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  • Donald Malarkey, WWII paratrooper, portrayed in HBO miniseries, dead at 96 | Fox News

    SALEM, Ore. –  Donald Malarkey, a World War II paratrooper who was awarded the Bronze Star after parachuting behind enemy lines at Normandy to destroy German artillery on D-Day, has died. He was 96.

    Malarkey was one of several members of "Easy Company" to be widely portrayed in the HBO miniseries, "Band of Brothers." He died Sept. 30 in Salem, Oregon of age-related causes, his son-in-law John Hill said Sunday.

    Malarkey fought fight across France, the Netherlands and Belgium and with Easy Company fought off Nazi advances while surrounded at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

    via www.foxnews.com

    Rest easy, soldier. You've surely earned it.

  • And Now, Edmonton, and Marseilles, Again.

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    From CNN.  Two attacks in Edmonton.  The first, a car running down a policeman at high speed, the driver leaping out and stabbing the Officer.  An ISIS flag found in the car.  The second, a U-Haul van running a barricade.

    Just before midnight, a police officer stopped a U-Haul truck at a checkpoint and recognized the driver's name as similar to that of the Chevrolet's registered owner. The U-Haul truck then sped off towards downtown Edmonton with police chasing it.
     
    The U-Haul traveled on busy Jasper Avenue, which late Saturday night and early Sunday morning was full of football fans and bargoers, reported CNN partner CBC. During the chase, the truck deliberately attempted to hit pedestrians in crosswalks and alleys in two areas along Jasper Avenue," Knecht said.
     
    At least four pedestrians were injured. Their conditions were not immediately known, the police chief said.
    Just a bunch of Lone Wolves up there in Canada, right?  Anyone wanna guess at the religion of the two perps?   Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, of course, made this somewhat conflicted statement:
    "We cannot — and will not — let violent extremism take root in our communities," he added. "We know that Canada's strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear."
    On the first point, you could, and you did.  On the second, you kowtow to those violent extremists with your "hate speech" laws and your intentional obtuseness to the fact that violent extremism has already found its way into your cities and towns, and you have all but subsidized it.  Reap what ye sow, fella.
     
    In Marseilles, yet another butchery by the Religion of Peace.  UK Sun tells us that two women were slaughtered by a knife-wielding man shouting "Allahu Akbar", which I am reliably informed translates to "my motives are unclear".   
     
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    Canada should hear the echoes of the terrible screams of those women, and of the policemen's gunshots.  Coming to a city near you, eh?  However, the leftists up there, led by Trudeau, are constantly equating criticism of Islam with the murderous conduct of the Islamists.  So, sadly, those echoes fall on the deaf, dumb, and blind personages of the willfully ignorant.   
     
    URR here.

  • Ken Block vs. Pike’s Peak.

     

     

  • Fire Finder Radars

    The use of radars to locate enemy mortar, rocket, and artillery positions goes all the way back to World War II.  The superb SCR-584, designed to direct the fire of 90mm anti-aircraft batteries, was shown to be quite capable of tracking inbound enemy indirect fire. It wasn't long before the services developed dedicated systems specifically for that role.  Here's a video showing the early 1970s era TPQ-31 in use. 

     

    The next generation of radars for the Marine Corps is the TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar, or GATOR, which combines Air Traffic Control, Air Defense, fire finding, and other functions in one set. 

  • World of Warships- A Wasted Kraken

     

     

  • Grump’s Cruiser Kraken

     

     

  • Let’s talk about 2LT Spenser Rapone for a bit.

    Twitter especially, but across most social media, people are talking about how on earth could the US Military Academy graduate an avowed communist.

    On paper, Spenser Rapone has a very impressive record. 

    Enlisted, served in  the Ranger Regiment (which means he also completed the Airborne School, as well as the Ranger Indoctrination Program), served a tour with the Rangers in Afghanistan, earned the Combat Infantryman Badge,  was accepted to West Point, graduated, was commissioned Infantry, and is currently attending Ranger School. Normally, this is someone you'd look at as a hard charger, a real comer. Most commands would be delighted to have a 2LT like that come in. 

    But, Spenser Rapone isn't like most new Lieutenants. 

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    That last pic, the tweet, well… that's a problem. 

    It's not technically a violation of regulations to be an out an out commie in the service. Which, I don't want the services policing the troops political thought. Neither do you. 

    Unfortunately for 2LT Rapone, Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says:

    Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

     

    While Article 88 might be somewhat selectively enforced, it's still there. Further, Article 92 of the UCMJ:

    Any person subject to this chapter who–

    (1) violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation;

    (2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by any member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or

    (3) is derelict in the performance of his duties;

    shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

    That covers the prohibition on political activities and speech while in uniform. Which, pretty clearly, he engaged in. 

    Finally, the catch all, Article 133:

    Any commissioned officer, cadet, or midshipman who is convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

    What is "conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman?" Pretty much whatever tends to bring discredit upon the service, among other things. It's the catch all article, similar to how Article 134 can be applied to a great variety of misdeeds for enlisted personnel. De facto, conviction under any punitive article of the UCMJ is prima facie evidence to sustain an Article 133 conviction. 

    Many people are asking who nominated Rapone to West Point. Frankly, I don't know. But I strongly suspect he was a Secretary of the Army nomination. It's quite common for the Army  to look at the ASVAB scores of new enlisted soldiers, and invite them to apply for a nomination while on Active Duty. 

    Will the Army court-martial Rapone? I doubt it. 

