Two afflicted with Potomac Fever

Prior to the 1960 election there was some discussion about age and running.

Stan The Man Musial, born November 21, 1920, was considered getting too old to run.  Jack Kennedy who born May 29, 1917, was three and a half years older was considered too young to run.

Kennedy was about 43 and a half years old when he took office.

His predecessors:

Dwight David Eisenhower:  Was 62

Harry S Truman:  Was 61 when he took office

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:  Was 62 at his last inauguration.

Our country grew old with FDR.  Both Kennedy and Nixon were of a younger generation.

I feel that Obama's disastrous foreign policy is in part due to his inexperience (youth).  Comments on his foreign policy can be found at http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/obamas-flawed-foreign-policy-doctrine-laid-bare

According to the Urban Dictionary:

Potomac Fever (n): A disease peculiar to the greater Washington, DC, metropolitan area that presents chiefly as an intense desire in the infected to be associated with the power and prestige of the United States Federal Government, particularly the Executive Branch. Associated symptoms include acts of extreme obsequiousness to those in power or likely to be in power; asserting as fact things one knows or suspects not to be true and; a burning desire to do more work for less pay.

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz seem to be afflicted by Potomac Fever.

COUNTERINSURGENCY

FM 3-24 (MCWP 3.33.5) is the Field Manual on COUNTERINSURGENCY.  The digital copy has a left hand menu with the "FOREWARD" near the top.

It seems to be a compromise between FORWARD (as in march) and FOREWORD (as in word coming before or whatever).  I spent 2 years in civil service as a Department of Army civilian.  I have seen FORWARD many times.

This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It has been 20 years since the Army published a field manual devoted exclusively to counterinsurgency operations. For the Marine Corps it has been 25 years. With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also must be informed by contemporary experiences.

This manual takes a general approach to counterinsurgency operations. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros, or Tupamaros; the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each varies considerably. Nonetheless, all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people. They use variations of standard themes and adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan. This manual therefore addresses the common characteristics of insurgencies. It strives to provide those conducting counterinsurgency campaigns with a solid foundation for understanding and addressing specific insurgencies.

A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies. The balance between them depends on the local situation. Achieving this balance is not easy. It requires leaders at all levels to adjust their approach constantly. They must ensure that their Soldiers and Marines are ready to be greeted with either a handshake or a hand grenade while taking on missions only infrequently practiced until recently at our combat training centers. Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors. They must be prepared to help reestablish institutions and local security forces and assist in rebuilding infrastructure and basic services. They must be able to facilitate establishing local governance and the rule of law. The list of such tasks is long; performing them involves extensive coordination and cooperation with many intergovernmental, host-nation, and international agencies. Indeed, the responsibilities of leaders in a counterinsurgency campaign are daunting; however, the discussions in this manual alert leaders to the challenges of such campaigns and suggest general approaches for grappling with those challenges.

Conducting a successful counterinsurgency campaign requires a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders. It is our hope that this manual provides the guidelines needed  to succeed in operations that are exceedingly difficult and complex. Our Soldiers and Marines deserve nothing less.

This foreword was signed jointly by Lieutenant General DAVID H. PETRAEUS, US Army and Lieutenant General, JAMES F. AMOS, U.S. Marine Corps.

Overseas Contingency Operation needs beefing up

The Bush administration used the term War on Terror to argue a global military, political, legal, and conceptual struggle against both organizations designated "terrorist"  and countries which host them.  It was easy to transition from “host” to “do not dispel them”.  Washington pressured other countries to join them in the WoT saying that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."  Many countries joined. 

As defined, there are no civilian casualties in the WoT.

In 2013, President Barack Obama announced that the United States was no longer pursuing a War on Terror, as the military focus should be on specific enemies rather than a tactic. He stated, "We must define our effort not as a boundless 'Global War on Terror', but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”  In March 2009 the Defense Department officially changed the name of operations from "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation" (OCO).

The Unscientific Age

“The Unscientific Age” is the title of chapter III in Richard Feynman’s The Meaning of It All http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_It_All.  The last half of the 20^th century went downhill under the influence of Postmodernism.  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

The Unscientific Age –

“The speed at which science has been developing for the last two hundred years has been

ever increasing, and we reach a culmination of speed now. We are in particular in the

biological sciences, on the threshold of the most remarkable discoveries. What they are

going to be I am unable to tell you. Naturally, that is the excitement of it. And the

excitement that comes from turning one stone over after another and finding underneath new discoveries has been going on now perpetually for several hundred years, and it is an ever-rising crescendo. This is, in that sense, definitely a scientific age. It has been called a heroic age, by a scientist, of course. Nobody else knows about it. Sometime when history looks back at this age they will see that it was a most dramatic and remarkable age, the transformation from not knowing much about the world to knowing a great deal more than was known before. But if you mean that this is an age of science in the sense that in art, in literature, and in people's attitudes and understandings, and so forth science plays a large part, I don't think it is a scientific age at all. You see, if you take, the heroic age of the Greeks, say, there were poems about the military heroes. In the religious period of the

Middle Ages, art was related directly to religion, and people's attitudes toward life were definitely closely knit to the religious viewpoints. It was a religious age. This is not a scientific age from that point of view.”

Required reading: page 28 from http://bondalapati.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/8773894-meaning-of-it-all-by-feynman-nobel-laureate3.pdf.

Richard Feynman gave these lectures in 1963.  It will soon be 50 years (2.5 generations) ago.

It is time to elect an honest politician, one that does not have a detailed plan with the all the answers or even a good vision of “the city on the hill.”  George H. W. Bush had “a problem” with “the vision thing.”  He didn’t know where he wanted to lead us.

Anyone with a vision of where they want to lead us is most likely a Democrat.  A good small government Republican does not have such a vision.

In the 1980s, “Build it and they will come” was a credo.  Now, “Create it and they will abuse it” seems to be more and more appropriate.  Recent studies say that the people come first.  (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110124111142.htm.)

Michigan State University. "Build it and they will come? Think again." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 January 2011. 

Open Letter to JEB Bush

The Country does not want Washington to fix it.

Motion to Disqualify

A Motion to Disqualify has been filed.

And rejected.

Judicial Overreach

Federal:

In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court legislated same sex couples can get married.

State:

In Kaaa vs Kaaa the Florida Supreme Court overruled a state statute.

Local:

In Florida's 18th Circuit, Judge Charles J. Roberts is demonstrating judicial run amok.  His court was described as having an illegal goal by the 5th District Court of Appeals.

Document no. 194 dated July 16, 2015, clearly demonstrates that he is a judicial problem.
His ruling violates several legal tenants and is inconsistent with his remanded instructions.