The past has shown that emails are not secure, no matter how secure the experts try to make them. The government is very good at keeping secrets from us, but very poor in keeping secrets from our enemies. Many years ago the great Fats Waller wrote a song that went, I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter. That’s where we are. Were I elected president of the United States I would immediately issue an executive order that no one in the Executive branch was to use email, that all communication was to be by hand delivered letter where possible, and the US Mail for out of DC. I would strongly urge Congress to pass legislation binding all Congressional employees to comply with these regulations. I would also have all elections by paper ballot. Any Federal employee violating these common sense orders would be doing hard labor throwing voting machines into the nearest river.

I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter
And put it in my desk and lock the drawer
And make those Russkie hackers go one better
And show Assange and Wikileaks the door
Before the war, the big one, the Pacific
We had a Sec of State who used to rail
At Intel guys, and just to be specific
He screamed no gentleman reads others’ mail
That’s where we are now that the lids have blown off
And nothing in the ether is secure
From prying eyes and shortly will be shown off
And do we really want to go to war
Because Gmail and Yahoo, even Outlook
Can’t keep a secret and don’t even try
In fact they do not care and I much doubt took
The simplest measure to deter a spy
But they are not to blame for Clinton’s treason
In putting our top secrets up for grabs
For money, and for her no other reason
Let’s see she ends with prison weight hijabs

I first posted this on 7 December 2010, and have re-posted it every December 7^th since then. I was in 7^th grade, and remember lying on the floor the Monday morning, reading the paper, looking at the photographs of the burning and sunken ships. I still see the basket masts of West Virginia, Wee Vee to her crew, still see the crew of a ship’s boat approaching a burning ship, still see the smoke and desolation of ships torn apart, burnt and capsized. Those pictures are seared in my memory.

BATTLESHIP ROW

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 17^th 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

It was recently reported on local television news that Philadelphia is still counting absentee and military ballots and that the Trump state-wide lead has shrunk from 70,000 votes to below 50,000, or 0.8% of the total votes cast in the State of Pennsylvania. If the Democrats discover more uncounted votes in desk drawers and car trunks to get the Trump lead down to 0.5%, that would trigger an automatic state-wide recount.  The Democrats always had the final Philadelphia vote total in their back pocket with uncounted absentee ballots. As reported some few years ago by the Philadelphia Inguirer, a staunch liberal Democrat paper, on a Sunday before the election Black churches in Philadelphia hand out absentee ballots to the people in the pews, who sign the absentee ballots and give them back to the ushers who turn them over to the Party to be filled out later, with most of the people then voting for real, as they see it, in the election. So the Philly Democrats have as many absentee ballots at their disposal as they need. But even if they upend the Pennsylvania vote and tip the state to Hillary, they still need both Michigan and Wisconsin to get her to 270 electoral votes. That isn’t going to happen, though I would keep an eye out for Detroit to fortuitously find a vanload of uncounted absentee ballots in a warehouse. What appears to be the motive for the Jill Stein/Hillary/Soros maneuver is to buy time to get a triggered state-wide hand recount in Pennsylvania and hope for a hand recount in Wisconsin and Michigan in order to prevent Trump from getting 270 electoral votes on 19 December, and even though he would still get many more than one half plus one of the Electoral votes cast, and be elected president, they could then claim he was illegitimate. I fail to see to what end this is all being done, other than pure hatred and the desire to shove a stick in the eye of everyone who voted for Trump. But I feel it must be more than that. We just don’t know yet what it is. Would they be spending all that money just to vent their spleen? I don’t think so. The Left does not admit defeat. Like vampires, the Left believes your blood is theirs to take.

The vampire, the living dead
They have a blood lust thirst to slake
And like the Left they live in dread
Of daylight and the wooden stake

The European Union was a unifying force that kept the peace among historically fractious elements. But so was the Hapsburg Empire. And, like the Habsburgs, who, like the Bourbons, knew nothing and forgot nothing, the European Union is equally historically ineffective in keeping the scam going forever. The European Union had a decent run, but only at the sufferance of the United States, and once that ended, as it did unofficially in the minds of most Americans some time ago, the jig was up. The EU is on the verge of dissolution as the European people revert to nationalism in the wake of the Muslim immigration fiasco foisted upon them by the EU. The guard is changing, but the ceremony may remain for the tourists to admire.