    But do I think 2LT Rapone's career in the Army will be curtailed? Oh, yeah. 

    The Army has a very wide array of tools to deal with officers that fail to maintain the standards of conduct expected of them.  Simply writing a bad Officer Evaluation Report is enough to sink a career. Letters of admonishment, Non-Judicial Punishment, and an invitation to resign in lieu of court martial are all options. 

    Interestingly, the pics of him at West Point are from 2016, so someone has known about this for a while. But now that he's made the Army look bad, things will likely happen. 

    Oh,  and since he's currently in Ranger School, there's a very good chance he has no idea of the social media shitstorm surrounding him. 

     

  • The Military Response to Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria

    There's an emerging political message on the Left that because Donald Trump is a racist that doesn't care about brown people,  he's ignoring the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. 

    As with most Left narratives, it's utter bullshit. 

    Carl Prine, the San Diego Union-Tribune's military  reporter, is hardly a Trumper. And yet, he's at least honest enough to tweet out exactly what the military is doing to conduct relief operations in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. 

     

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  • World of Warships- A Duel to the Death

     

     

  • The Patriots Lost on Sunday

    …and lost big.  

    Sixteen of their number, players James White, Alan Branch, Brandin Cooks, Devin McCourty, , Lawrence Guy, Trey Flowers, Elandon Roberts, Duron Harmon, Jonathan Jones, Deatrich Wise, Johnson Bademosi, Adam Butler, Malcom Brown, Malcolm Butler, Stephone Gilmore, and Jordan Richards, chose to intentionally show disrespect to our flag and our country by kneeling in protest during the National Anthem.  What were they protesting?  Racial injustice, supposedly.  (You see, it is considered de rigueur by the far-left to denigrate the United States and everything about it, because in their views it fails to be the perfect utopia they have constructed in their heads.) 

    Of course, most of this was done in response to President Trump's pointed remarks condemning such behavior, in which he called for NFL owners to fire players who showed such disrespect (former QB Colin Kaepernick first started this crap in its current form).  While Trump used questionable wisdom in making his remarks (he is the President, not a candidate), and while it is certainly true that such protest is legal free expression, the players kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem of the freest nation in the history of mankind, in order to protest "racial injustice", are rich, spoiled, and ignorant hypocrites.  

    If "black lives matter" so damned much, why haven't those sixteen players gone into Chicago or Baltimore or St. Louis and employed some of that self-congratulatory courage to put an end to the gang and drug violence, and the overwhelming cause of deaths of young blacks.  Which is, of course, being murdered by other blacks.  Nearly every black person murdered in this country is killed by another black person.  To the tune of 93%.  Blacks are, according to the Justice Department, responsible for better than half of the murders committed in this country between 1980 and 2008, despite being slightly less than 12% of the population during that time.  Self-described "team leader" Devin McCourty?  You go first.  Put up or shut up.  

    You see, the men and women who serve the country and the flag you protest while making your millions, do just those sorts of things.  They go into places that are terribly dangerous and they risk their lives every day to defend the innocent.   Save me the bullshit about this not being about money, either.  The sixteen players that showed such disrespect?  They are paid more, on average, as INDIVIDUALS (not counting endorsements) every month than a USMC Rifle Platoon earns in that same month in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Nearly twice as much, in fact.  For playing a game the rest of us played for the love of it.  Perhaps one of those sixteen could use his millions to fly to Sangin and tell the Lance Corporal walking a combat patrol in the 110-degree heat all about his "white privilege".  

    Were I to possess a magic wand, I would wave it over the sixteen assholes mentioned above.  Then, they could learn about real discrimination.  Some would become Copts in Egypt, being burned alive inside their Church by the same Muslim Brotherhood that Barack Obama invited to the State Department over and over again.  Or they could suddenly find themselves as ethnic Kurds in Saddam's Iraq, seeing  themselves and wives and children buried alive by the Iraqi security forces.  Or they could be ethnic Poles, enslaved and starving, being worked to death in an Arbeitslager in Germany or a Gulag in the Soviet Union.  Or an Armenian without food or water or hope, on the death march across the Syrian desert.  Then, perhaps, they could have a taste of what hate and discrimination truly is.  But none of them know, not even a little.  Instead, they play a game for great deal of money and are treated like celebrities, simply because they possess physical talents given them by God.  

    As for owner Robert Kraft, fuck you.  You are supposed to be the adult in the room.  When those players wear that uniform, in that stadium, they work for YOU.  They show such disrespect to our flag and our Anthem because you condone and approve of it.  Your players are not "intelligent" or "thoughtful".  They are ignorant, arrogant, spoiled children.  If they were intelligent and thoughtful, they would understand, in some small way, that they should kiss the ground in front of them, and thank their God they were born into this time and this place.   Into the freest nation ever on earth, bought and paid for by those who fought and died for their liberties, to end slavery and oppose tyranny.  None of those terrible things mentioned above will happen to your players, because better people than they will lay down their lives to prevent it.  Men and women for whom the flag and Anthem your players have shown such contempt for represents anything but injustice. 

    The cascade of boos from people who paid their hard-earned money for a ticket yesterday showed that they understand, even if your players don't.  One would think you might have the spine to teach them.  Or tell them.  Stand your asses up and respect your country and your flag.  But you don't have that courage or that spine.   

    The score of the game was immaterial.  The Patriots lost.  Perhaps they should consider a name change for the franchise.  URR here.  

     

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