Tom’s World – 07NOV2024 –

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Update:

I kicked this to the top of the site because I want it to get more views.  Tom has collected some wonderful photos of an iconic old military facility.  I especially like the shots of the interior masonry.  His use of HDR (high dynamic range) technique produces fascinating images.

 

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TomD

Ft Pickens is the site of a US National Park located at the mouth of Pensacola Bay into the Gulf of Mexico. Historically it has been the site of military defences to protect said bay from foreign intervention. Other than altercations between Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War, I’m not aware of any military confrontations between US and hostile foreign forces since the original fort was established in 1830. At least in one instance, WWII, I’m fairly sure that was because of the deterrence of the fort. Especially in the 1st couple of years of WWII, the Gulf was lousy with German submarines, and absent the fort there would have been little to deter the Germans from coming into the bay and shelling the deep water port facilities.

 

Fort Pickens was active as a military base from 1830 to its closing in 1947 and it has abandoned facilities and gun emplacements from all along that time frame. This is just a few pictures and doesn’t begin to encompass the buildings, emplacements and facilities there.

 

Photos:

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Light at the End of the Tunnel: This is one portion of one wing from the 1st facilities constructed, in 1830, completed just 8 years after Florida was ceded to the US by Spain. It was constructed of brick using slave labor.

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This is a spotting tower used to spot and correct the shell fire from the two 6” shield guns featured in later picts.

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Another location in another wing of the 1830 fortress.

One of the 6”. These guns were 6” shield guns in use from before to through WWII.  These guns threw a shell weighing probably around 90 pounds to a distance of around 17,000 yards. There’s a picture of the interior of the shield further down.

Here’s a “disappearing” gun from the WWI era. Seems to me that would be an effective defense strategy since, any adversary unless at an extreme range, would have a flat trajectory to its shell fire.

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This is the 2nd shield gun at that emplacement. This picture doesn’t reveal differences from the 1st but I just like the photo as a photo.

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A 3rd shot of another location from in the 1830 building

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One wing of the 1830 building. It connects to the remainder of the building on the left but not the right side due to a “little” hurricane some time in the past.

View from behind one of the shield guns showing the interior. These turrets were fully powered, as they would be on a ship. You’ll notice that the breech block has been removed. Spoil sports! They never let us have any fun, pot shots at fishing boats 10 miles out would be great sport.

 

You can see that the breech design is of the interrupted screw type (no jokes please). This design is prevalent with American canon types of the time as opposed to the falling block favored by many other nations. Since, the US Army at least seems to use the falling block.

09NOV2024 – Quote of the Day

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The lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether to preserve it or no, and to His will do I resign myself. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied, and, if anything happens to me recollect death is a debt we must all pay, and whether now or in a few years hence can be but of little consequence.

Horatio Nelson

New Media Buries the MSM

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I think this may be the most interesting analysis of the media battle for the 2024 election,  He says the MSM was the voice of the Deep State and this time America stopped listening to them.  Trump is a fascist.  Trump is literally Hitler.  Trump will personally rape all of America’s cat ladies.  It didn’t work.

And even as I get out of the business of being a voice of the great right-wing conspiracy I’ll take my tiny bit of credit for making the MSM a spent force.

Three cheers for us.

Hey Christopher Wray, Brace Yourself

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So what’s likely to happen to an agency of the federal government if it harasses and persecutes a presidential candidate and then he wins the presidency?

Well, if that agency is the FBI and that candidate is Donald Trump I’m guessing there are going to be an awful lot of unemployed FBI big-wigs.

And it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

“The Washington Times learned through several anonymous bureau sources that senior executives who run the agency were “stunned” and “shell-shocked” by Mr. Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.”

And besides the personal animus of the incoming president there is fear that a general purge of the department is possible:

“Additionally, many on the 7th floor of the FBI are concerned about billionaire tech executive Elon Musk, owner of X and Tesla, being brought into the Trump administration as head of a government efficiency commission.

“When he tries to do efficiency at headquarters, the place is going to have five people … if he’s talking about a lot of dead weight,” a second FBI source said.”

Well, they say what goes around comes around and I couldn’t be happier.  If he doesn’t shut the whole place down I hope he gets Congress to neuter them so they can never threaten the freedoms of the American people again.

I only wish prosecutions of Wray and Garland were likely.  I hate those crooked bastards for what they did to a lot of innocent people on January 6th.

Segueing Into a Brilliant Future

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So, the fireworks are finished and now we go a couple of months until Trump enters the White House.  In the meantime, the Deep State tries to figure out how to destroy his presidency.  And they’ll also try to save the Ukraine misadventure.  Although I can’t see that working.  Without tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and support Ukraine is going to collapse.

