The Onion, a US magazine given to satire and practical jokes, published an article declaring that the fat, jowly, dour dictator of North Korea, Kim Jon Un, was the sexiest man on Earth. The Chinese and North Koreans picked this up, and not understanding the nature of the Onion, believed it, and praised the Onion and Kim for the honor. One wonders why a North Korean magazine didn’t honor the little fat guy before this? They don’t have much time. Famine once again stalks the glorious Communist country of North Korea, and this time the Army is going hungry. And the army has guns.

 

A magazine calls Kim Jong Un

The hottest man on Earth

Or so says NKs famed Un Yun

Which never deals in mirth

Whose latest issue’s cover shows

Young Kim in all his glory

Surrounded by his fawns and does

But that’s another story

And still another story line

The Un Yun doesn’t mention

Insist they must that all is fine

Or face lifetime detention

But showing now are regime cracks

As hungry men are arming

And cries get Un off of our backs

Grow more and more alarming

The Un Yun though, like US chums

Still kiss the man in power

And glory in their ill gained crumbs

Despite the late late hour

 

China, which survived the Japanese in WW2 only to be submerged in the Communist wave shortly thereafter, is stirring the somnolent Japanese into an action the Japanese public does not want to do, namely re-arm. With the American umbrella gone, the Japanese find themselves alone against a resurgent China. And so they build the ships again, only this time without the pagoda mast.

 

Was it just in the past

That the pagoda mast

Saw the dawn in the South China Sea

When the fierce IJN

Ruled the waves now and then

Heavy cruisers and fast sleek DD

Yes the bright Rising Sun

Snapping proud on the run

From Rabaul all the way to the Slot

Where so many then found

The name Iron Bottom Sound

Was for them a cold watery plot

Now the band plays again

The renamed IJN

May return to the South China Sea

Modern ships sleek and fast

Sans the pagoda mast

With an ancient foe off to the lee

 

For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. This is an old wives tale that applies only when the subject of the action reacts, which the Obama administration seems incapable of. China is stirring, using its new found muscle to intimidate its neighbors, demanding rights to islands and minerals claimed by others, notably Japan and the Philippines. The Philippines has a handful of old American Coast Guard cutters, but the Japanese are another matter. The Japanese, recognizing that the American umbrella has been folded and put in the closet by Obama, now know they must re-arm, and that means the creation of a new Imperial Japanese Navy.

 

When China stirs ever so slight

Their neighbors look around in fright

To see if someone strong is standing by

And heretofore a strong man stood

Prepared to do the things that would

Dissuade the Chinese and they did not try

For in the distance they could see

That big gray ships kept others free

And so the region kept a wary peace

But now the big gray ships are gone

The sun sees now an empty dawn

And China sees its plans have a new lease

And so the Japanese must arm

And put their ships in way of harm

And gather little folks under their wing

Who looking ‘round in wonder hear

The East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Is back as though the war meant not a thing

 

Sticks and stones led to clubs, clubs led to spears, spears led to bows, bows led to gunpowder, and gunpowder led to the Manhattan Project. And so it goes. At every step the carnage grew. At every step man comes closer to returning to sticks and stones.

 

Chivalry is dead, the embattled man cried

Leaning heavy against his stout horse

Dead and buried beneath the sharp incoming tide

Dead beneath the foul uncaring gorse!

He paused to take breath then resumed his sad tale

Edged weapons are things of the past

A man is now had for a two penny sale

And good chaps like I cannot last

I’ve killed men in battle but never in spite

‘Twas always but simply our way

To fight true and fair is the code of the knight

To think I should see such a day

As seen on this ground, a changed thing to amaze

And good men lay dead where they stand

As unseen projectiles are now the new craze

With men like I swept from the land

He sobbed in despair as he saw in his pain

A future where noblemen died

At the hands of the rabble both dirty and plain

Then he hefted his sword and he sighed

‘Tis over, my friend, in a world that’s gone daft

With everything worthy laid low

While I who spent years in perfecting my craft

Am slain by a man with a bow

 

One of the lessons of the past election is that half the country is now on the gravy train, and they voted to keep the train running. And it is running, running straight for the washed out bridge and into the gorge where all socialist gravy trains wind up.

 

The roadbed crew laid down the stones

The ties set down and square

The gandy dancers drove the spikes

The rails lay straight and fair

Behind the crews the engines sat

Their boilers banked and low

Each carriage filled with screaming folk

Enraged the pace was slow

The rails crept forward, gathering speed

Across the fruited plain

And at each stop more people climbed

Aboard the gravy train

 

The Obama administration has again demonstrated its complete mastery of the art of foreign policy by the way in which they tasked Qatar to be the middle man in the brilliant scheme to arm the Syrian rebels without Obama’s fingerprints being on the venture. The administration has run into the same problem it seems to always run into, the bedeviling problem of unintended consequences. Qatar has quietly sent US arms, intended for the Syrian rebels determined by Obama as being more or less friendly, to al Qaeda and other radical Muslim jihadists. The administration, of course, has expressed outrage, but is it sincere outrage? Is the arming of al Qaeda truly an unintended consequence, or was that the intended consequence from the beginning? Is this a case of unintended intended or intended unintended?

