheds or missiles hit military targets.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 05:49 pm: Edit

Russia is failing.

It would greatly benefit their war effort to actually target combat units (tanks, APC, artillery) or support units (supply, repair, fuel,) or (if they can find them) the drone control centers in the field.

Russia attacking civilians and larger towns and cities is an open admission that the drones and missiles expended have no better targets to hit.

It is also reminiscent of the thinking (present in both world wars) but mostly in the second world war that if the attacks are big and horrific, they will inevitably cause the civilian population to lose faith in both the government and the military defending the nation.

Generally, civilian support increases under such attack… it will be interesting to see how the Ukrainian population reacts over time to such tactics.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 07:07 pm: Edit

they will inevitably cause the civilian population to lose faith in both the government and the military defending the nation.

Didn't happen in Britain or Germany, worked even less over Japan......

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 08:13 pm: Edit

Mark, that was the point.

The proponents of bombing had grand visions of winning wars thru bombing.

Didn’t happen.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 08:15 pm: Edit

Indeed, as Jeff said, that WW2 thinking was not sustained by the results. The USAAF always claimed the Douhet theory, that bombers could not be stopped and that bombers could win a war all by themselves. Post-WW2 analysis did not support the wartime bomb damage assessment. Bombers, at least the daylight raids, did contribute to victory, if only by forcing the defenders to pull fighters away from the front and forcing the defenders to spend energy relocating industry.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, May 26, 2025 - 01:01 pm: Edit

New item, 100 National Security “advisers” have been “fired”, “laid off” or reassigned (terms vary depending on the individual.)

One side claims these individuals are “Deep State” who do not owe loyalty or respect to the current administration.

The other side will doubtless claim that these people are professional longtime employees, in some cases with decades of experience working for both Democratic as well as Republican presidents.

The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

The majority will not miss any pay checks or risk losing benefits as they are “on loan” from various executive branches of government such as DOD (department of Defense), Treasury, Commerce, Department of State, Agriculture etc….

Some, when they report at their respective agencies will be terminated… but unlikely to be all.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, May 26, 2025 - 10:59 pm: Edit

The Department of Homeland Security has announced plans to expand the size and funding of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Among the items to be changed includes:
1) Reduce the number of Coast Guard Admirals by 25%.
2)Modernize the fleet (many ships are old and expensive to maintain.)
3)restructure the Coast Guard by instituting a Secretary of the coast guard.
4) increase the size of the coast guard beyond its current authorized strength.
5) build and operate a new class of ice breakers to exploit the artic sea frontier.

Wow.

By Vincent Solfronk (Vsolfronk) on Tuesday, May 27, 2025 - 10:57 am: Edit

Interesting article on the drone war in Ukraine in the Atlantic.com:

Ukraine’s New Way of War: American weapons are important, but Ukrainian drones have changed everything.

By Nataliya Gumenyuk

"As Ukraine’s partners speak of peace deals and security guarantees, Ukraine’s armed forces are adapting in every way they can to continue carrying out their mission: to defend a stretch of border, to hold off Russian advances on a particular town. They cannot afford the luxury of counting on American commitments or Russian concessions, because for most Ukrainians, what matters above all is physical safety. And the only force protecting human lives in Ukraine is the Ukrainian military."