But from our point of view there’s really not much to talk about.  Whether the Republicans have a three or a four man lead in the Senate or Mike Johnson has a ten or eleven man lead in the House isn’t all that important.  The fact that Mike Johnson isn’t Paul Ryan is somewhat significant.  But all of the action starts happening in January.  And really, we won’t know anything right away because it will take a bunch of weeks for Trump to get his Cabinet sworn in.

My point is that there’s really not much of substance to say.  Basically, Joe Biden destroyed the country and Kamala Harris was his Vice President.  And on top of that she is a terrible candidate.  So, Americans rejected both of them and hired Donald Trump to fix the country.  Yay, for our side.

So now I have to figure out a new tack for my writing and my on-line existence.  I can’t see the need to document the Trump/Washington war on a day-to-day basis.  Undoubtedly there will be events that will inspire me to write at length.  But a daily journal of that will be excessive.  Instead, I want to spend the majority of my writing time on fiction.  Also, photography is the other focus I want to feature on the site.  And of course I’ll provide reviews of books, movies and music as I find it.

So, let’s see how all this goes.  Probably the difference will be hardly noticeable to the casual reader.  And the extra time for writing will allow me to finish my first book and see how that works out.  I’m of course expecting at least a ten million books sold in the first year and then up from there.  I’ll probably be asked by the Trump administration to become a key advisor to the President on all cultural matters.  I suppose that goes without saying.  But it won’t affect my trademark humility and love for the common man.  My only extravagance will be an exact replica of a Packard Eight constructed almost entirely of tantalum.  Well, maybe I’ll get Camera Girl a Dyson vacuum cleaner too.  She’s been good.

So, the future is upon us and it’s all sunshine and sharkskin suits as far as the eye can see.  We all will march into this bright future thanks to the final humiliation and banishment of Biden and Harris and the ascension to the throne of the once and future king; Donald J. Trump.  Long may he mock our enemies and exaggerate his accomplishments.  Let’s just his (and our) luck holds out long enough to staunch the bleeding of this once great land.  We really could use a break.

Read It Great Trump!

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It would make sense that the true America Caesar wouldn’t be a general but rather a huckster.  P T Barnum is more or less the archetype.  Here is Trump; a man who all alone against the omnipotent federal government single-handedly wrestled them to the ground and pushed their faces in the mud.

I was talking to a friend tonight and we were both marveling at how Trump instinctively knows how to manipulate every person and situation to his advantage.  He exposed the phoniness and selfishness of oligarchs like Jeb Bush and Hilary Clinton to the American working and middle classes.  He exposed “free trade” as the weapon of the rich against their own fellow citizens.  He refused to allow the elites to use forever wars to control the whole planet and at the same time whittle down the warrior class to a manageable force.

And now he has exposed the incompetence and imbecility of Biden, Kamala and their handlers before the whole world.  Before our eyes he put on the “greatest show on Earth” and blew the Biden and Kamala clown cars right off the road.  While not as hilarious as the 2016 Hilary “Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth” medley, it’s still plenty funny to listen to the various pundits screeching about how Trump will bring to life the “Handmaid’s Tale” and force these 80-year-old hags to dress in the nun outfit and bear him children.  Well, I guess everyone is entitled to a secret dream, even 80-year-old hags.  I wonder if he has to dress up as a pirate in that dream?

So, my hat’s off to him.  Bravo!

The only thing I wonder about is how much will he be able to achieve that will be of lasting benefit.  Look at what they did to his vibrant economy.  All it took was the Summer of George Floyd and COVID19.  Imagine if he really went after the CIA, FBI and the IRS.  They’d probably unleash a hybrid of small pox and Ebola.

But Trump deserves to have his chance.  He’s shown himself to be resourceful and fearless.  With a lot of work and even more luck he might achieve some very worthwhile things.  And we all have our secret wish list.  Here’s mine:

  1. Pardon himself. This one’s a no brainer.
  2. Pardon everyone who’s been persecuted by Democrat lawfare. That goes for everyone from Rudy Giuliani to the J6 protestors languishing in prison.
  3. Disband the FBI. Or, at least, all of the offensive parts.
  4. Declare a national emergency and end all immigration until the illegal aliens have been deported.
  5. Deport all the illegal aliens.
  6. Get Elon Musk to “right-size” the federal government, with a chain saw.
  7. Rationalize American foreign policy with regard to military actions and develop an acceptable status quo with Beijing and Moscow.
  8. Make Rudy Giuliani the Attorney General and use the Justice Department to punish all federal and state infringements on the first amendment. This includes freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and free association.
  9. Use the Justice Department to crack down on all federal and state infringements on the second amendment.
  10. And lastly, make Joy Reid wear a bag over her head whenever she’s on tv.

There!  That’s not so bad.