Discovering Cable News

I didn’t know what cable news television was until I took our state utility truck in for repairs during the late 1990s.  Up until that time I’d always watched news on my rabbit ears 19 inch TV.  Dealerships had big screens in their waiting rooms with something new to me – cable television.  Oprah, Judge Judy, and Dr. Phil were big at the time, but I didn’t care anything about that fluff except I liked the way Judge Judy took no guff from those who appeared before her.  Cable news was longer and better covered and it was glamorous.  Case in point: FOX News and its stable of blonds.   It was a time when men were men and women were actually attractive.  I remember Gretchen Carlson, a pioneer the employment of beautiful women in cable television.  Rupurt Murdock knew what he was doing.  Of course, that’s sexist, but sex sells.

On the other hand there’s MSNBC:  transgender this and LGBT that.   I have enough trouble getting past the “talking with hands” mannerisms, let alone wondering if Rachel Maddow has an Adam’s Apple.  If I want to find out what the red brigades are up to, MSNBC is the place and it’s actually fun because they follow the socialist and communist playbook so closely.  (I did a blog post on Halloween at MSNBC) Is there anyone there who’s not a militant atheist?  Who’s the almost-white chick with the braids?  Stop waiving your hands and talk slower.  Those of us from the Hustings can’t understand what you’re saying.  Perhaps we’re too simple.  All we get is that you hate white men, come from an oppressed minority, interview wretched like-minded leftists, and get a big fat paycheck for doing it - probably from an old white man.

CNN and Anderson Cooper are getting better.  At least he has a nice looking haircut and doesn’t tell us he’s a homosexual all the time.  Who cares?  Not all the world is a Bruce Jenner telling the world to “look at me.”  Thank you very much.  Currently, I’m sticking with Bill O’Reilly because he doesn’t hide what real people think like the other cable channels do.  Real people know the country is irretrievably lost because they have eyes and ears and a memory.  I wish Hannity would ask real people real questions in one of his town-halls.  He’s got the bad habit of asking only celebrities and experts.   Of course, you can argue cable news isn’t real reporting in the tradition of Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Morrow.  It isn’t.  It’s entertainment and we must pay the price.

29 Palms: Live Fire

This is what Outpost Crampton looked like in 1978.  It was a part of reserve Marine Corps training at 29 Palms, California in the Mojave Desert.  Any resemblance to civilization is merely co-incidental.  The wooden buildings are permanent and are occupied by succeeding units that overlook the valley where the armored battalions maneuver under live fire conditions.  APCs reach 155 degrees on the inside.  Where we were on the mountain top it was only 120 degrees.  The first photo shows the ingenuity of Marines.  Wherever two or three rocks are gathered together, Marines will make their homes.  I remember we had no cots and slept in tents infested with rats.  One discovered my unopened can of peaches two feet from my head.  He picked it up with his paws and sniffed it, bit holes in the top, and sucked out the juice.  Our Vietnam veteran corpsman had warned us by relating the story of how the rats used to attack the eyeballs of Marines while they were sleeping to obtain their body salt.  Standard amenities at Crampton included a 4-seat non-partitioned toilet they called something else.  Navy corpsmen would burn off the contents only on certain days when we were down wind.

 

The next photo is when the planes and artillery opened up on a target.  One A-4 jet from El Toro streaked up to us on the west side and fired his neon colored missiles upside down as he crested above us.  Captain Anderson in white t-shirt looks on and SSgt. Vest (seated) enjoys the view.  If I remember correctly, the guy taking the picture in the middle is Pvt. Malko, soon to be the official photographer of Hq. Co. 24th Marines, Kansas City.  Note the panorama and the smaller mountain ridge below the big ones.  Our regimental S-2 shop had spent several months making a terrain model of the area out of newspaper, sugar, and flour.  To our surprise it didn’t make it to the Palms.  Mice had eaten it in transit, but still, preparing models are part of the intelligence function.  Our shop was set up in one of the wooden buildings and it was typical.  Our desks were olive drab blocks we had to unsnap and unfold.  I suppose they had been that way since the Civil War.  Of course, we had the situation map with red and black grease pencils and overlays.  Today with computers, it’s all changed.  I was the only divisional level trained intelligence analyst, a rare bird.

