Dunkirk 2017

It came by Netflix, and I watched it on my Sony flatscreen last night.  Lots of dramatic shots of British soldiers in deep doo-doo, bombs falling, tide going out, few to no boats in sight, struggling in the water. Many pitiful scenes of British soldiers standing in line on the sand, (queuing up the British say) waiting for a vessel to take them home. One group takes a stranded fishing trawler out into the Channel.  They spend most of their time below decks shouting at each other.  I kept wondering why they stayed below, rather than out on deck where they could see where they were going and who was coming after them.  Lots of shots of RAF fighters going out at low level.  RAF pilots looking and sounding cool as cucumbers under fire.
   Although the camera man did things right,  turning on the lights before filming, the sound man bungled badly.  He never muted the score and the sound effects when characters were speaking.  That, combined with modern actor's tendency to mumble their lines, caused a good deal of the dialog get lost.   Fortunately there wasn't much dialog.  I never caught the stage names of any of the characters, mostly because nobody ever addressed any one else by name.  And with the exception of the two teen aged boys aboard the old codger's yacht,  nobody had any connections with friends, family, sweethearts, warbuddies, any other human being.  There was no protagonist for us audience to rally behind and root for. 
    The movie never told us that we were watching a turning point in WWII.  Hitler could have won the war that day.  If der fuhrer had stayed off the telephone and let his best tank general, Heinz Guderian, commander on the scene, do what he wanted to do, the British army (every soldier Britain had) would have been surrounded and taken prisoner of war.  Instead, Hitler feared that Guderian's panzers were too far out in front, they might be counter attacked. He ordered Guderian to stop and wait for the bulk of the German infantry, marching on foot,  to catch up with him.  This delay gave the British time to evacuate.  This fact comes right out of Guderian's after-the-war memoir. 
   Britain nearly gave up the fight that summer.  They had been driven out of Norway, driven out of the Low Countries, driven out of France.  They had sacked their prime minister and installed Winston Churchill that very week.  The entire British establishment, members of parliament, the press, academia, the churches, business men, the entertainment business (we call ours Hollywood, dunno what the Brits called theirs) were against fighting the war.  Many of them had fought in the First World War, and they were not going to do that sort of thing, ever again.  And Germany had more people, more industry, more advanced science, and looked invincible. 
   Hitler was offering the Brits a deal, You Brits let me keep all of continental Europe, and I Hitler will let you keep your overseas empire and your Navy.  A lot of Brits were ready to take this deal.  Not Churchill.  Newly installed as prime minister, Churchill had to rally his country.  The British rank and file were more tough minded than their establishment.  The rank and file didn't want to kowtow to the Nazis, and were willing to fight.  They figured they had whipped the Germans twenty years ago and they could do it again. But in June of 1940 everything was in flux.  If the Germans had taken the BEF prisoners of war that would have been a tremendous downer to all of England.  As it turned out, the Brits got nearly every man, 350,000 or so, off the Dunkirk beaches and safely home.  That did a lot to steady things down and build support for Churchill.  
   If the evacuation had failed, Churchill might have been turned out of office (he had a lot of old enemies going back forty years) and Britain might have signed a deal with Hitler.  Which would have made launching the D-Day invasion from Britain impossible, and deprived USAF of bases from which to bomb Germany. 

Don't talk to cops, they are out to getcha

Advice to President Trump.  Special Council Mueller is out to get you.  He will take anything you say to him and twist it to make you look bad.  Your best bet is not to say anything to him.   I'm sure all your lawyers are telling you this already.  If Mueller wants a private interview with you, tell him to get a  subpoena from a real court.  Not that rubber stamp FISA "court".  If you have things you want to "get on the public record"  tweet them.  Tweets go right out, the way you want them to.  Anything you say to Mueller will get twisted before it becomes public.

Congressional Earmarks and Donald Trump.

