Year: 2017

Postcard From the Swamp #27

The winter Solstice is tomorrow and we can begin to get some daylight back and move toward Spring. The Swamp has been busy this week. Most of the action was on the tax bill, which like the Affordable Care Act, passed without a single bi-partisan vote. The FBI continues to melt down. Either a big […]

Japan-Gazer Update

平成29年12月18日 = (18 DEC 2017) (McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantoms of US Navy Fighter Squadron 151 fly echelon formation over Mt. Fuji. Photo USN). – – – – – = This week’s poem: Naval Station Great Lakes You stand the watch, hour after hour, Tired and bored, but alert Making decisions, wielding power, Over mostly trivial things […]

Arrias: National Security and the Debt

Several days ago I read a comment that an entire generation of social programs were being destroyed by the Trump administration. It was suggested that President Trump plans to, through the vehicle of the next budget, reduce funding to a number of entitlement programs. The individual further commented that our defense spending was far too […]

Skyraiders

So here we are- Christmas roaring down, the new year looming, and there is too much going on, nationally, professionally and personally to really deal with. I think this is going to go down as One Of Those Years when we think about it, as a prelude to something really big that might have been […]

Delusions

  Editor’s Note: This is a a feeble halting step in putting together the next book, while I await some editorial work on the recently completed first draft of the unconventional biography “Cocktails With the Admiral.” I did a pretty good job of keeping notes on the last years of my folks. It is a […]

Taps: Fred “Kool” Grambau

(Fred, wearing #92 goes after Quarterback Don Bunce in the 1972 Rose Bowl). 13 December 2017 Frederick E. Grambau (born August 30, 1950) at Salt Lake City, UT. He was with family at the time of his passing. Known as “Kool” to his college friends and team-mates (and #92 to his fans), he played college […]

Post Card From the Swamp #26

OK, so our current favorite bar is shuttering its doors on the 30th. One of our Polish lifeguards is back and determined to build a new life in America- on a tourist visa. I have no idea how to help. Yesterday, another jihadi attacked New York..and failed spectacularly. I am not going on the Metro […]

The Front Page

I like George, the affable Greek owner of the Front Page Bar, the watering hole whose tender embrace we sought when fabulous Willow shuttered i’s thick mahogany doors two years ago. Spirit of the season, I had to go to the UPS Store just up the block a week or so ago. Things for the […]

Arrias: On the Road to Jerusalem

At least our Ambassador will be, soon. Jerusalem sits at an historic crossroad: the northern terminus of an old caravan route that brought frankincense from the hills around modern day Aden, up to the major trade routes; if you then turn west, you entered Ancient Egypt, north led to Asia Minor, north-east and then east […]

Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF) To Get A Long-range Strike Capability

Editor’s Note: One of the basic tenets of American policy after the formation of the japanese armed forces in 1954 was that US would provide the external military capabilties of the the Alliance, while the Japanese would maintain a defensive posture. The North Koreans have changed that equation significantly. The landscape of East Asia is […]