The only thing good about Outpost Crampton was when flew back to Camp Wilson. The first person I met after landing was from a New York unit, a beautiful Puerto Rican girl near the wash racks.  She teasingly sprinkled water in my face – the nicest greeting I ever received in the Marine Corps and a real morale booster.  Sadly, I learned in 1980 when we came back to the Palms for CAX80, she had been stabbed to death in a jealous rage.  The last photo shows a bunch of us getting ready to catch the bus for the trip home.  We had staged our gear and I hold my ever-present water bag.  Sgt. Peak holds the soda pop and SSgt. Williams is next to him milling about smartly.

National Police Strike

The plotters of the Left know when they have a good thing going.  They’ve found a perennial excuse to attack the police locally and nationally, the allegation of police butality.  Of course, they’ve been using the race card for decades in their desire to establish a national police force like the NKVD or Gestapo.  Al Sharpton wants one.  It would be much simpler to establish a socialist state with no opposition if every police department was put under the control of a Blue Cap commissar in the Federal Government. 

In the waning months of the Obama Administration, the Fortuitous Convergence still tempts the crazies of the Left.  So the attacks began to destroy another institution – the police – by the old tired and true technique of provocation, crisis, and reward.  The big picture tells us that the Left is trying something new and more dangerous.  Capabilities beyond the imagination of the SNCC, SDS, and the Black Panthers (and more permanent) have arrived.  New technology has advanced their capabilities to dangerous level unappreciated by the Right.  With provocateurs armed with cell phones recording every move of the cops and with media complicity in non-stop coverage, they’re successfully bringing law enforcement to its knees.   Criminals are targeting and assassinating cops.   The Obama Justice Department is attempting a federalization which masquerades as reform. (see: Kelly File interview, J. Christian Adams  5/ 29/15, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department).

The best elements know their history too and have begun to fight back with a police Slow-Down in Baltimore.  Why protect the ones who are trying to kill or imprison you?  And why not meet a national attack on police with a “national police strike” counterattack?  It’s how our best elements can force the issue like Martin Luther King did when he made Birmingham in 1963 a national and international issue.  If President Obama tries to counter with the federalizing of U.S. police departments, the U.S. will become a dictatorship overnight and then the real game begins.

The Passing of Mr. Stockmyer

A few days ago on the Internet I learned John Stockmyer had died a year ago last month.  He was a history professor of mine from the 1960s.  The last time I saw him was about 15 years ago at a restaurant near River Front in Kansas City not far from Maple Woods Community College.  I think it was a departmental retirement dinner, but Mr. Stockmyer was sitting with another man close by.  Even after all those years I still recognized him.  I told my boss, “That’s Mr. Stockmyer, my old history teacher.”  I had to pay my respects, so I went over and introduced myself as one of his former students at Metropolitan Junior College.  (I also told him I was writing a book.)  He looked embarrassed by my compliments and when I returned to my table, I heard him quietly tell his friend, “He’s one of mine.”  I get a little misty when I think about it.

The first time I saw John G. Stockmyer in 1969 I thought he was one of us.  He had that rare gift of looking many years younger than he actually was, especially with his boyish mischievous smile.   After the bell rang he closed the door, unbuttoned his cuffs, and rolled up his sleeves.  He didn’t look like a history teacher, at least the ones I endured at Westport High School like Dave Morton, the TV weatherman who gave me an “I” in Colonial History which I deserved.   Nor did Mr. Stockmyer look or sound like Mr. Naismith at Metropolitan Jr. College in Kansas City – very pleasant, but uninspiring.  History to me meant just another teacher moonlighting from coaching basketball.

Things were not going well.  In the fall semester of 1968 I had withdrawn from a five hour course, General College Chemistry that kicked my behind in more than one way.  Fortunately, the instructor, who looked and sounded like Ben Stein (Clear Eyes), gave me a “Withdrawal Passing” grade which left me with just 12 hours that semester and eliminated my student deferment in 1968 the year of the Tet Offensive.  Mr. Stockmyer’s Early World Civilization, also a five hour course, got me back on track with a “B” and actually convinced me to make my major History and Art my minor.

