Finally

Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates deserve recognition, as does the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" organization Get Equal.

It Breaks Your Heart

Richard Tillman On Real Time

My Adopted Senator

Go Fuck Yourself You Tired Old Bastard

The House just voted to repeal DODT.

The Senate Armed Services Committee passed it. But it faces a filibuster in the Senate. And war hero turned cranky fundamentalist apologist John McCain is for just that.

"I think it's really going to be very harmful to the morale and effectiveness of our military," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a leading opponent of the repeal.

How? Positions without evidence are like omelets without eggs. But grampy thinks it; that's apparently enough.

And by the way, how many filibusters have these guys done? With all due respect to the Senate, has any Congress ever had this many?

A Gay By Any Other Name

I mourn the dearth of great, eloquent polemists, both for and against my positions. Without well-crafted arguments, semantics and histrionics rule:

A new CBS News/New York Times poll released this afternoon shows 57% of Americans approve of "homosexuals" serving in the military. Change the word "homosexual" to "gay men and lesbians" and the support jumps to 70%. The change in support holds when respondents were asked whether they think "homosexuals" vs. "gay men and lesbians" should be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. armed forces.

On the "serve openly" question, 44% were in favor when the word "homosexual" is used, and 42% were opposed. When that word was swapped for the alternate "gay men and lesbians" wording, support for serving openly jumped to 58%. Just 28% were opposed.

I am perplexed. Is our nation's bigotry so debase as to be semantic?

Contrast this statistic to the arguments held over at my favorite naval blog, Information Dissemination, where two people who agree on repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" can disagree on how it should be argued ([1] vs [2]). Well enough, but neither argument relies on a term. Sadly, the rights of a minority might ultimately depend on what they are called. And, like any minority, the gays can be called a great many things...

Note To John McCain: You Are A Loser

While his wife and daughter support LGBT equality,

Cindy McCain, Wife Of John, Supporting Marriage Equality

John McCain actually said the following this week:

I am immensely proud of, and thankful for, every American who wears the uniform of our country, especially at a time of war, and I believe it would be a mistake to repeal the [don't ask, don't tell] policy.

This successful policy has been in effect for over fifteen years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.

This from the "moderate" and "independent" "rogue" of the Republican Party.

Really? The "most professional force in the history of our country" can execute 2 wars but can't handle honest queers in their midst? And the latter should not be able to list their beloved to be informed should they tragically die in the service of our country? Or to be able to have a partner visit a VA hospital when they return? Or to even comfortably and safely talk with a loved one, not just when on the battlefield, but when captured by the enemy? John McCain, hero of vets and the champion of our current war-fighters, considers this grotesque discrimination and affront to the common morale "successful." And no Republican said a word against him.

FUCK YOU JOHN MCCAIN!!! I would wish that your next cancer gets you good, but I'm not as grotesque and hateful as you. Or your former captors.

I voted for Obama. Don't ever ask me why again.

Arguments Vs Political Positioning Concerning Afghanistan

Galrahn at my favorite naval blog, Information Dissemination, provides a great commentary of Obama's speech regarding the increase of military forces to Afghanistan. Were that our cable channels so thorough and cogent. My favorite part, which touches on my earlier post:

Obama: Now, let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period. Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions and to explore all the different options, along with my national security team, our military, and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and our key partners.

Information Dissemination: This is absolutely 100% accurate, and why people who have been crying about the Presidents "delay" are simply uninformed. Look at the historical statistics of casualties for OEF. Which armchair general on Fox News or anywhere else believes for a minute that the President has been wasting time? Whoever that person is; that is the person who I guess thinks we need to move our Army into Afghanistan just in time for winter.

Good strategy Mr. Political Talking Point... lets be like Napoleon and Hitler in Russia? On second thought, by acting now, we have time to prepare for the Spring offensive while the enemy huddles by the fire in their cave. In other words, we use mother nature to get a head start. That is the narrative that isn't mentioned in the political talking points, but I assure you is discussed in the DoD.

I know we have more to do in Afghanistan and that we have to do it. I find the whole endeavor distasteful, yet necessary. It's the best bad medicine that we can swallow now that the infection has been allowed to linger.

I Find This Funny

I used to say that if the US Navy wanted to know where the first Chinese SSBN was, they need only put two sailors out on opposite sides of San Francisco bay with hollowed out styrofoam coffee cups and place the rims to the water: that should be enough to triangulate its position.

Apparently, those two sailors are going to need to move to Hawaii: the new Chinese SSBN is noisier than a 70's-era Soviet clunker.

The problem is, the Chinese diesel-electric submarines are very quiet and only getting stealthier. That ups their home advantage, which may be all that counts with us. But if they want a global navy, they are way behind.

The Military Proves Lasers May Not Be Boring

Zap!

The footage I posted of an air-based laser clumsily cutting through a car engine pales in comparison to the above photo: a ground-based laser taking out a UAV. What's better, it used a "relatively low laser power" system.

Surely a nuclear engine of a carrier can support this level of defensive firepower...

Lasers Are Boring

Below is the result of decades-long development of a military laser, here placed on an gunship.



Lasers are boring.

(B)V-1 Beetles

I really don't know what to think about this. It's either a great advancement towards getting my Jude Law-bot body or a scary omen of an insectoid robot-zombie holocaust.



Either way, I welcome my automaton-beetle overlords and beg for assimilation. Unless they can do that shit with squids.