Well fashioned caps and spit-shined boots
Did at one time impress recruits
Who thought the palace would be played
For centuries, and thus arrayed
The palace guard with shouldered arms
Would keep the peasants on the farms
Where they could sing and play and dance
Enjoying socialist romance
As Brussels wrote incessant rules
For those it suffered being fools
But now the fools have had enough
And caused the ship of state to luff
The flapping sails lose steerageway
Thus raising shouted cries, Belay!
The sheets run home, the ship sails on
Into the light of rising dawn
Her crew lined up on every yard
And cheering as they change the guard

There is much fake handwringing about fake news today, but if we didn’t have fake news we wouldn’t have any news at all. Not surprisingly, fake news is not new. Quite possibly the first published fake news occurred more than three thousand years ago when the Pharaoh Ramses II, returning home with the remnant of his shattered army after being smoked by the Hittites at Kadesh, had a series of large stone reliefs erected on the outer walls of the Ramseum at Thebes, depicting an Egyptian victory over the heathen. The fake story was believed by historians until the late 19th century when archaeologists discovered the Hittite capital of Hattusa and found, in the palace library, baked clay tablets and seals signed by the Egyptians setting the terms of the suspension of hostilities, with the terms highly favorable to the Hittites, indicating that the Pharaoh had not been entirely truthful. Naturally enough, many archaeologists refused to believe the evidence of their eyes and disputed the accuracy of the signed agreements, preferring to remain enchanted with the lie rather than believe such an outcome could have occurred. We find this attitude prevalent today in people who still maintain that CBS News anchor Dan Rather’s fake documents designed to unseat President George W. Bush in the 2004 election were genuine, or if not genuine, then at least accurate. And now the Democrats have orchestrated a fake news blitz claiming, without a shred of evidence, that the Russians elected Donald Trump, and we can expect more fake news as Democrats are now trying to get a recount of the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania so that they can steal the election, as they have so successfully stolen elections, by fraudulent recounts, in Washington State and Wisconsin in the very recent past. I include myself in the list of believers in fake news so long as the fake news is delivered by someone I trust not to do so. And therein lies the rub. I have watched documentaries of WW2 and listened to the voice over state the most absurd things I know to be not true but will watch a documentary on polar bears, about whom I know nothing, and believe every word.

If all the news we hear is fake
And all the fakes are news
What disposition can we make
Of one another’s views
I read the Internet of course
And television too
And yet while I believe the source
That doesn’t make it true
I scratch my head and think aloud
Did Cronkite in the booth
Did Walter Winchell do us proud
Did either tell the truth
I know so little when compared
To what there is to know
So that is why I am prepared
To take my news real slow
And wonder if those fake reliefs
On modern temple walls
Reflect not news but false beliefs
And juggled bowling balls

Jill Stein, Green Party nominee for president, has been joined by the Hillary Clinton campaign in asking for a recount of the vote in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It is clear Stein is a stalking horse for Clinton and the radicals in the Democratic Party who want to turn the United States into a banana republic. No recount will overturn the votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania to give Hillary 270 electoral votes, so the reason for the recount is clear: send the election into the House and Senate when the recount delays those three States from certifying the results before 13 December, in which case Trump will not have 270 votes when the Electoral College meets on 19 December. The Republicans control the House and Senate so they will doubtless vote for Trump, but if that happens, and the precedent has been set, then no president will ever again be elected by the people unless his party also controls the House. And maybe, just maybe, Hillary can win this in the House, despite the odds against. One State, one vote. Would a Soros billion be enough to persuade the persuadable?

Jill needs some jack to climb the hill
And Hill needs time for her to kill
The vote denying her the prize
That shone so brightly in her eyes
Unjustly taken by the rubes
That sent her reeling down the tubes
Hill cries Delay! All will be well!
And we’ll survive election hell
A Clinton never knows defeat
A Clinton never will retreat
We’ll win this thing by hook or crook
Just give those votes another look
And maybe money can’t buy love
But cash and favors just might shove
A GOPer to change sides
I love these roller coaster rides
And on the day I take the oath
Back to the White House for us both
And when I raise my clenched right hand
I’ll tell you all to go pound sand

Donald Trump heads the revolution against the Washington establishment, but he did not create the revolution, the revolution created him. For there to be a revolution there must first be a movement, and the movement must then find a leader or create one. The anti-establishment Tea Party movement was crushed by the Republican Washington establishment, forcing the Tea Party and its supporters to look elsewhere for leaders, and they found that leader in Donald Trump. The descendants of the people who built this country were faced with having their country taken from them by the Democrat and Republican establishment and given to people who had no part in its history or construction, and the finally aroused people elected Donald Trump and are marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks, determined to keep their country by pitching the establishment in the Potomac.

