The Longest Wind

Good Lord. Can it be that long since President Obama first showed his arse to the world in a D-Day speech?

He's still fumbling for his Commander-in-Chief britches,  but in all fairness he has improved since the rhetorical embarrassment he uttered five years ago today when he proclaimed that the Normandy invasion was launched by generals who planned to fail.

Today's 2014 edition is less laughable, pretty good, in fact for His Ineptness. If you want to think he ordered his speech writers to study up on Peggy Noonan's  the boys of Pointe du Hoc gem I won't argue with you.

On the other hand, he forgot to remind his staff that maybe they might want to think about consulting someone who is at least casually acquainted with the summer of '44.

By the end of that longest day, this beach had been fought, lost, refought and won -- a piece of Europe once again liberated and free. Hitler's Wall was breached, letting loose Patton's Army to pour into France.

All I can figure is that his pollster told him Patton is a supremely recognizable name while Omar Bradley is  by now a whoduhhellizzat?  I mean,  George even had a movie made about him, and it is still getting decent numbers on teevee reruns.

On D-Day, Patton was giving speeches in England and commanding a ghost army of rubber tanks and plywood trucks to fool Nazis into believing in a main attack later across the Dover Straits. He was quietly training his real army -- the Third -- which went operational more than a month later, long after the first Normandy beach breakouts.

The point isn't Patton. It is a president who commands resources vast enough to inform him -- assuming he gives a damn --  that, among the Americans, Bradley and his First Army carried the load for weeks beyond "The Longest Day." It's basic stuff.

But maybe it is important only to old cranks who cling bitterly to the notion that when presidents speak their stuff gets written down in books and, therefore, the lower the nonsense quotient the better.

---

And then he read off his Teleprompter:

To the East, the British tore through the coast, fueled by the fury of five years of bombs over London, and a solemn vow to "fight them on the beaches." 

Just for the record, the quote is from Churchill in 1940 and had nothing to do with Overlord. Winston was rallying the home army -- and the home folks with shotguns and cricket bats -- to hold fast on the beaches of Britain.

Oh well. What difference does it make, anyway?

The unmasking of a president

In The Unmaking of a Mayor, William F. Buckley, knowing full well he would lose his race,  reflected:

I am running to advance certain ideas. It makes no difference to me who implements these ideas so long as he is a good administrator.  (Paraphrase)

Barack Obama's nervous jitterbugging on the five-for-one swap with Taliban terrorists illustrates the value of Buckley's words.

Obama says he told congress; then he apologizes for not telling congress; then he remembers that he really did tell congress but it was three years ago; and, besides, Bergdahl is a hero, or if not a hero at least another deserving American boy. Or. Maybe. I said. I meant. He's glad the hometown would celebrate the return. He understands why they canceled the party.

Proving that this guy is to the presidency as Barney Fife is to police work. Praying folks should petition their gods that the coming 31 months bring the nation no crisis requiring clear thought and administrative competence.

But .. but ... sputter ... sputter

You guys told me the world was getting hotter and that would make me colder up here in the north plains and, besides, all my buddies on the gulf and east coasts would get smooshed by dozens of giant killer hurricanes. I mean really whacked, bad enough to get lots of free stuff from FEMA.

And now you tell me it ain't so Joe?  Cooler Atlantic Ocean this year and a "slow" hurricane season?

My deep faith in the infallible accuracy of government and its climate scientists is beginning to weaken.

The Smokey Bear Gun Library ("adult" language)

It probably isn't as Mark Trail-twee as the Cabela's shrines, but the inventory came cheaper.

This guy in Wisconsin was a career game cop for the DNR. Over the years he busted hunters and took their guns, not because anyone had found them guilty of anything but because he accused them. This conforms to the letter of our tyrannical civil forfeiture laws, and Smokey would probably have endured to collect his pension except for one thing.

He kept them, if you believe the prosecutors. His excuse is that Wisconsin required him to have a home office, and that's where he stashed citizens' guns -- beginning in 2003, apparently.

I'm not going to take time to dig them out, but there are a number of TMR posts on the subject.  The general idea is that cops often have very nice gun collections assembled at astonishingly low costs.
---
And even if this guy had turned them in to his boss cops, there's that annoying Constitutional mumbo jumbo:

"...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
---
It just so happens that I'm working on position statements for my 2016 presidential campaign and decided to focus on crap like this after reading about government agents' lust for free stuff.  The platform plank is brief and applies also to the more formal confiscations by regular cops, game cops,  the IRS and its 50 state affiliates, and God knows who else in our multi-million corps of bureaucrats with badges. To wit:

CIVIL FORFEITURE:  Fuck no. If you want to take a citizen's stuff, convict him of something first.