WWII was won at Pearl Harbor.

 

Today is 7 December.  Seventy nine years ago on this date the Empire of Japan attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor.  This was one of the decisive world changing military actions of the entire war.  In the space of a few hours it complete changed American outlook on the war which had been raging for two years already.  Pre Pearl harbor Americans were determined not to get sucked into another European war. Not matter what atrocities the Nazi’s or the Japanese performed, we were NOT going to jump into the war no matter what.  We had done that 25 years before.  We had beaten the Germans but the overall results were not so good.  We had loaned the Allies (British and French mostly) huge amounts of money.  After the war most everyone welshed on their war debts to us.  And a bunch of peaceniks started up the “merchants of death” business.  They claimed that the arms makers had set off WWI to improve their arms sales.  And we took a horrible number of combat deaths.  The British and the French took even more, but we didn’t care much about that.  The whole ball of wax and ill feeling was called isolationism.  It got to Congress where laws to prevent us from ever going to war again were passed.  Isolationism was so strong that even Franklin Roosevelt, probably the strongest US president of the 20^th century could not go against it. 

   In a couple of hours that Sunday isolationism disappeared.  The 3000 casualties at Pearl Harbor were shocking.  Sinking the entire Pacific battle fleet was shocking.  Being attacked on US soil, thousands of miles from anywhere in Asia where the Japanese were active, without a declaration of war was shocking. Sneak attack we called it.  Americans were mad and wanted to kick some ass. 

   We were well equipped to do so.  We had a population of 100 million or so in those days, twice as much as the British or the French, nearly as much as the Russians.  We commanded a rich continent that yielded all the oil, coal, iron, wheat, beef, copper, timber, every natural resource imaginable, as we would ever need.  We had an industrial base used to producing 4 million automobiles a year.  No one else could do that in 1941.  We shut down domestic automobile production and converted the car factories over to producing war material.  Jeeps, army trucks, semi automatic M1 rifles, tanks, B-24 bombers, strange little secret agent hand guns, just about anything imaginable.  Although we didn’t have much of an army in 1941, we fixed that rapidly.   We were able to throw an army into North Africa six months after Pearl Harbor big enough and strong enough to decisively beat the Germans, under Rommel.

   We unleashed a whirlwind against Japan.  We sank their carrier fleet at Midway.  We put the Marines ashore on Guadalcanal.  We threw in airpower and seapower and more infantry to hold Guadalcanal.  We launched a submarine fleet that sank the entire Japanese merchant marine by 1945.  We developed and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Admiral Yamamoto said “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”  He had that right. 

   A more intelligent Japanese government would have gone far out its way to avoid antagonizing the United States.  We had absolutely no intention of getting into a war with them.  After we embargoed oil and scrap metal to them they could have bought all the oil they needed from the Dutch East Indies. 

Where did all the shaving cream go??

 My grocery store no longer carries shave cream.  Walmart had some but no brands that I reconized.  I wound up with a strange looking can, painted grey, and a no-name manufacturer.  It was the last can on the shelf.

  So what is happening?  Electric razors tanking over?  Guys working up a little lather from the bath soap bar?  Gels?  Guys giving up on shaving and growing beards?  Do I need to find a shaving brush and work up my own lather?  Anyone know?

And for that matter, Walmart no longer carries wool blankets.  They have nothing but fleece blankets, which are warm, silky to the touch, and cheap.  I was raised on wool blankets, we even had wool camp blankets at summer camp.  Do the kids go to camp with fleece blankets now?

TV still talking about who should get Corona virus Vaccine first

 Cool and all that.  But American industry will churn out enough vaccine for everybody in the world given a few months. 

They submitted the paperwork to FDA.

 And FDA is going to sit on it for two weeks.  Responsive they are. 

New US government computer model claims 100 million Covid cases

Of course, the model suggests that there are a lot of "cases" out their that didn't make the patient sick enough to see a doctor, or get tested.  Personally I believe that cases of a disease, corona virus or just plain old measles ought to diagnosed, by medical personnel, not guessed at by computer modelers.  Far as I am concerned, unless patient gets sick, shows symptoms, runs a fever, we don't have a case.  Right now they are calling every false positive from testing a case, even when the patient isn't sick.  And, this kind of imagineering of the number of cases, does crazy things to the death rate.  For the same number of deaths, if you call the number of cases 100 mil, the death rate drops down to practically nothing.   Plus we know that the medics are under a lot of pressure to call every death a Corona virus death.   

   There was a study, that got published and then got retracted a day or two later, that claimed that the over all US death rate (all causes) was about the same this year as it was last year before the Corona virus hit.  Which suggests that a lot of the deaths blamed on Corona virus would have happened anyhow due to patient age and other conditions.  

Anyhow, I am taking all the Corona virus statistics with a grain of salt.  Maybe a whole tablespoon of salt.  

His Dark Materials

 They made a miniseries out of the Phillip Pullman books (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass).  It plays on HBO and I got the first season thru Netflix.  I started on the first disc, and have watched the first two episodes so far.  It's not bad.  The landscapes and cityscapes are well done and convincing.  The daemons are well done.  I assume both are all CGI. The interior scenes, especially of Jordan College are beautiful and well done.  The airships look good.  
    They gave black actors a lot of parts in this one.  They all seem to be pretty good actors.
    It doesn't move all that fast.  After two hour long episodes we have only gotten Lyra picked up by Mrs Coulter and brought to Mrs Coulter's London place.  Lyra has just decided that Mrs Coulter means her no good and she slips out the window and runs for it.   The girl they cast for Lyra's part is really too old, too tall, and not all that cute.  The Golden Compass movie had a better young actress for Lyra's part.  
    I read the books, some years ago, so I could recognize the major characters and know their names.  The poor second string characters don't get names.  Nobody ever addresses them by name, or speaks about them and gives their name.  If you haven't read the books, you will need to pay very careful attention to the plot or you will get lost.  
   All in all, it's pretty good, I plan to watch all the episodes.  

Lotta whining, lotta bitching, Senate grills Big Tech

The senate has spend all morning grilling Big Tech, Facebook and Twitter.  Senators have complained about them.  No senator had the stones to propose any concrete fixes.  Such as using Sherman anti trust to break both of them up for being monopolies.  Break them into smaller pieces, let the pieces compete against each other in the marketplace for users and advertisers.  That will force them to stop objectionable activities such as censoring conservatives.