#16 | Posted by SpeakSoftly at 2026-07-24 06:11 PM | Reply | Flag: Yup

[Joe Biden's] moderate delusion is what doomed the country to this nightmare.

The LA wildfires prevented Joe Biden from his last official trip to Rome to see the Italian PM and Pope Francis in mid Jan 2025.

Good that Biden didn't go. Pope Francis was in daily contact with the Catholic leadership in Gaza and the West Bank throughout Israel's pogrom and he was going to give "Genocide Joe" an earful.

When LBJ was facing the difficulties of the Vietnam War, he called ex-POTUS Harry S Truman for advice, because he fought a war against the Communists in Korea. "American Ceasar" five-star General Douglas MacArthur had passed in early 1964, which would have been the better man to ask with his 52 years experience in the US Army and the Pacific. Generalissimo MacArthur had already advised JFK about Vietnam in April 1961.

Basically, the conversation between two yokels circa 1965 went something like this:

LBJ: "So, Harry, what ought I to do about these darned North Vietnamese? They're driving me nuts!"

HST: "Lissen Lyndon -- and listen hard. When the Commies hit 'ya, hit'em back hard. Twice as hard! Get me? Twice as hard!"

LBJ: "Got it, Harry. And thanks."

~snip~

Same continent, Asian enemy, communists, but wrong dynamic and circumstances, and therefore wrong advice.

The North Koreans and CHICOMs were conscripts fighting for a dictator under the Communist banner and on an offensive to rid South Korea of a pro-Western regime.

The Vietnamese and Viet Cong were dedicated freedom fighters ousting the last vestiges of colonial rule in Vietnam, a brutal Catholic minority junta in Saigon. Ho Chi Minh only adopted communism because the USSR and China were willing to help him.

Result: ~500,000 US Servicemembers in SE Asia by 1966 and a lost war.

To this day, every Vietnamese person calls the 1955-1975 conflict "The American War."

Thanks, Harry!

The Israeli trolls are afoot on drudge.com today to distract us from the catastrophes in Congress and the Middle East. 75,000 Palestinians in Gaza butchered by the Israeli Death Forces (IDF) -- serial killers of the Middle East. Israel-caused quagmire in Iran for the American taxpayer as oil prices sky-rocket and the SPR may have to be tapped again.

Attacking Dummkopf Trumpf and Republicans on drudge.com for Israeli trolls? EZ peezy.

Pointing out the foreign interference in our government from AIPAC on drudge.com? Distract and deflect.

And "$" with Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn -- mid-1970s West German cine -- involved an elaborate bank heist in West Germany. Two of the characters are US Army black marketers.

Ha!

Good one, Doc Sarvis.

And good afternoon to you.

Like radioactive elements with half-lives, there are half-truths.

After D-Day, a rape epidemic swept Europe. Yup, the "Greatest Generation." And our boys from Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, and Phillie organized gangs, just like back home and pilferred away. Some became bank robbers in France, and the post WWII French govt honored them for being good "Bosch killers."

The Allied forces suffered 50,000 desertions in Europe; zero in the Pacific Theater of Operations (nowhere to go for the GIs, right?).

Literature and cinema touched upon these deserters and gangsters: Kelly's Heroes (~1970), Brass Target (1976) about GIs stealing Nazi gold and killing Patton to cover it up, and Charade (~1962), a non-Hitchcock thriller about OSS agents hiding Nazi loot for them to recover after the war. The Bamboo Curtain covered GI gangsters in occupied Japan. Robert Stack played a US Army CID agent in the first American film made in Japan after the war (~1955).

Gotta cook dinner now and then a chukka of bridge.

More later, Doc Sarvis.

I finished On the Beach just now. There is no violence or sex, lots of platonic love and functional relationships -- and Nevil Shute develops his characters empathically. We feel for all the victims.

He has a smooth prose, although he overused the word "equable" when other synonyms would have worked. The editor might have caught that for Mr. Shute.

There is only one reference to a firearm (page 153), when the captain of the submarine wants to leave an "automatic" for a sailor who will die miserably of radiation poisoning.

The author named the captain of USS Scorpion "Dwight," possibly a subtle nod to Eisenhower who was POTUS at the time.

Like other novels and stories written by British authors in the 1950s, America is seen as a big brother and good friend. In The Day of the Triffids (1951, John Wyndham), a Londoner is expecting the Yanks to come to their rescue from their catastrophe. All unlike today thanks to Dummkopf Trumpf.

Besides being a cautionary tale, On the Beach is also a story of military discipline, as Nevil Shute was a British military veteran and weapons developer. Duty, discipline, and a code of honor is emphasized all the way -- even to the "final day" in this tragedy.

If FDR had Democrats like these to work with, all of Europe would be speaking German today, every Jew would have been liquidated Gaza-style, and in the US we'd be living in Hoovervilles without social security.

Oof!

The leader of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon was 250 years old. He was a French Jesuit missionary who was rescued by the monks centuries ago, eventually becoming their "High Lama." His Jesuit education and experience was probably welcomed by those Tibetans.

Father Perrault stressed enlightenment, education, tranquility, and kindness (above all) as the secret to longevity. Of course, Shangri-La is shut off from the world and they have a pure, natural and unique environment. Imagine a world of no chemicals, radio signals, artificial preservatives, microwaves, pollution, background radiation, noise, and we can envision Eden. The Westerners eventually depart to spread the new "Gospel."

A fine companion piece to Lost Horizon might be The Razor's Edge (1944, W. Somerset Maugham).

A disilluioned Westerner, part of the "Lost Generation," Larry Darnell [sic] returns home from a lengthy sojourn East and tries to enlighten his wealthy, but venal friends. He has mastered exotic yoga techniques and spreads kindness everywhere, like the High Lama wants -- shocking his old pals. For example, his friend suffers from strange migraines and Larry helps him overcome them with mind control and then he helps an alcoholic get off booze.

Larry is not a complete Buddhist per se, because he also used violence to rescue a female friend of his from drug abusing human traffickers.

"Be kind."