Introduction

Welcome to my wee little blogspot. I’m pretty new to this end of the blogosphere, and I’m not very sure yet about this business of creating and building a blog. I think the primary motivation came from my wife, who got tired of my muttering, grousing, and outraged retorts to the endless adoring and idiotic media coverage of the depressing election results of Nov. 4, 2008. She told me to do something, and blog construction has kept me away from the Op-Ed pages and the gloating TV coverage…which has been good for my blood pressure.

Now about the site name. I have always loved the story of the Cactus Air Force, and the role they played in the epic struggle at Guadacanal in the early days of WWII. The United States was just beginning its military mobilization after the attack at Pearl Harbor, and was reeling from a stunning series of reverses and defeats at the hands of a Japanese military machine that had been building and preparing for all-out conflict with the U.S. for decades. The American forces in the Pacific were hugely outnumbered by Japanese naval, aerial, and infantry forces, while being ill-prepared and poorly provisioned for war. Late 1941 and the first-half of 1942 was a dark time in the Pacific for America.

America was back on her heels, trying to shake off the frightening success of the Japanese while mobilizing for the long battle ahead. It was primarily the job of the Marines Corp to hold this island at all costs, and to buy time for Americans until they were ready to bring the fight right to Japan’s doorstep. The Marine aviators, fighting only with a handful of aircraft and living under impossible conditions, scrambled every day to meet the meet the endless waves of Japanese fighters and bombers, and inflicted incredible losses on the Japanese naval air force. Weak from malaria, low on food and ammo, these hero’s held on against all odds and turned the desperate Battle of Guadalcanal into Americas first victory in the Pacific, and helped turn the tide of the war.

Now there’s two reasons I chose this name for my site. For one, I’m partial to any aerial heroics, given my passion for almost anything related to aviation. I have been flying for over 25 years, and today I fly Yak warbirds with a great group of guys (many former Marine, Navy, and Air Force fighter jocks) doing formation, aerobatic, and airshow routines. I love flying the old military hardware, and it evokes an incredible period in aviation history.

And the second reason is that I think the story of the Cactus Air Force is a very good metaphor for where conservatism stands today in the aftermath of the Nov 4 election. Conservatives face a zealous, motivated, and determined enemy, who have significantly improved their strategic position and now hold excellent position with the White House and Congress. Like Japan before 1941, the enemy has been strategizing and mobilizing for this fight for many years, and is now moving to permanently change the playing field.

The Democratic Party, hijacked from the outside by the left and inwardly by the liberal elite, have formidable resources in the form of questionable money, radical ideology, a biased and powerful main stream media, the NEA, the American Bar Association, government bureaucracies, opportunistic special interest groups, and a large and thoroughly indoctrinated cadre of supporters.

It is going to require a sustained and maximum effort to initially slow and sabotage this advance of socialism. Like the story of the Cactus Air Force, it is going to initially be a lopsided and fairly desperate fight to resist this advance, and to gain some traction. We need to buy time, in order to reorganize the Republican Party while reestablishing the principles of individual liberty, limited government, and financial prudence. The next generation of leaders need to be identified, groomed, and then empowered with support and resources to take on this grave threat to our core national values and our own sense of American exceptionalism.

Pretty grand talk, eh? I mean, this is one small and fairly crappy looking blog site…right? Well…that’s ok. Mighty oaks begin with small…(aerial)….acorns. In fact, I’ll invoke a Chicago blessing now: May this blog site grow and swell, and become freaking engorged like that nice ACORN group and its nice folks who strove mightily and with impressive tenacity and energy to steal state elections for Barak.

Then again, maybe I’m just nuts.

But I do think our situation is fairly bleak at this point, which is why we need to look to our heros for inspiration. Mine were the men of the Cactus Air Force, tough guys who spit into the face of their enemy and flew at them with blazing cannon and will. Countless times they scrambled with 4 Wildcats against 30 or 40 Betty bombers and Vals, accompanied by 30 Zeros (with superior performance), and yet would regularly inflict terrible casualties against the overwhelming Japanese forces. They adapted and evolved better tactics to overcome these enemy advantages, and in the end demonstrated greater force of will and purpose in defeating them. That’s a prescription we need today to cure what ails conservatism in America

We can hope for change…or we can get off our asses and fight. If we are going to fight this thing, then we had better Bring It!

Let’s get it on!