Just Getting Started -- October 4, 2023

Locator: 45642ADLIB. 

Updates

October 6, 2023: her remarks on Trump no longer bother me.

October 6, 2023: I will never have anything more to do with the Republican Party after the way they treated Kevin McCarthy. 

For Donald Trump not to call the party out on this, there is no way I can ever support him again. Pure disloyalty. The whole party should be embarrassed.  Link: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/45-republicans-call-house-rules-overhaul-mccarthy-ouster-ashamed-embarrassed.

Almost embarrassing: the party did not embarrassed until "after the fact," "after the damage had been done." This is truly no different than bullying in high school.

Original Post

Kevin McCarthy; This will be a much longer note --- about all things non-Bakken, but only one thought now: Kevin McCarthy can hold his head high: he fought the good fight, and at the end of the day, he was one of the few adults in the room. To paraphrase an oft-quoted Hollywood aphorism, "there are no small political acts; there are only small thinkers." Kevin McCarthy was not one of them. 

I feel sad for the disenfranchised.  A millionaires' club was more interested in shutting down the US government to satisfy their egos rather than work to help the poor.

I do think that the torch was passed from Ronald Reagan to Kevin McCarthy, two Californians, a torch doused with a pail of water by small thinkers. 

Doused but not extinguished.

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0540 - 1000 Hours

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The Book Page

The Maniac, Benjamin Labatut, c. 2023.

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The Venerable B-52

96th Bomb Squadron. Link here.

Time lines:

• B-52: 1952 -- present.
• B- 1: 1974 -- to be retired by 2036.
• B-2: 1989 -- to begin replacing the B-1 after 2025.
• F-15: 1972 -- present.
• F-22: 1997-- proposed by DOD to retire training F-22s by 2024 (blocked by Congress); and, to have all retired by 2030.
• F-35: 2006 -- present.
• the F-35 first flew in 2006 and entered service with the U.S. Marine Corps F-35B in July 2015, followed by the U.S. Air Force F-35A in August 2016 and the U.S. Navy F-35C in February 2019. The aircraft was first used in combat in 2018 by the Israeli Air Force. The U.S. plans to buy 2,456 F-35s through 2044, which will represent the bulk of the crewed tactical aviation of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps for several decades; the aircraft is planned to be a cornerstone of NATO and U.S.-allied air power and to operate until 2070.