The Bering Land Bridge

A lot of talk about it.  The Bering Straits are shallow, and not all that wide, and it is thought that in long past times the seas went down and/or the land went up, and people and animals could cross from Siberia to Alaska dry footed.  A lot of speculation about how and when the Indians came to North America centers on when the land bridge might be open.
    What the land bridge enthusiasts forget, or perhaps never knew, is that man can cross the Bering straits by boat, given decent weather.  Say summer weather. The Eskimos used to cross regularly, up until the Soviets tightened up their customs enforcement after WWII and  started hassling any American Eskimos they caught on their side of the straits. 
     The Eskimos used skin boats, umiaks, to make the crossing.  Granted a skin boat sounds kinda flimsy, except the skins were walrus hides, a quarter of an inch thick and tough as fiberglass.  A umiak could carry a dozen people, and were strong enough to take the thrust of a forty horsepower outboard motor. 
    If today's Eskimos could make the passage, I dare say the ancestors of the Indians could make the same passage, about anytime they felt like it.  No land bridge required. 
    The recent publications about DNA analysis of an 11,500 year old Indian child from an Alaskan site all talked about crossing on the land bridge.  I maintain they could have come by boat, any summer. 

Cannon Mt Ski Weather

I have 9 inches of nice light powder on the railing of my deck.  And my deck is within walking distance of Peabody Slopes chairlifts.  It snowed all day Thursday.  No wind (despite weatherpeople predicting hurricane force winds) . So the nice new powder snow is still on the trails rather than blown off into the woods where it doesn't help the skiing at all.   Conditions are as good as it gets at Cannon.  Forecast is for cold over the weekend, so bring an extra sweater, a scarf, maybe even a face mask. 

Floating Fortress to bolster US Naval Power

Headline of a Wall St Journal op-ed on Saturday.  The writer, William Lloyd Stearman, long time National Security Council staffer,  laments the fact the the US has not done an amphibious assault since Inchon, way back in the Korean War.  He blames this on the existence of anti ship missiles that make it too dangerous to bring warships closer than 100 miles to land. 
   His solution a humongous 1000 foot long ship, displacing 125,000 tons, loaded with anti aircraft missiles and artillery, more artillery for shore bombardment, helicopter and VTOL fighter pads, and carrying Marines would be able to close up on the enemy coast, land the marines, and give them fire support.  "This ship could be designed to make it virtually unsinkable."  Yeah right.  This concept has been kicking around in various issues of Naval Institute Proceedings for years under the name of "arsenal ship".
  Sounds cool, but Mr Stearman seems to have forgotten WWII experience showing that if you put enough bombs and torpedoes  into the biggest ships, they sink.  Witness Bismark, Yamato, Roma, Prince of Wales, Lexington, Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu, Zuikaku, and many more famous capital ships.  
   To do an amphibious assault, first you need air superiority, air craft carriers and their air wings.  Once you have air superiority, you don't need an arsenal ship.  The aircraft take out the anti ship missile sites.  Then ships of ordinary size will do just fine. 
  I'm surprised that this guy was a National Security Council staffer for more than 15 years and has no better grasp of naval warfare than this op-ed shows.  

Lying to the FBI,

Should not be a crime at all, let alone a felony.  All the FBI has to do is interview/interrogate the victim long enough and they can catch him/her in a contradiction. Who can remember all the things they said during a long interrogation?  Just keep the interrogation up until the victim makes a mistake, and bang, you got him.  Lying to the FBI, a felony.  You can take the victim to court on that, even if you don't have any evidence of a real crime. 
   Far as I am concerned, we oughta get rid of lying to the FBI (or anyone else) as a crime.  Unless the victim is under oath, in which case false statements are perjury, the cops should be required to discover real evidence of real crimes (not thought crimes) in order to prosecute citizens.

Strange things in the modern Navy

According to Instapundit, the Navy ran a "climate assessment" survey aboard the two destroyers that collided with merchant vessels.  The surveys asked crew men about how short of sleep they were, how they felt about the ship, the mission, and the Navy.  And how they felt about their officers.  Basically the men reported being tired, overworked, and not too sure their officers knew what they were doing.
Wow.
I was an Air Force officer for six years back during the Viet Nam war.  USAF did not run surveys of any kind back in that day.  How the troops, both NCO's and enlisted men felt about me, my leadership, the Air Force mission, and fixing aircraft right was important to me.  I put in a lot of hours in my shops looking around and talking to the troops, likewise out on the flight line. I joined a stock car racing club the troops had organized.  I said nothing when the troops posted Lt. Fuzz cartoons on the shop bulletin boards.  I would not have benefited from or believed in a USAF survey.  I had seen how my troops had massaged the maintenance date reporting system to indicate that they were all working hard, and doing things right.  I would have figured the troops would respond to a survey with answers that they figured would do them good. 
  Gotta wonder about that Navy.  Competent officers keep in touch with their men and have a pretty good idea of what they are thinking.  They don't need "climate assessment" surveys. 
   The Navy has never given clear answers about how those two destroyers managed to collide with merchies.  Could it be that the entire bridge crew just fell asleep, letting the ship plow straight on under autopilot control?

Fantasy that the MSM keeps repeating

Fantasy #1.  Trump should/will fire special prosecutor Mueller.  Not likely.  Last guy to fire a special prosecutor was Nixon.  See where that got him.  Trump is smart enough to understand that. 
Fantasy #2   Impeach Trump.  The Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress and simply won't allow impeachment to go forward.
The MSM would do the country more good if they stopped pushing fantasies.

We oughta do something to help the Iranian protesters

The Iranian mullah government is hostile to us, supports terrorism world wide, and thanks to Obama, will have nuclear weapons shortly.  Anything we can do to make life hard for them we ought to do.  They are having some anto regime demonstrations.  We ought to assist the demonstrators
Favorable publicity on the net, the MSM, radio and TV is good.  We need to make contact with Iranian dissidents inside Iran.  That could be difficult since I don't believe we have diplomatic relations with Iran.  We need to tell CIA to get some agents inside Iran, even without embassy cover and diplomatic immunity. 
   Political dissidents can use money, weapons, internet access, passports and visas, airline tickets, satellite antennas, cell phones, xerox machines, lots of stuff, that we have and aren't all that expensive, compared to say a single new F35.