 

Obama basks in compliments

As an unintended consequence

Sees arms and ammo given to wrong guys

But who says they’re unintended

When so easily pretended

And when found out can evince such great surprise

So when guns go to jihadis

Just perhaps it was the Mahdi’s

Guys Obama had in mind the whole darn while

From behind the man is leading

And it seems he is succeeding

And the unintended consequence his style

 

Will Assad use chemical weapons? Will Assad leave quietly as Obama has demanded? Can Assad leave at all? The ruling Alawite ruling class, a minority in Syria, understand full well that if Assad leaves they will be slaughtered, and so it is in their interest to see that Assad stays in power, and they will do anything to keep him in power.

 

If you wish you can surely then threaten a

Guy who has studied the retina

And his pupils who think

If Assad dares to blink

That they a thick noose will be getting’ a

 

The eye of the god on papyrus

Shows that Horus had quite a large iris

With the falcon god gone

Down the hill with the dawn

Assad cries we won’t quit till they fire us

 

A bunch of hackers who call themselves Anonymous have released secret emails revealing that Iran and Syria are supplying weapons made in Belarus and Ukraine to the Palestinian terror organization Hamas. But didn’t the recent cease fire signed by Hamas and Israel specifically call for Egypt to see that no such weapons are supplied to Hamas? Of course it did, but anyone who thought this would be honored by Egypt, Syria, Hamas or anyone else also believes Unicorns live in lairs. What are we to make of this? Well, for one thing, nothing is secret once delivered into the ethereal void via email or twitter or anything else.

 

Do unicorns really have lairs?

Are stallions horned but not the mares?

When boarding arks, they go in pairs?

The answers are not known

Are emails secret and secure?

As secret as behind closed door?

Does anybody know for sure?

Anonymous has shown

That secrets are things of the past

When emails to the winds are cast

That everything is known real fast

And then your cover’s blown

The universe is surely queer

What e’re you say someone will hear

So whisper secrets close and near

Not email or the phone

 

Wanting above all else to be on the winning side, the Obama administration is trying to decide who to back, if anyone, in the Syrian civil war. I spoke to a Washington insider familiar with the White House discussions, and he said he was at a loss for words.

 

I fear I’m at a loss for words

Who shall I back, the Turks or Kurds

The Chechens now are not nice guys

And Assad should have stuck to eyes

Egyptians want to blast the Sphinx

It’s dangerous for one who thinks

That finding partners in this fight

Will turn out easy, turn out right

But Obie’s running things right now

And searching for to find out how

To smile and use the press to spin

That we have helped the last man win

Which makes us friends both wise and kind

And all from leading from behind

 

Today is the anniversary of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an attack that left the battleships of the US Pacific Fleet burning hulks on the bottom of the harbor. Guts and valor are words not usually associated with inanimate objects, but ships are not inanimate objects. Ships are live, living things. Ships, as well as men, can be tough and resilient. Such were the ships of Battleship Row.

 

0755 SUNDAY, 7 DECEMBER 1941

 

A quiet, peacetime Sunday morning. Seven battleships swung gently at their moorings; Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and California. Pacific Fleet flagship Pennsylvania was in drydock. When the attack came, half their crews were ashore, and most of the officers. None had steam up, for it was Sunday, and all was at peace. Except Nevada. Nevada had steam. Nevada could move. At the height of the attack, with burning and exploding ships all around her, already severely hurt by a torpedo to her port side, Nevada, under Lt. Commander Francis J. Thomas, senior officer aboard, broke out her big battle ensign and stood down the channel, heading for the open sea. Sailors on the burning ships cheered and threw their caps in the air, but Nevada’s gallant sortie was short lived. Five Japanese dive bombers laid her low, beaching her.

 

The battleships were ultimately raised and rebuilt, those that were salvageable. They rejoined the fleet, but the war had passed them by. It was a carrier war now, and the World War 1 era battleships were too slow, could not keep up with the fast carriers. They were relegated to fire support, and accompanied the Marines in their march across the Pacific, bombarding the beaches, their 14 and 16 inch guns trained on palm trees instead of dreadnoughts, declared unfit to do the job for which they were built. Until Surigao.

 

SURIGAO STRAIT, 0351 TO 0409 hours, 25 OCTOBER 1944

 

Vice Admiral Nishimura, with a force of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, was heading for the Leyte beaches and the soft-skinned, vulnerable transports, still loaded with troops. Standing across his path was Admiral Oldendorf, and six old fire support battleships, all but Mississippi on Battleship Row that Sunday morning in December. The other five were California, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Oldendorf put his weary old battleships in line ahead, a Battle Line, as battleships had fought since the 17th century, and waited for Nishimura. At 0351 the big guns lit the sky. Oldendorf brought his big ships across the Japanese front, crossing the T, the dream of every admiral down the centuries, doing to the Japanese what Togo had done to the Russians at Tsushima nearly forty years earlier. The Japanese fought back, but when Nishimura turned away his battleships were gone, along with most of his heavy cruisers.

 

Surigao was the last battleship to battleship action of WWII, and very likely the last big gun surface action battleship fight the world is likely to see, and it was fought by ships that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor and returned to life. Ships, like men, can be judged by their deeds, and some, like the ships of Battleship Row, by their sheer stubbornness, their refusal easily to die. Ships, like men, are alive, and though it took the ships of Battleship Row almost three years, they gained their revenge in the only way they knew how. With their guns.

 

 

Torn by bombs, wracked by fire

They settled slowly to the harbor floor

Breathing their last, or so some thought

But not they

Rising, they joined their kind

Who scorned them now

As the young scorn the old

The slow

They did their job

Plodding the vastness of the central sea

Island to island

A supporting cast

Gaining no praise

No, that was for the young

The swift

The carriers

Until

Until

That blessed night

When called upon to be themselves

They were

Themselves and more