The people with the pitchforks claim
Corruption is thy middle name
To be burnt out by torch and flame
The Republic thus restored
We have our man, his name is Trump
And into baskets heads will thump
The bodies to the city dump
And death thy cold reward
The people with the pitchforks know
That slime filled swamps with offal flow
If not cut down will only grow
And now it’s to the sword

The German magazine Der Spiegel ran a cover story explaining how the election of Donald Trump meant the end of the world. And they were absolutely correct. The election of Donald Trump, along with Brexit, shows that the growing fear, loathing and anger in Europe at the open borders policy of the Leftist elite governing class that has flooded Western Europe with unassimilated and unassimilable third world Muslim foreigners into their midst has resulted in the people of Europe preparing to replace the current elitist ruling class with people who care about the future of Western civilization and the safety of European populations. And to that extent Der Spiegel is correct – the world as they know it, the leftist elitist run socialist world that Der Spiegel knows and approves of, is dead.

Der Spiegel cries, The end is near!
Not knowing that end is here
For fascism in smiling guise
And so to them the big surprise
Will come when shortly they’ll be gone
As surely as the coming dawn
Will usher in to Europe wide
Renewal of the nation’s pride
In what the West means to Der Welt
The art and science that has spelt
Extended lives for all of us
All without fanfare, boasts or muss
The rise from poverty of those
Whom nature and bad leaders chose
To keep in bondage to the soil
Dependent on incessant toil
To end their lives as old young men
Who choose not to remember when
With Brussels gone, forever dead
And future reads what Spiegel said
They’ll smile and wonder how it felt
To be there as Trump changed Die Welt

When Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington, and as the redcoats stacked their muskets after the battle of Yorktown in 1781, tradition has it the British Army band played a ballad called And The World Turned Upside Down. Yesterday, with the Trump victory over the established order, the American political landscape has been turned upside down. The entirety of the Western world is turning upside down politically as we watch, fascinated. First Brexit and now Trump, and soon the creaky progressive Leftist Western European Blue Model European Union is dissolving as the Left elites watch helplessly. And it truly is the world that is turning upside down, for the West is still the leader in science and technology, and without the supine Left allowing that science and technology to be turned against us by people who could not, by their unaided efforts, pour a concrete patio. The people of the United States and Britain have voted for Nationalism, and Germany and France are soon to follow. How long will it be before the velvet glove again covers an iron fist.

The world is turning upside down
Long nightmare at an end
The people want a king and crown
Not everybody’s friend
Who says the borders do not mean
That we are separate
And so we welcome the unclean
The mad, the desperate
The people of the West have spoke
They want their countries back
They view their countries as one folk
And so the Left must pack
And leave most quickly in the night
From every Western town
And province till they’re out of sight
And the world’s turned upside down

Anthony Weiner, a man who has given sexual perversion a bad name, may be the unlikely savior of the Republic. Ironic that the marriage of convenience to Huma may lead to Hillary wearing a permanent orange pantsuit. The revelation that 650,000 Hillary emails resided on Tony Weiner’s laptop, causing FBI Director Jim Comey to send a letter to Congress a week before the election saying he was re-opening the Clinton email case might have been just the straw that broke the back of the Clinton camel and moved enough swing state voters to vote for Trump. I believe Donald Trump would have been elected even had the emails not surfaced on Weiner’s laptop, but we will never know how much of an effect the Comey letter had. But Donald Trump is president-elect, and the country is saved. And what is more, unless Hillary is pardoned by Obama, she will face charges of violation of the espionage act and obstruction of justice, among many other crimes she thought she would never have to pay for.

For little girls there is no keener
Man alive than Tony Weiner
He likes ‘em short, he likes ‘em long
And now his emails sing a song
Of Hillary and email docs
That puts her now in a tight box
But will she squirm and wiggle out
Or run in circles, scream and shout
And will the Times and Post declare
The timing surely is unfair
Forgetting that we all despise
The folks who spring the big surprise
Just days before elections loom
To send the GOP to doom
What’s in these emails we don’t know
We’ll just sit back, enjoy the show
It’s over now, election done
The bitch is gone and Trump has won