In thinking about it after all these years, Mr. Stockmyer was the right man at the right time for me.  With his unconventional ways of teaching, he made history fun and better still, he made it doable; you could pass a seemingly boring subject.  I remember the silver Greek Drachma he used to pass around on “Things and Stuff” day which was every Wednesday.  With a gleam in his eye, he’d say something like, “Shriek, Shriek, Chuckle, Chuckle . . . We’re going to learn about the Pink Power of Pergamon today.”  He was also known for his Time Machine which I don’t remember.  He made history come alive because he incorporated all the senses, at least those that can be.  From the Internet I’ve read Mr. Stockmyer was the best history teacher in the United States.  For me, he certainly lit the spark and fed the flame.

George Washington Cherry

The Central Plains were not settled by a haphazard onslaught of land hungry pioneers.  The real ones were smart enough to follow the paths of least resistance up the Missouri River and adjacent trails to Independence and Kansas City using St. Louis as the ultimate source of supply.  In turn Kansas City became the hub which fed the Oregon Trail and the 800 mile long Santa Fe Trail. Westport, the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail, received supplies from Kansas City a few miles away.

The relevance of George, my great grandfather, is that he was the first Cherry to break from the Cumberland region, head west across the Mississippi River with the Independence Wagon Train, and found the Missouri Cherrys.  After 1850, he went west to California and became a gold miner in Jacksonville, Oregon.  George was a freighter across the Plains from Ft. Leavenworth to all government posts including those of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.  On November 1, 1855, he enlisted in the Oregon Mounted Volunteers in D Co. commanded by Captain Miles F. Alcorn and led by Colonel Robert Williams of the 9th Regiment.  At the time of enlistment, he was 5 ft. 11 inches tall, had a light complexion, blue eyes, black hair, and weighed 125 pounds.  He was discharged on May 28th 1856.

Shortly after this, he became a “filibuster” under General Billy Walker in Nicaragua where two hundred army soldiers of fortune fought against 20,000 Nicaraguans for control of that Central American country.  They succeeded for about a year until disease and starvation drove them out.  In November, 1857 George enlisted in the Utah Volunteer Battalion for the Mormon-Indian expedition.  The two stories I heard in my youth about George and the Indians happened here.  He scalped an Indian and left him for dead.  At a trading post some years later that same Indian came up to him and said; “You scalped me!”  George was supposed to have used a hollow reed in the water to hide from the Indians.  On December 12, 1857, he was stationed at Camp Scott, Utah Territory and became Captain of C Co. just three months after the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  He was discharged September 14, 1858 after walking 1200 miles back to Ft.  Leavenworth.  Prior to Kansas and Missouri, George had lived “3 years in Differnt (sic)Places in Oregon and Caliaforne (sic) and Utah” (sic).  After that, he lived “11 years in Kansas and 33 years in Mo.”

He then returned to Kentucky and married Sarah Parrish on December 12, 1858 in Barren County.  They packed up and went to Linn Co. Kansas for seven years.  This was during the time after the Kansas Nebraska Bill of 1854 which admitted Kansas as a free state.  Settlers both slave and free, were encouraged to immigrant there to tip the balance in favor of their particular political persuasion.  “Bleeding Kansas” was not a good place to be.  The newlyweds had no sooner got to Kansas than the severe drought of 1859-1860 happened.  When my grandfather, Isaac Anderson Cherry was born to George and Sarah in Olathe, Kansas April 15, 1861, the War Between the States began.

Last Call for Race Riots

Where do we go from here?  The April riots are over and the hot months of July and August 2015 approach.  The “Fortuitous Convergence” of Left wing forces is still operational.  All the “civil rights” stars aligned: black President, black Attorney General, black mayor, black prosecutor, and the Media hungry for dramatic events and ratings.  Pinch me.  Am I living in another Reconstruction America after the Civil War with its federal occupation of the South?  With more than a half century of “loot and scoot” politics has time finally run out on the thugs and criminals that have made a mockery of law and order?  On the other hand, as one commentator on MSNBC gleefully noted; violence works.  Jesse Jackson knew that; so did Martin Luther King Jr. and Tom Hayden.  “When you riot, you get things.” 

