Far East Cynic

Busy week.

And what a sad week it has been too. The news from Paris is sad, tragic and sadly, all too expected in this day and age. In solidarity with the right of a free press to publish what it wants to and not be subject to censorship at the point of a

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Following up.

Happy New Year to all.  Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu! Kotoshi mo yorishku onegai shimasu. I , unfortunately had a quiet new years, definitely not the one I wanted to spend skiing. You can thank the S.O. for that because of continued inabilty to make a decision and her repeated failure to

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Sayonara 2014

And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. As years go,  2014 was not really a good one for me. I won’t be sorry to see it go. It started living under the burden of a poorly thought out merger at work, engineered by

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The tragedy of the American Military

James Fallow’s of The Atlantic magazine has written a must-read, thought-provoking article, on the current state of civil-military relations. It is a long read, but it is well worth your time. In it, he highlights the real hypocrisy of a country that fawns over its military to the point of idolatry, yet

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The Hagel Mess

Listen up boys and girls, because contrary to the opinion of some ( and you know you are), I can , in fact, be critical of the President of the United States. And today is a good day to be critical of Mr. Obama, since just two days ago-he made a

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But I thought we lost the war during Obama’s West Point speech?

LTG Daniel Bolger (Citadel Class of 1978) has a very good book out chronicling the truth that a whole lot of people don’t want to admit. For them, the wars were lost when the President of the United States decided to :1) not hang US troops out to dry with a

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Again it comes down to how many bother to show up.

Tomorrow is election day in the United States. Since I will be on my 5-year pilgrimage to the sacred soil in Charleston, I have already submitted my ballot via absentee. A fat lot of good it will do me since my Senator is running unopposed ( thank you Citizens United

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Going too far.

The S.O. and I had a marvelous time in Austria-and for what it is worth, October is a great time to visit. The mountains are still glorious, there is a little early snow, but for us at least the weather was nice and we did a lot of hiking. A

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You only see the “Y” in the road, not the end of it.

The S.O. has had to work all this weekend, and I have been on call for my job. Basically its a payment up front for the both of us-for we will be in Austria for her birthday at the end of the month. The timing is less than optimum, but

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Pumpkin Fest

In Ludwigsburg, they are running a Pumpkin Fest. In German, the word for Pumpkin is Kurbis(with an umlaut). It’s held in the garden of the palace in Ludwigsburg. Probably most amazing-besides the Pumpkin Wine, Soup, and Pasta-and beer-is the Pumpkin Figures. See for your self: And Elvis, had to stop by: And

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