Are You Ready For Some ONT?

Well, tonight is opening night of the NFL season, Ravens at Chiefs. And if football season is upon us, that means that something else is coming up fast. Something...ominous.

Ship Of Fools

There is Dysfunction, and then there's USS Manchester (LCS 14) Gold Crews in 2023

As the ship prepared for a West Pacific deployment in April 2023, the enlisted leader onboard conspired with the ship’s chiefs to install the secret, unauthorized network aboard the ship, for use exclusively by them.

So while rank-and-file sailors lived without the level of internet connectivity they enjoyed ashore, the chiefs installed a Starlink satellite internet dish on the top of the ship and used a Wi-Fi network they dubbed “STINKY” to check sports scores, text home and stream movies.
Led by the senior enlisted leader of the ship’s gold crew, then-Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero, the effort roped in the entire chiefs mess by the time it was uncovered a few months later.
Marrero was relieved in late 2023 after repeatedly misleading and lying to her ship’s command about the Wi-Fi network, and she was convicted at court-martial this spring in connection to the scheme.
She was sentenced to a reduction in rank to E-7 after the trial and did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

Spy Vs Spy

“Havana Syndrome” is the Greatest Scandal in the History of American Intelligence

What the hell is going on here? wondered the American spies who proposed interdicting the GRU hit team and seizing their secret weapon. Clearly, the local COS was “just following orders” from CIA headquarters, what’s termed the “seventh floor” at Langley. Biden’s IC was determined not to have the weapon fall into American hands. Because if that happened, it would only be a matter of time before Congress found out and started asking questions. Such can’t be allowed, since that would require Biden’s intelligence bosses and their masters in the White House to admit that they’ve known the truth about AHI for years and chose to aggressively cover it up, as hundreds of Americans fell victim to this outrageous Moscow-Havana operation. Many are crippled for life. Others are dead.

Team Biden doesn’t want to know the truth. Indeed, they refuse to. One more time for the seats in the back: They don’t want to know.

This reads like a Tom Clancy novel, except that the bureaucrats in a Clancy novel are usually not incompetent/evil.

Ugly

Barack Obama's Monument to Himself Is a Hideous Eyesore

Located on a sprawling 19-acre campus in Jackson Park on the city's south side, the half-finished construction site is dominated by a 225-foot "museum tower" that looks like a brutalist tomb designed to house the remains of some tinpot oil sheikh or dictator from one of the ex-Soviet "stan" countries. The horrendous design was approved by a committee of experts including Caroline Kennedy's husband, Meryl Streep's ex-husband, and Democratic megadonor Fred Eychaner. A large portion of the self-monument will be engraved with words from one of Obama's speeches so that all may marvel at Dear Leader's eloquence. It certainly feels like a place where mere citizens are expected to make pilgrimage and weep in awe; one of the first things rebel forces would destroy after seizing power in a revolution.

What is it about Marxists and brutalism? Ugly inside, ugly outside?

If You Can Keep It

Biden’s Disappearing Act Reveals the Real Power in Washington

The executive branch now drives policy while Congress acts as an occasional, flaccid check on its actions. This is a total reversal of how our constitutional system was supposed to operate. From domestic matters to issues of war and peace, everything now flows through the presidency first and foremost.

But what we have isn’t quite Caesarism, at least not in the classic sense.

One man doesn’t run the show. In fact, it appears that the position atop the executive branch is more and more a ceremonial formality. Right now, it has been granted to Biden, who is being rewarded for his more than half-century of service to the Democrat Party with a career capper.

No, what we have is a different kind of Caesarism than that of classical Rome.

We have little Caesarism, with apologies to the pizza chain.

We are now ruled by millions of little apparatchiks burrowed in our Byzantine executive and legislative agencies. It’s a vast interlocking web of government bureaucracies that dictate federal policy more than our elected officials, whether members of Congress or the president.

The founders' genius was in recognizing that the only way to preserve liberty is to sharply limit exactly what government can do. If its reach is not limited, it will eventually encompass everything. We have failed utterly at preserving that vision, and unless we somehow regain it, this country will slide further and further into despotism.

I Shouted Out “Who Killed The Kennedys?”

RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY: The RFK Jr I know is a unifier, and just proved it

Simply put, it was immediately clear that he was a blessing: a man of principle committed to his values; a man who walked his talk; and a person infused in his personal faith and his faith in what this nation can be.

Time went by, and Kennedy announced his candidacy for President. It was frustrating to see how he was blocked out of the Democratic Party, which, in collusion with the mainstream media, was committed to reelecting a senile Joe Biden without any contest. It was clear that he had a great internal struggle about running as an independent, and that there was immense personal pain at the thought of leaving the party whose identity had been tied to his father and uncle.

But Kennedy is a dreamer and a man of faith, and so he chose to try to climb the “glass mountain” of running for President as an independent. And he was attacked in every way for doing so.

Ehh. I don't buy the RFK hagiography. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that he removed his name from the ballot in swing states (those that would let him), but he's a committed leftist on all but a couple of issues (MRNA Vax and corruption). If Trump gives him a place in his administration, it should be one that is narrowly focused on one of those subjects, and he should be ignored on everything else.

Jihad

You Can’t Defend Israel Unless You Talk About Islam

After Oct 7, Israel, like the Bush administration, called on a liberal consensus that no longer existed, and tried to rally public opinion against “barbarism” and “savagery”. But neither of those are motives. Rather than acknowledging what the enemy was and trying to build a coalition with other countries struggling against Islamic terrorism, Israel tried to appeal to liberals. And lost.
Israel had failed to define the enemy. Terrorist supporters stepped into that vacuum. Their narrative, easily familiar from even the briefest exposure to media and social media, is that Israel was oppressing a minority that had struck back as an act of resistance and liberation.

This is the same excuse used to justify religious violence by Islamic groups around the world against not only Jews, but Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and numerous cultures and religions.

The big lie that Islamic violence is socioeconomic and not religious, local not global, only works when no one talks about Islam or recognizes the larger pattern of Islamic violence for a thousand years that is being perpetrated on nearly every continent and against every culture.

Are Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists all the problem? Or is Islam the issue?

When we fail to ask this fundamental question, we lose the argument.

Islam does not play well with others. It's great to be tolerant and freedom of religion is a founding principle of the US that I agree with, however it is not unlimited. Freedom of speech does not include inciting violence. Limitations on any of our core freedoms must be rare, and extremely narrowly written, but they are necessary. Perhaps it's time to discuss how such restrictions might be applied to a movement that hides behind its status as a religion in order to be a destructive force. I'm not sure we're mature enough as a culture anymore to have that discussion.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by cow products:

posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM

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