History & Comment for March 12, 2025

A look at historical and current events on this day, comment and humor so dry it would make a camel thirsty. 

Transcript

This is History and Comment for Wednesday the 12th of March 2025,

The Ostrogoths fail in their siege of what is left of Rome in 538.   This is more than 50 years since the last Emperor was deposed.   Historians date the Fall of the Eastern Portion of the Empire to the year 476.  While the Eastern Empire based at Constantinople will remain intact until 1453.   

The empire had reached its highwater mark about the year 370.  And almost immediately began a rapid decline.    

There are some interesting points.   One of Rome’s biggest issues was it became so large as to be uncontrollable.   Reaching from Hadrian’s wall near the Scotland border in the NW.  To the Eastern tip of the Black Sea on the NE and much of Egypt along the Red Sea.    Beginning with Emperor Constantine, there was a push to move the Government East from Rome to the City named in his honor. Constantinople. This will remain an important seat of control for another milliena.

Another graph that is interesting to overlay is the formalization of the Roman Church.  It collects power in Rome between 325 and about the year 600, under Pope Gregory.   In many ways it replaces the Western Empire when it becomes a full political enity on Christmas Day in the year 800 when the Pope crowns Charlemagne, Roman Emperor, it will survive for the next 1000 years.  

Jumping to the 20th Century, the Girl Guides are founded in 1912.  As a compliment to the Boy Scouts.  They will rename themselves the Girl Scouts the next year.    The goals were noble and not much difference,  than the Boy Scouts.    The mission was to  "[build] girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place".     Compare this to the Boy Scout Mission;  “developing boys' skills, character, and patriotism through outdoor activities.”  

Both organizations rotted from leftist influences.  The Girl Scouts became overran with Feminist indoctrination, at least at the top levels.    Then a wave of Girls wanted to be included in the Boy Scouts, and the issues and litigation of abuse and inclusion of Homosexual as leaders.   

Let’s look at the present mission of Scouting USA as the Boy Scouts are now known; “to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices throughout their lives” While Ethics and morals were  always a part,  the ideals of "patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues," have somehow gotten lost.  

The thought the left ruins everything it touches comes to mind.  

Moscow once again becomes the capital of Russia in 1918 as part of the Revolution.  For two Centuries St. Petersburg had been the Capital.    The City of St. Petersburg, named for the Apostle, but during the communist era, it was known as Leningrad.   

President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives the first of his fireside chats in 1933.   While he was not the first President to address the nation via radio, he was the first to do so frequently during the depression and again during WW II.    By this time 90% of American Homes had at least one radio. It was the beginning of rapid mass media, where a broadcast could be heard by most Americans in real time.    The only other President to make radio broadcast frequenlt was Ronald Reagan, who delivered a weekly radio address.   In fact Reagan,  began his weekly radio program shortly after leaving the Governor’s Office is Sacramento and continued utill the 1979 Presidential Campaign. And a Short period during the 1976 campaign.    There was a thing called the fairness doctrine that said if one candidate got air time their opponent was entitled to an equal amount on the same terms.    Reagans absence during the first two years of his presicency was due to this.

President Truman is in the news today.   I really want to like the guy,  but a visit to his President Library showed a side that I really have trouble with.   While he might appear to be the common guy from farm country.    He was a political hack,   who would do what was needed to keep power.     I’m reminded of a story Micheal Reagan told,   How he thought he had arrived when his adopted Farther Ronald was elected California governor. He had a job working the docks in Los Angeles,  pretty much blue collar, and he quit thinking a Government job was in the future.    Ronald told him to go get his old job back,  Neopotism was not a thing in their household.   Ronald and my Dad came from the same school on that point and a few others.    

Truman on the other hand owed, his political power to the Kansas City Mob,   and  often did as he was told.    

But that is not the story at hand.  In 1947,  with WW II in the rear view mirror the view ahead was still rather bleak.    Russia once an ally wanted to spread their politics around.  Truman stated that the US would oppose Russian back communism in various countries. At the moment that was Greece and Turkey.   Historians mark this speech and date as the start of the Cold War.   Ironically, it was Reagan that brought it to an end, after four decades.  

1993,  North Korea announces their intent to expand their nuclear weapons program.   Brilliant,  a weapon of grand scale in the hands of a juvenile mind.   

One of the outcomes of Turman’s resolve was the formation of NATO.    In 1999, former Warsaw Pact Countries The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join their former foes.    NATO, is an alliance of European Countries and the US,  pledging mutual defense should any member be attached by the Soviet Block. 

Bernie Madoff pleads guilty to an extremely large ponzie scheme in 2009 and will be sentenced to 150 years in prison.   He had a very successful stock brokerage, but there was the dark side of investment management. There he handled as much as $65 billion.   Investigators believe there was $18 Billion in direct looses to clients.    Most of the loses have been recovered, but they are still looking for $3.5 Billion.   

The news this morning is the USAID office in conducting a massive document destruction.   Folks, the rats are scurrying around.    Why is there a need to destroy documents?

The phrase that is common in Government, Waste, Fraud and Abuse, is common this Spring.    With a front row seat to the trenches of the Department of Defense for more than three decades.    The problems are not a few bad players or even 75%.   Most of the folks, millions of them, in the trenches have the best of intentions to play by the rules and in fact do what is best for the Government.    But the system is designed with a certain amount of inefficiency in the framework, that cannot be fixed.   Some of the good rules on one hand,  at the same time create problems on the other.     One case I recall,   certain parts on the aircraft had been designed by a contractor to Grumman the Aircraft builder.    There name and part numbers were on the drawings.     We needed to buy a large package of then.   Now from a technical perspective, the ideal was to write a sole source contract to the large defense company.  The Contracting folks had rules that we should favor small business whenever possible.      I told them from the first meeting that plan was a disaster.  The Government did not have enough data to build them ourselves, and we had a shop on base that had great capabilities.   We could have built a cable that would have worked.   But we could not build and test them to the original specs.   For a small business it was impossible,   but still we pursued the course.   The whole effort took the better portion of  year before the last small business bowed out.    The issue was, to save money the Government had not purchased all of the drawing needed to build the cables.  We had the first drawing which cited four other drawings.  The subdrawings contained information about the process and may have been critical.    We simply did not have that.  In this case the Original Vendor was happy to supply the part.   The fun started when the did not or were out of business.   I have stories about those cases, to.  

I could tell stories for weeks if not years.   The rules get in the way of common sense.   DOGE cannot fix it.   

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