In my studies of the 1960s era I was surprised by the intimate relationships between the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, the Left (CPUSA), and Democrats, especially John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.  In the largely unknown story, there was a remarkable co-ordination: tactical and strategic strategy, logistics (Ford Foundation), alliances (i.e. ACLU, Lawyers Guild), and above all, Media support and participation.  Someone could write a book about it, but the important thing to remember is these guys like Stanley Levison, Harry Wachtel, and Allard Lowenstein knew what they were doing.  So do people like AL Sharpton and our other present day rabble rousers.  It’s their thing and how they make a living – professional carpet baggers and snake oil salesmen.  Amateurs can’t sell Utopian ideas.  On the other hand, I think it’s fair to say, their nemeses in the intelligence agencies are good at their jobs too and know what the trouble makers know.  Time is running out on their race card antics.

 

If you’re going to riot, burn down another town, rob CVSs, or pulverize the cops with brinks (Kent State), do it in 2015.  (July and August are the traditional riot months in the United States.  See Facts on File, 5-Year Index.)  Both sides know their history, especially Republican strategists who, I believe, are still shedding crocodile tears over Ferguson and Baltimore.   Don’t riot in 2016 because that’s Election 2016 and the Republicans will be waiting with a Nixon-like “law and order” candidate.  Next stop: another Republican landslide.  The last part of 2015 should be a healing and forgetting period after the projected summer riots.  If riots occurred during the presidential debates or conventions (Chicago 1968) in 2016, it would be disastrous for the Left.  Again, I say the Left is calculating about its timing in the application of destruction and violence.   History shows July and August are their favorite months, in this 2015, their final glory hours of the Fortuitous Convergence.

29 Palms: Heavy Metal

In 1978 the Soviets had their new T-72 tank.  In our S-2 shop, we didn’t know too much about it. In the Marine Corps Reserve, we still had our old M60 tanks produced in the early 1960s.  Twenty-nine Palms is where I first saw ours in numbers because that’s where tankers go to have fun.  I’ve seen these guys drive around firing at targets all day long.  Fire streaks out of the barrel and if they miss, there’s a bright ricochet when the shell hits the ground.  I didn’t see any old hulks used as targets like I did at mortar ranges.  Tires are used instead.  The guy in the picture isn’t having any fun because his tank was out of gas. (Can you believe it?)  He told me all he needed as a funnel and he’d be on his way, so I got him one at supply with my ID card.  The M-60 is big and hot and they had no AC.  I don’t see how those guys in armor stand it; the surface temperature then was 144 degrees.  When I went through weapons orientation at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona our intelligence class got to crawl inside one of these beasts.  I remember they were reasonably cozy and the turret could be easily cranked manually if the power went out.

My job was with regimental intelligence – S2.  Operations (S3) dealt with American equipment and I have to admit Soviet equipment was my specialty.  CAX78 and exercises like it balances out the theoretical training of books and the class room.  My lowly rank excluded me from training at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, but still I read, especially one primary source account of real war by Chaim Herzog, an ex-Israeli intelligence officer.  He wrote the War of Atonement in 1975.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the Israelis advised us at 29 Palms.  I only saw them mixing with the officers.  Herzog’s account of their war five years earlier jived with all my intelligence training: advancing to lines of departure, diplomatic moves, rehearsals to crossing the Suez, Sadat recording brag sessions of Israeli generals from their previous victories, advancing to the attack on Israel in the morning with the sun blinding Jewish defense.  Then there was Task Force Zvika soundly clobbering Arab units.

The last photo is one taken in front of a 155mm Self Propelled (SP) howitzer.  These are the ones the Marines used before the 198mm came into service with a significant increase in stand-off range.  For those who do not know, the difference between a gun and howitzer is one of angle.  A “gun” fires directly at a target; a “howitzer” fires up at an angle.  Of course you have exceptions, most notably the German 88 which did both - best artillery piece of WWII.  The barrel of the 155mm rests at eight feet, my reach.  A 50 caliber machine guns protects against infantry.  In a day or so we were to stage our gear for the move to Outpost Crampton up in the mountains where it was 20 degrees cooler.  That’s where the combined arms were to be tested in the valley below the outpost.  I soon found out that these exercises are dangerous and people can get killed.