Free Republic

With the end of their convention, the Republican Party and Donald Trump have reached what in military theory is called the “culminating point.” “The culminating point of victory,” according to the Modern War Institute at West Point, “is the threshold when military advantages peak and then rapidly turn into disadvantages.” As an infantryman, I was taught that the culminating point is a paradox; it’s a moment of maximum vulnerability at a time when you believe you are at maximum strength. Let’s say your platoon has just taken a hill. Exhausted and jubilant, you’ve achieved your objective. Your troops have sent...

<p>The CLU, or command launch unit, is a highly capable thermal optic that can operate independent of the missile system. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we would often carry at least one Javelin on missions, not because we expected to encounter any al-Qaeda tanks, but because the CLU was such an effective tool. We’d use it to watch road intersections and make sure no one was laying down IEDs. The Javelin has a range in excess of a mile, and the CLU is effective at that distance and beyond.</p>

A friend sent me an interesting Youtube video a couple of days ago, and I’ve been spending some time watching it and thinking about it. It’s a video from PBS consisting of an interview by Judy Woodruff of Doug Schoen and Elliot Ackerman, two of the principals of this group. As I listened to them, this all sounded very enticing on its surface, but the longer they spoke, the more I began to wonder about who is behind all of this. It seems like an effort to circumvent the ordinary electoral process, and when I think of that notion, the...

I don't have cable, so I do watch PBS Newshour as it is less annoying than the other network water carriers...tonight, Elliott Ackerman, COO of "America Elects" was on...he had a Clinton talking head with him,and they both love the internet-based method of putting another candidate selected by all 50 states on the ballot in each state...hmmm...not sure if he's a liberal, that is Ackerman, but it sure sounds like a way to undermine the electoral process with the end goal being to elect the president by popular vote...hmmm...so big cities will be the only ones who elect them because...