Mark Steyn: Obama a tough guy, at least with Fox News
Benjamin Disraeli's most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: "Never complain and never explain." For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Churchill, Lincoln and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on "Orating With The Stars," Barack Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side. He tried it with health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end, and the more he explained the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it's time to sign on or else.
Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining. If you express concerns about government health care, they complain about all these "racists" and "domestic terrorists" obstructing his agenda. If you wonder why the president can't seem to find time in his hectic schedule of international awards acceptance speeches to make a decision about Afghanistan, they complain that it's not his fault he "inherited" all these problems. And, if you wonder why his "green jobs" czar is a communist 9/11 truther, and his National Endowment for the Arts guy is leaning on grant recipients to produce Soviet-style propaganda extolling Obama policies, they complain about Fox News.
Read the rest.
First? But if I stick up, that hammer will hit my head.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the result of an insecure administration trying to deflect criticism.
ReplyDeleteEither that, or they're so sure they're right, and that it should be so blatantly obvious to anyone else, that any criticism must be racist or whatever.
Or, probably, subconscious insecurity that results in a defensive attitude that they must be correct.
I must be crazy; I'm talking to myself. I'm the only one here.
ReplyDeleteActually, have to head out for a few minutes to clean up after the dogs
Little-known fact: football was invented by the Norsemen. The dwarves of NFLheim held the first pro football franchise.
ReplyDeleteGood Afternoon buzz. Hope you are enjoying your Sunday.
ReplyDeleteSo far, so good, thanks. You?
ReplyDeleteAmerican Thermopylae, 65 Years After the Battle of Samar
ReplyDeleteImagine looking through your binoculars and seeing one of the mightiest armadas in history barreling towards you at top speed. The power amassed against you can sink your entire fleet in ten minutes of shooting.
On October 25, 1944, this is just what happened to the US 7th Fleet. With a large part of her fleet already sunk, Japan's commanders made a make or break decision to defeat the anticipated US attack on the Philippines. They sent three naval task forces in a daring plan to get their powerful surface ships into gun range of the US carriers. To do this, they decided to sacrifice their remaining carriers. One task force got gunned to the bottom by a fleet of refloated Pearl Harbor battleships. The US 3d fleet sank part of Admiral Kurita's strike force but then made a very bad call, upon hearing Japanese carriers were to the north, Admiral Halsey broke north to attack the carriers. While damaged, Kurita's force was still one of the most fearsome group of ships ever assembled. With Halsey taken out of the fight, Kurita charged.
The US Seventh Fleet did not have a single ship with anything larger than a 5" gun. Adm. Kurita's flagship, the Yamato, not only was the biggest battleship ever built; its secondary armament of 12 6' guns could have sunk the whole 7th Fleet in an hour of shooting. Kurita had three other battleships PLUS seven cruisers.
The Japanese had the element of surprise and a massively inferior opponent. It should have been a turkey shoot with thousands of US sailors killed and the Kurita could easily have gone on to shell MacArthur's undefended landing zone.
But then something unique happened. An act of selfless heroism that it belongs as one of the greatest collective acts of heroism ever. The destroyer screen of the 7th Fleet made as much smoke as possible to hide the US carriers and then attacked Kurita head on. Head on. Four ships led the charge: the Hoel, the Samuel B. Roberts, the Johnston and the Heerman.
A single hit by a battleship round is enough to disable or sink a destroyer. The Samuel Roberts wasn't even a full destroyer; it was a destroyer escort, a smaller slower ship designed for escort and fleet duties.
These four ships went in guns blazing and torpedoes flying. The Hoel, Roberts and Johnston kept shooting even after they were repeatedly hit. They kept fighting with their ships on fire and blood of their fellow sailors on the decks. They never quit. They kept shooting even though it was an act of suicide to stand there. The Heerman, miraculously, fired almost every shell in its magazines and steamed away unhurt. While two small US carriers were hit, despite his unbelievable position, in a fluke of history that is still debated, Kurita lost his nerve and broke off the attack saving the US from a terrible defeat.
Sixty five years ago, a chapter of American heroism was written that may never be eclipsed. Today, we should honor the memory of these, the bravest of the brave. We cannot be Americans if we do not appreciate those who sacrificed all for the idea that our nation is worth fighting for and our society is a shared ideal that can only be preserved through self sacrifice for the greater good.
Since I first read of the Battle of Samar, I have always marveled at the heroes of the Destroyer screen at Samar. Please share the memory of these heroes' glory with others. Their story is known by far too few. Those wishing to learn more about the battle of Samar, Jim Hornfischer's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors cannot be more recommended.
Excellent post, AG. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHello all! Currently test-driving the new website...
ReplyDeleteWhoopee, did Blogger fix our avatars?
ReplyDeleteone more
ReplyDeleteand another
ReplyDeleteAre the Bengals that good, or do the Bears just really suck today?
ReplyDeleteThis will still have an avatar?
ReplyDeleteAha, 5 non-vanilla avatars and the game is up.
ReplyDeleteBTW, AG, what if anything do you know of the torpedo-plane sinking of the Haruna in the days following Pearl Harbor?
