Month: July 2024

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 10

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Military Movies

I’m sure everyone will say I left out one of their favorites.  War movies and movies about the military seem to be very personal in their impact.  And that’s easily remedied when you list your forgotten favorite in the comments!

I left out ancient wars so Spartacus and Henry V were too far back I thought.  “Master and Commander” is close to the line but is such a good movie I couldn’t leave it out.  Although it would still show up in an action category and a list of movies about the sea.  Of course, I was restricted to movies I’ve seen and I can’t claim to have seen most war movies.

  1. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) 3
  2. The Story of GI Joe (1945) 3
  3. They Were Expendable (1945) 3
  4. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
  5. Fixed Bayonets! (1951) 3
  6. Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) 3
  7. From Here to Eternity (1953)
  8. Pork Chop Hill (1956) 1
  9. The Gallant Hours (1960) 3
  10. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 3
  11. The Longest Day (1962) 3
  12. The Great Escape (1963)
  13. Zulu (1964)
  14. Battle of the Bulge (1965) 3
  15. In Harm’s Way (1965) 3
  16. The Dirty Dozen (1967)
  17. Battle of Britain (1969) 3
  18. Patton (1970)
  19. A Bridge Too Far (1977) 3
  20. Big Red One (1980) 3
  21. Das Boot (1981)
  22. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
  23. Gettysburg (1993) 3
  24. Saving Private Ryan (1998) 2
  25. Band of Brothers (2001) 2 *
  26. Black Hawk Down (2001)
  27. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
  28. Downfall (2004)
  29. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) 3
  30. American Sniper (2014)
  31. Dunkirk (2017)

*(TV Series)

1 Master Diver

2 Tom D

3 War Pig

Now is the Summer and Autumn of Our Discontent

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August, September and October will be consumed with talking about Kamala Harris?  It doesn’t seem possible.  There’s just nothing there.  They’ve got to throw us something else or we’ll all go insane.  I guess the next thing will be her vice-presidential pick.  Can you imagine that?  Being second banana to Kamala Harris?  In a sense Kamala Harris was the perfect person to be the back up to Joe Biden.  An emotionally unstable nitwit would complement a dementia patient well enough.  But what would be one rung below her?  I don’t know, a roll of bubble wrap?  One of those door-stops that’s made out of a spring?

I suppose, to distract us Joe Biden can start a war with someone.  It’ll have to be with one of our allies.  We can’t afford to lose to one of our enemies.  Currently our navy is taking incoming from something called the Houthis which sounds like a Star Wars race that should look like lobster-men.  Apparently, we’re now being attacked by smaller and smaller organizations.  Eventually we’ll work our way down to where TikTok influencers will be calling us out.

But yes, Joe Biden is going to need something to do for the next six months while he waits for his brain to reach zero-charge and he expires behind the Resolute desk.  So, a war makes sense.  It doesn’t have to be a real war.  In fact, a fake war will be much better.  Now that Betty Boop doesn’t have to run press conferences for President Meathead she can be repurposed as Joe’s babysitter.  She can bring him ice cream and give him war updates.  And to simplify things for the personnel who run the White House tours they can move Joe down into the bunker.

Breathless news of great victories and tragic defeats could be delivered every few hours and lulls in the battle could coincide with his 1:30 pm nap.  I think it would suffice if they could get him the deluxe edition of Risk and let him set up the board on a card table next to his Lazy Boy.  If he’s smart, he’ll build up his defenses on Alaska and Greenland and get those five armies for North America every turn.  The smart money is to expand into South America and Africa after that.  Europe will be tough although he’s already got a lot of armies in Ukraine so there’s that.  Well, I won’t second guess Biden.  He is a strategic giant so I’ll just wait for his memoirs to come out in “Highlights” magazine to learn how he conquered the world again.

We’ll have to get through the next three and a half months somehow.  I think I might skip the Kamala speeches altogether.  Listening to her talk about her racial and sexual grievances would be way too annoying.  Perhaps I can come up with a completely non-election-based series of topics to get me to December.  And at that point many things will have been decided by the outcome of our political drama.  I think this election will be an endpoint for a lot of things.  A Kamala Harris presidency would be a benchmark.  People in the future could point to it as the official beginning of post-America.  Perhaps I should start drafting an obituary.  It would be the decent thing to do.

