Yeah a little weird today. But a change of pace yes?
Ace, “It Is Time to Scrap the F-35 And Simply Begin Building Somewhat Updated F-15s Again” at Ace of Spades HQ = http://ace.mu.nu/archives/357606.php. It might help to explain that since my teenage years in Great Britain where we lived a few kilometers from a major Army garrison have always had a certain fascination with military hardware. Used to buy magazines and build plastic models. I have been seeing posts and tweets on this lately. Basically we have spent one trillion(???) dollars developing and building the F-35 Joint Strike Force plane that (1) the Air Force and Marines and Navy can all use and (2) United States allies can use. Basically a One Plane Fits All plane. (One trillion? Really? That does not sound right.) This plane was not developed or promoted without some controversy. The main problem at this stage of the game is whether it is better than the planes it is replacing. Some of them are old but still very good very effective planes such as the A-10. One video I watched has the designer of the F-16 say the primary purpose of the F-35 is to send money to Lockheed Martin. Ouch. But surely there are two sides to this and there are some who can defend the F-35.
There is no doubt that the US fighter fleet could use a refreshing — but this plane seems to be awful.
We need some brave voices to stand up to the serious Career-Momentum of this thing — that is, everyone who shepherded this piece of shit along is going to suffer a career-ending embarrassment if we pull the plug on it, or put it back on to the chalkboards — to take a stand and say that our boys, and our security, are more important than some Pentagon Procurement *******’s career.
Put the F-35 back into the chalkboard stage, and begin designing some incremental, evolutionary changes to the F-15.
No, a slightly upgraded F-15 will not give us the sort of dominance we need.
But the F-35 sure won’t, either, and at least we know, with the F-15, we’re getting a reliable and effective platform.
We do need more stealth. Fine. Use the money saved from canceling the F-35 rollout (and buying cheaper upgraded F-15s) to buy some extra stealth planes.
But this F-35 seems to be a disaster, and Washington seems to be doing with this disaster what it does with all disasters of its own making: Pretending it’s not happening so that no one actually has to (gasp!) get a demotion over the catastrophe.
For a contrary take, see Defense Tech, quoting pilots who claim flying the F-35 is “like magic.”
I don’t know.
There’s a certain rah-rah that happens when you’re in a group project and you want it all to turn out all right.
Who knows? Perhaps the F-35 is a metaphor for the Christian church.
Jonah Goldberg, “In the South, grace and dignity after Charleston church shootings” at Wisconsin State Journal = http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/guest/jonah-goldberg-in-the-south-grace-and-dignity-after-charleston/article_5e78da87-ba5d-5161-a2a7-778ea63e56cb.html#ixzz3ee0BMJcY. Goldberg reflects on (1) how Christians responded admirably to the Charleston church shootings and (2) how ethnic/racial groups came together in unity and solidarity and what this says about the South. What grabs my attention in the piece is when Goldberg discusses the condescending contempt many in the North have for the South. As a proud son of Massachusetts (and New York) I am particularly sensitive to this. Basically I think he is right. The question is why. Why is this frequently out of date contempt for the South so prevalent in the North? I have a theory. Would you like to hear it? Increasingly I am convinced that many human beings have a burning need to feel Superior to someone else so that they can feel Good about themselves. And for many affluent educated and secular Northerners if you ain’t better than a Southerner or an evangelical Christian then you who better than?
White Northern liberals explain how the South is an irredeemable cesspool of hate, while ignoring that blacks are abandoning the Northern blue states in huge numbers to move to the South.
Demographer Joel Kotkin found that 13 of the 15 best cities in the country for African-Americans to live in are now in the South. Over the last decade, millions of African-Americans have been reversing the Great Migration of a century ago to live in Dixie.
A big part of that story is economic, of course — the “blue state” model has failed generations of minorities — but it’s also cultural. Word has gotten out that while the flags may be around in some places, the Old Confederacy is gone.
Whenever conservatives complain that blacks vote monolithically Democratic, liberals are quick to argue that this is a rational decision given the realities of the black community. Surely, the same thing holds when they vote with their feet?
Frankly it is not quite that simple. I see the problems and disparities right here in Baton Rouge.
Elizabeth Scalia, “Eight things Catholics can do to fix things” at The Anchoress = http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2015/06/29/8-things-catholics-can-do-to-fix-things/. Scalia responds in part to an article by Father Robert Barron on what Roman Catholic Christians can do as the dominant culture changes so radically and rapidly around us. What grabbed my attention was her rejoinder to Frank Bruni and others who are suddenly playing the Practice Your Religion in Private Please (Except When You Say and Do What We Get to Approve) game which when you think about it is the most troubling and morally dishonest dimension of the emerging New Normal. See many of the comments to articles by Rod Dreher if you want to know what I am talking about.
If we really want to “fix” the world, these are “what to do”. We work with, and through, not around; we keep our eyes on Christ Jesus. We prepare to be really hated (by both activists and some Catholics), and to answer that hatred with love.
And the very first, most primary thing “to do” to “fix” the world, is to pray for the salvation of every soul you encounter. Nothing is more powerful; nothing is more needed; nothing keeps us more rightly oriented and humbled.
I admit there is a part of me that just wants to throw up my hands and quit. Just being honest.
Addendum 12.26h – Doctor Alastair Roberts, “Can evangelicals see themselves in the LGBT movement?” at Christ and Pop Culture = http://christandpopculture.com/capc-mag-volume-2-issue-18-outsiders/can-evangelicals-see-lgbt-movement/. Roberts invites evangelical Christians to see how much the way they think and do church resembles the LGBT movement. What can orthodox Christians learn from the similarities?
In responding to movements that are deemed to be unchristian within our culture, our habitual posture is one of direct and forceful rejection. We perceive our duty within such engagement solely to be that of defending the truth against error. In adopting such an approach, I believe that we miss one of the chief purposes of such challenges in God’s providence. In sparring with opposing positions, we can uphold the truth. However, we can also develop new strengths and, more importantly, can discover our own compromising weaknesses.
As evangelicals respond to the LGBT movement, I hope that we will do so self-reflectively. This is an opportunity to learn uncomfortable lessons about ourselves, to discover how our ‘truth’ can rely upon little more than brittle bigotry, to discover how we have marginalized God’s story for the sake of our own, and how we have lost sight of the blessing and authority of institutional means of Christian and social formation. As we come to a realization of the faults in others, we may find that we are seeing a mirror image of the faults in ourselves.