John T. Reed’s news blog

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/05/12/three-deaths-linked-to-recent-navy-seal-training-classes/ One drowned in training. One committed suicide after flunking out. Another died in a drunk driving accident after flunking out. Kill a trainee, leave the military A person dying in training ought to end the careers of the closest three people above the deceased in the chain of command. By definition, training is closely supervised and the conditions are tightly controlled. I went through five full years of Army training—West Point, ranger school, signal officers basic, parachutist school, radio officer school and satellite officers school. Guys died in ranger in my class, the class before me, and the class after...

I have been asked what I think about the 17 black female West Point cadets who were photographed holding their fists up.They are wearing white collars from the 1800s. I am told doing that is a new “tradition” at all-tradition-all-the-time West Point. I don’t get the white collars or dressing up in a no-longer-used uniform. But it seems harmless. They are also wearing saber belts that were only worn for marching into weekday meals last I was plugged into the routine.As far as the fists, it all comes down to intent. I do not know what their intent was. Maybe...

The U.S. government owes $35 trillion. That is also known as our national debt. It is also the total amount of U.S. government bonds we have sold. You can see the real time amount of it zooming up like a rocket car odometer at http://www.usdebtclock.org/.  We are increasing the national debt each year by the amount of our annual deficit spending.  Defaulting would mean stealing the money we borrowed from the bond buyers by reneging on paying it back. Would that be immoral? Absolutely. My personal code says, Tell the truth.Keep your promisesTreat others as you want to be treated....

I have written in the past about Bush, Cheney, and Palin derangement syndrome. It is a psychiatric defect suffered only by Democrats. Now we have Trump derangement syndrome. He is the Republican presidential nominee. Paradoxically, this syndrome afflicts only former Republican elites.Apparently these folks thought they owned the Republican Party. However, because they need 70 million voters to win in November every four years, they led the rank-and-file Republican voters to believe that THEY owned the party and got to choose its nominee. It is fair to say that the Republican Party elites regret that they did not create a...

I came across a great compound word today in an old review by Martin Amis of Hillary’s book It Takes a Village. It’s on today’s WSJ editorial page. He said the books was the product of a large staff effort to achieve “pan-inoffensiveness.”Not only is that the goal and “skill” of politicians, nowadays, about 99% of the population are also “politicians.” Most are amateur politicians, water-cooler politicians, high-school-cafeteria politicians. They all are convinced the only way to succeed in life is to avoid pissing anyone off.The only way to do that is to do nothing and say nothing, which is...