Tom’s World – 24JUL2024 – Gulf of Mexico Oil Field Work Boats- 2

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

Here are a few more boats that work the Gulf of Mexico oil fields.

The ubiquitous tug boat. These aren’t the largest, sexiest, awe inspiring or most anything when it comes to work boats. But they have one thing going for them, it doesn’t work without them. They’re everywhere because they are needed everywhere.

SONY DSC

This one wasn’t a work boat. It’s an ex-roro (roll on- roll off) ship that carried cars for delivery all over the world until bought by Jeff Bezos and brought to Pensacola to have all of its superstructure cut off except the forecastle. This in preparation to operate as a landing ship for space launch vehicles. It would have operated similarly to the Space X barges. Bezos’ Blue Origin wheels ran off or something happened and his plans crashed. At the moment of this phots, the ships name was Jacklyn, for his mother.

Global 2000, another heavy lift work vessel used for building and dismantling drill platforms.

Deep Blue, makes pipelines for carrying crude from where it is drilled many miles out in the Gulf to onshore refineries. I’ve never thought it through but I wonder if the pipelines need intermediate platforms with booster pumps? I can’t imagine the needed initial pressure to push a viscous oil through 50-100 miles of pipe.

SAMSUNG CSC

I don’t know how I missed getting photos of it but the USS Oriskiny was brought into port here to be prepared to be the largest man-made fishing reef about 200’ deep in the Gulf. It sits about 22 nautical miles (25 regular) on roughly a 150 degree heading from the mouth of Pensacola Bay. I’ve fished it a number of times but you have to be there when it isn’t covered up with dive boats. I’ve never caught anything anywhere there were a bunch of divers in the area. Can’t get too upset, I used to be a fanatic diver.

What Comes After the Kamala-fication of 2024?

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As the political system of the United States descends ever faster into farce, I find myself wondering if there any depths to which the people running this carnival ride won’t descend in order to prevent the citizens of this country from regaining control?

Think about it.  They let a dementia patient pretend to be in charge of the US nuclear arsenal while they performed brinksmanship with Vladimir Putin.  They apparently were willing to let Biden try to stay on the job until he was eighty-six years old, only his inability to remember the word “healthcare” torpedoed the only public speaking appearance they’ve allowed him in years.  They’ve now anointed an emotionally unstable nitwit to be their candidate.  And four years ago, they were willing to shut down the world economy by releasing a tepid bio-weapon against us in order to prevent Donald Trump’s reelection.

So, let’s suppose somehow Donald Trump “wins” the election.  What makes anyone think they’d be unwilling to do whatever it takes to destroy his administration?  Maybe this time they release a deadly bioweapon and all the people who refused the vaccine last time, die this time.  Or now that we’ve seen how the secret Service can be weaponized what will prevent them from finishing the job after the inauguration?

I don’t want to come across as a doom and gloom-er (well, maybe somewhat) but I think there’s a pretty strong case to be made that the people who run the Deep State are pretty damn vicious and unafraid to throw a wrench into the works that keep this country running if it will damage their adversaries.

Let’s look at the best-case scenario.  Donald Trump gets back in the White House and has a House and Senate that aren’t dead set against him and he begins implementing his plan; deporting illegal aliens and restoring fossil fuels as our energy source.  Will the powers that be allow him to defang the Deep State?  Will he be allowed to fire the people in the Justice Department, FBI and CIA who have been working against him for almost ten years?  It seems highly unlikely.

After all, we’ve reached the go-for-broke stage of this battle.  At this point there are probably a lot of people who know terrible secrets of illegal activities by people in high and middle levels of the bureaucracy.  They must be pretty frightened that at some point someone will rat them out.  That somewhere in the FBI or CIA there might be someone who wants to put an end to the endless string of unconstitutional covert actions against Donald Trump and the normal people in this country.  In such an environment I have to think that the people running things must have a policy to avoid losing power by any means necessary.

If you follow how this has been going, the actions needed to keep the lid on all this seems to be escalating.  And the rate of escalation seems to be accelerating.  By my way of looking at this, that’s a recipe for disaster.  Eventually the lies and excuses will become completely transparent.  Even the stupidest or laziest observer will realize that the whole system is a sham.

That will be the point where our situation corresponds to last stages of the Soviet Union.  “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.”  At that point reality no longer controls the actions of the state and collapse will ensue without warning.  Well, at least I’ll be able to say I told you so!