Can you taste the pork yet?  Earmarks were a scheme whereby CongressCritters could order federal taxmoney spent in their district on pet projects.  Like that bridge to nowhere in Alaska.  CongressCritters loved earmarks, after getting one, they could brag about it back in their district.  We rvrn got one some years ago, Former Senator Judd Gregg managed to pull down $492,000 to renovate the Littleton Opera House, a well loved antique building, standing on a prominent site in downtown Littleton. 
   The incoming Republican congressional majority from 2012 voted to outlaw earmarks as pure pork and a total waste of taxpayers money.
   Yesterday I heard our boy, Donald Trump, praise the earmark system and suggest bringing it back because it was the one thing that could achieve bipartisan support.  "You vote for my earmark and I'll vote for your earmark".  Earmarks might have been something that drew bipartisan support, but bipartisan or not, voting for earmarks was voting to waste a lot of taxpayer money.  I'd druther spend less rather than get bipartisan support for pouring good money down the drain.  

"bloody nose" versus "regime change" strike on NORKs

We are hearing talk today, in the Wall St Journal, and PBS, and the other TV newsies about taking the military option with the NORKs.  A "bloody nose" strike, which would do some damage, perhaps take out a missile site, or shoot down a missile after launch, or something,  but the NORKs would recognize that it was just a  minor slap in the face rather than the opening moves in a total war to wipe them out.    Dicey.  Lets think about Little Rocket Man, in his secret headquarters, watching on radar the warplanes crossing his borders, violating his airspace, headed for important installations.  What's Rocket Man gonna think?  If he thinks the Yankees are coming to hang his ass, he will probably order an all out strike on the South right then and there. 
   Let's think about something else in the military line.  How about a regime change strike?   We just put a smart bomb thru Little Rocket Man's bedroom window.  Boom. Instant regime change.   Do it right, a single stealth aircraft, after dark, flying low, and the NORKs won't know what we are doing to them until it's too late.  For good measure we could hit secret police headquarters and army headquarters at the same time.
With Little Rocket Man turned into dog food, it will take 'em a few days to settle things out and give orders to attack the south.  And the new regime might be ready to listen to reason and negotiate rather than start up the Korean war again.      

Head Shrinkers and the Goldwater rule

The Goldwater rule, goes back to 1964 when Goldwater ran for president against LBJ.  A bunch of shrinks opined in the public press that Goldwater was mentally unstable and unfit for the presidency.  In short the shrinks called Goldwater crazy.  Goldwater sued them for libel. 
   The American Psychiatric Association, after the election was over and the smoke had cleared, issued a rule that shrinks must not opine about the mental conditions of people they had not met and examined in person.  Which makes sense.  If you haven't examined the person yourself, what do you really know?
     And, in the few cases where you have examined the person, that makes you the doctor and the person your patient.  For a doctor to talk/write about a patient's mental or emotional state is a clear violation of ethics, common courtesy, and ordinary politeness.  Should my doctor  discuss my health, physical or mental, with anyone, I would be deeply offended, offended enough to find a more honest doctor ASAP.

Are burglars tele casing my place?

I get a lot of strange phone calls.  When I answer, all I get is silence.  So I hang up.  Are they calling to see if anyone is home?  So they can burglarize the place in safety?  Even though I have little in the place of worth to a burglar or a fence.  About the only worthwhile items are a seven year old Sony flat screen TV and a HP laptop. 

How can two ships collide 200 miles offshore?

Surely all ocean going steamers have radar in these days?  The Ramore Head, upon which I sailed to Europe in 1956 had a very good radar on her bridge.  Southwester, a 42 foot wooden sailing yacht, had a decent radar that could pick up ordinary buoys at a couple of miles when I sailed on her twenty years ago.
   Now we have video of a supertanker, engulfed in flames, 2-3 hundred miles off of Shanghai China. The newsies say she collided with a freighter carrying grain.  Were the bridge crews sound asleep?  Surely the radar on both bridges showed the other vessel approaching?   Chapman (Piloting Seamanship and Small Boat Handling) has an entire chapter on right of way and rules of the road.  The Officer of the Deck is required to know all the rules by heart and follow them.  Both ships were far out to sea, free to maneuver in any direction without fear of running aground.
  So what really happened?
  For that matter we have never heard what really happened aboard those two Navy destroyers that collided with merchies last year.