A Great Article About Secretary Gates

From Wired:

Robert Gates: Overhaul the Pentagon

Beyond The Republican Assertions About The End Of The European Missile Shield Program

The guys over at my favorite naval warfare blog, Information Dissemination, sum it up:

We seem to be heading towards one of two conclusions. Either big time sanctions are applied on Iran, or Israel attacks Iran by the end of the year. Today's actions suggest Russia will support the sanctions, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

They, like me, support this move by Secretary Gates. As the last post on this blog reiterates, the State Department is ill-equipped to handle the change, but it's a good one.

We have THAAD and Aegis (and the Israelis have Arrow). Theater ballistic missile defenses work. To continue to throw money at a system that would require massive expenditures to be deployed in a decade is retarded, especially when the whole point of the "shield" was to intimidate Russia. A few well-placed F-35s and F/A-18s, along with THAAD and Aegis, could do just as well.

Uh Oh

Military rumor mills are buzzing:

• Ramadan ends on September 19.
• Iran has stated that it will continue its nuclear program, even as we agree to hold talks.
• Did Netanyahu go to an undisclosed Arab country on Monday?
• Did Netanyahu go to Russia this week?
• Without anyone saying anything, Putin states that attacking Iran is unacceptable?
• At the same time, we have deployed an unusual number of submarines.

Could be nothing, but there is another issue: the disappearance of the Arctic Sea. On the positive side, Le France has urged Russia not to sell air-defense missiles to Iran.

All of this could be a confluence of unrelated events. I'm not panicked, but I would not be surprised if war broke out within the next couple of weeks.

Speaking Of Carriers...

Here's a pic of potential B-2 fodder, the Chinese remodeling of the Russian carrier Varyag.

Apparently, China doesn't like Russia's island.

Even the Chinese aren't dumb enough to think that one carrier, or even a modest fleet of them, would ever engage the US Navy except during the most tense of diplomatic stand-offs. The point of a Chinese carrier is to protect interests abroad, same as ours. Should the US ever go to war with China, the US Air Force (with the power of Super Jesus behind them) would explode whatever warships our submarines didn't sink long before our carriers got within striking distance.

But having a carrier, even an old bad one, is better than none at all. And getting one signals China's wish to evolve into a global military power.

The United Kingdom Joins France (Kind Of)

The UK has started work on their new carriers, the first of which is the HMS Queen Elizabeth. What a horrible name, considering their current, aging carriers are named Invinsible, Illustrious, and Ark Royal. But then again, our next aircraft carrier is sadly named the USS Gerald Ford. I guess "Midway," Coral Sea," or "John F. Kennedy" seemed too political for a Republican congress to name a major warship class after...

HMS Queen Elizabeth, a medium carrier capable of catapult launches

Here's the good news: the UK has quietly stated that it will be buying F-35Cs instead of F-35Bs. The F-35Bs are the short take-off and landing versions of the F-35 Lightning 2, designed to replace the Harriers. The F-35Cs are the American carrier versions, which means that the UK carriers will support both catapults and arresting gear. In other words, they will not be light carriers: they will be oil-powered medium carriers.

Better 2 medium carriers than 3 light ones. Or even 4 light ones.

Le France may buy one, though they prefer nuclear power. I predict they will forgo these and instead build another nuclear carrier.

Here's my hope: with a medium, catapult carrier design going into production, maybe other European navies with light carriers will follow. If Spain and Italy build a medium-class carrier each, based on the British design, and France builds another large carrier, then we are golden. A European Union with 6 good carriers (and Japan with 3 light ones) will contribute more to global security than our having 1 over 10. And I question how we can ever justify a navy with over 10 supercarriers (and over 8 amphibious assault/light carriers) after 2020.

One Of These Is Not Like The Other Ones

Take a look at the list of "The Most Religious" Colleges in the US. One can't help but notice that 2 Alabama "institutions of higher learning"--Samford and our arch-rival Auburn--make the list. I wish those were the most disturbing entries, but they are not. Take a look at #14:

United States Air Force Academy

I could go into a huge tirade here, but I'll leave it to this: who planned the disastrous Iraq invasion? The one where we bombed the infrastructure of a civilian population that was supposed to welcome our occupation (and proselytizing) with flowers and candy as they died in the dark of dysentery and chaos? Here's a hint: they believe in Super Jesus, American Christian primacy, and the John-the-Revelator apocalypse somewhere between a backwards Birmingham Southern Baptist fundamentalist bible college and an east-of-nowhere shitstain public university called Auburn.

The Air Force Academy is in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Guess who else is located there: Focus on the Family, the disgusting anti-Enlightenment group of stupefied bigots headed by the odious James Dobson.

The Air Force is in charge of most of our nuclear arsenal. Sleep well...

The Navy's Next-Generation Advanced Attack Fighter

For about a year now, the Navy has been testing a pimped up Super Tacono to provide close air support for SEALs. The Air Force may follow.

Then Get On With It

Obama recognized June as Pride month.

"The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done," he said. "LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect."

Obama also reiterated his support for hate crimes legislation, civil unions and federal rights for LGBT people, outlawing discrimination in the workplace and ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law "in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security."

Well, what's stopping you? End DODT now: one stroke of a pen ends throwing gays out of the military (legally, the President can end military discharges in wartime based on whatever criteria he sees fit), and Congress can do the rest if pushed. And tell those reprobates in Congress to repeal DOMA this session (or as soon as Al Franken is in the Senate, in any case).

Like any minority tied to one party, we're taken advantage of in November, then promised the fulfillment of promises until the party's power is lost. But we have a card to play with the DNC: we don't have to show up to the polls in 2010 or 2012. And if "No more Mr. Nice Gay" is going to mean anything, that card needs to be played.

And Obama might want to reconsider his stance on gay marriage since, on that issue, he is to the right of Darth Cheney.