ReplyDeleteThis was celebrated by the Left back during WWII because the pilot of the plane was Irish, or of Irish extraction, and the bombardier was a Jew--so celebrating the victory was an early piece of multiculti celebration. Did these two survive?
*Sigh* I just ♥ Mark Steyn!
ReplyDeleteBBIAW,,,,
Thanks for the post on the Battle of Samar.
ReplyDeleteHaruna, a 26,230 ton Kongo class battlecruiser, was built at Kobe, Japan. Completed in April 1915, she operated in the Pacific during the First World War. While in the south Pacific in 1917, she was damaged by a mine laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Wolf. In 1927-28, she was modernized at Yokosuka Dockyard, emerging with only two smokestacks and a new forward superstructure, as well as with improved armament and protection. Reclassified thereafter as a battleship, Haruna was again modernized in 1933-34, this time at Kure Dockyard, raising her standard displacement to over 32,000 tons and giving her a quite up-to-date appearance. More powerful machinery and a lengthened hull gave the reconstructed ship a speed of thirty knots, making her a very useful battleship, though relatively lightly armed and armored.
ReplyDeleteDuring the Second World War, Haruna was extensively employed, often in company with aircraft carriers. In December 1941, she covered the invasion of Malaya. The first four months of 1942 saw her supporting the conquest of the Dutch East Indies, participating in a bombardment of Christmas Island, and participating in the Indian Ocean Raid. In June, she was part of the ill-fated Japanese carrier force during the Battle of Midway and was lightly damaged when a bomb nearly hit her stern. The Guadalcanal Campaign that began in August 1942 also brought Haruna into action. With her sister ship, Kongo, on 14 October she delivered a devastating bombardment of Henderson Field, the U.S. airfield on Guadalcanal. Later in the month, she was present during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and in mid-November operated with the Japanese aircraft carrier force during the climactic Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
Like most of the heavier Japanese warships, Haruna saw no combat during 1943 and the first five months of 1944, though she steamed north to Japan in May 1943 in response to the American landings on Attu and was in the central Pacific later in the year during the invasions of the Gilbert Islands and Bougainville. In mid-June 1944, however, the Japanese fleet was sent to counterattack the U.S. forces then assaulting Saipan. As part of the heavily-defended van carrier group, she took an active role in the ensuing Battle of the Philippine Sea and was hit by a bomb on 20 June. Haruna also participated in the Japanese Navy's final fleet action, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. She was damaged by bomb near-misses in the Sibuyan Sea on 24 October 1944, but steamed on to engage U.S. escort carriers and destroyers in the next day's Battle off Samar.
Stationed in Japanese waters by the beginning of 1945, Haruna was damaged at Kure during the U.S. carrier plane raids on 19 March. Still moored near Kure four months later, she was sunk by Task Force 38 aircraft on 28 July 1945. Haruna's wreck was scrapped after the war.
Dont' know much about it. :)
BSM- Haruna did not get sunk until 1945. The first months after Pearl Harbor were punctuated by defeat after ugly defeat.
ReplyDeleteAny claim if left glory in WWII is forever tainted by Stalin's pact with Hitler and his hideous waste of lives soldiers. For bonus points there is Mao's craven conduct during the war and Stalins policy of murdering most who were captured in the war.
While we're on naval history, battlecruisers were a WWI-era solution to the lower power of engines at the time. They had battleship guns, but less armor. The idea was they could sink anything they couldn't outrun. A battleship was armored against an equivalent ship; battlecruisers weren't.
ReplyDeleteOnce more powerful engines were available in the 1920's-1930's, they were obsolete.
The most famous battlecruiser is the HMS Hood. She had added armor, but not enough.
Good afternoon/ evening. I ran the Marine Corps marathon today along with 30,000 of my closet friends. (Yep, I'm bragging.) 4:37. I feel old. I was faster than Al Gore (4:54, 1997), Bill Frist (4:54, 2001) and Mike Huckabee (4:38, 2005) but slower than Oprah (4:29, 1994.)
ReplyDeleteI killed the thread!
ReplyDeleteMurderer!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Jim!
ReplyDeletePink- on killing the thread? ;>)
ReplyDeletePink- on killing the thread? ;>)
ReplyDeleteJust a characteristic of Sundays, Jim. We're all laid back today. :-)
Spiders on drugs.
ReplyDeleteDEZ said...
ReplyDeleteSpiders on drugs.
Roach! Roach! Kill It! Kill It!
Jim: congratulations, and a little tune for you:
ReplyDelete"Marathon" by Rush (audio only of studio version at GrooveShark; YouTube of live performance)
It's not how fast you can go
The force goes into the flow
If you pick up the beat
You can forget about the heat
[...]
It's a test of ultimate will
The heartbreak climb uphill
Got to pick up the pace
If you want to stay in the race
More than just blind ambition
More than just simple greed
More than just a finish line
Must feed this burning need
In the long run...
[Chorus:]
From first to last
The peak is never passed
Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes
One moment's high, and glory rolls on by
Like a streak of lightning
That flashes and fades in the summer sky
AG:
ReplyDeleteYou just fucking rocketh.
I shall research and learn. Thank you.