Editor’s Note: The rhetoric flying around these days contains a lot of archaic terms- “White Supremacist” seems to be a favorite, which makes me remember when such despicable creatures actually existed, attacking children of color during integration times, and “KKK,” of whom there may be a few hundred sprinkled in a population of 320 million. […]

Editor’s Note: Japan-Gazer has ended his government career, and this is the first of his retirement essays. He will stay on as an ExPat, and his observations are as keen as ever in our most important Allie in Asia: Japan. With rhetoric rising between the DPRK and DC, he will have a ringside seat for […]

Editor’s Note: It was a couple cycle of advertising slogans ago for the recruiters, but one of the ones that resonated with me long ago was “Join the Navy and see the world!” We did, in grand style. But we were also seen by the world we visited. CDR Gilmore has a thoughtful appreciation of […]

Swamp Postcard I swear, you could not make this stuff up. no one would believe it. The address by the President drowned out the 140 MPH winds slamming Puerto Rico, right across the old Navy base at Roosevelt Roads. Mom always said, don’t work on the other side of a bridge from where you live, […]

As a function of habit lately, I got out of bed and shuffled to the living room to check on the storms. We are just looking at reporters under blue skies looking at heaps of wreckage. From what we have been hearing, a difference of just twenty miles in the storm track may have saved […]

(Pentagon, 11 September 2001. I thought I lost my whole GDIP Budget Staff. Instead, I lost my pals in the CNO IP). I have already been in tears this morning. I must be getting soft. Or just old. One of the cable networks was re-running the coverage from The Day sixteen years ago on the […]

(Poet and Empire story-teller Rudyard Kipling) Editor’s Note: In view of our renewed commitment to Afghanistan, it is worth re-visiting Rudyard Kipling, Poet Laureate of the British Empir, and recall his thoughts about the troops and service in that troubled land…and America’s longest war. – Vic Troop in’ (Our Army in the East) Troopin’, troopin’, […]

Yeah, another nuclear test from the NORKs, and warning of another atomic conflict, but they shouldn’t do the demonstration over Labor Day. It is wasting time. It is like they don’t get the news cycle and the popular attention span here in America. Let’s concentrate on things that matter. Yeah, I know summer doesn’t officially […]

The Cajun Navy stepped up, revealing the real America that the media doesn’t tell us about- wrong ‘meme,’ whatever that word means. I was never that clear on it. Steely Dan had a distinct voice- meme, message, whatever, but that is gone this morning since half of them- Walter Becker, 67- are now dead. I […]

I awoke way too early, and on my way to the end of the Internet, was only moderately surprised to see the North Koreans had apparently tested another nuclear device. I don’t think they realize we are not paying much attention to it, since we have plenty of stuff to occupy us right here, what […]