Roger's Humor Fitting At This Time As With Court Humor. Sign up for Bolton's Address Here At The Landings. Off To Atlanta. Lynn Won Again.

I hope and pray everyone who will be confronted by Irma comes through in fine fashion with no damage to themselves, their loved ones and/or their possessions.

We leave Saturday for Atlanta.  I lost my argument with Lynn to stay in Savannah at our cousin's downtown condo so I have to schlep to Atlanta and fight the traffic getting there and then more when I arrive. UGH!  After 45 years of marriage I long for the day I will be allowed to win one rational plea.

Obviously, last memo until we return to what I hope is our home.
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The SIRC is taking reservations with accompanying checks for the Feb. 19, President's Day Dinner featuring Amb. John Bolton as our guest speaker.

We are anticipating a capacity crowd so I urge you send your request for reservations to Mary Ann Senkowski at: 8 Mainsail Crossing, Savannah, Ga. 31411 with an accompanying check made payable to The SIRC President Day Dinner in the amount of $150 PP.

If you have any questions I will be happy to do my best to respond. The event begins at 6PM, at The Plantation Club, The Landings.

The dinner is open to the public and those coming  from outside The Landings should let me know so I can arrange for a gate pass.

Looking forward to seeing you there. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Finally, a little more humor to make the dismal day brighter. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Trump Orders Military to Shoot Down North Korean Missiles

By John Gizzi

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

 President Donald Trump has given military orders for U.S. forces to shoot down and destroy any missile launched from North Korea and moving toward the continental United States, Hawaii, and Guam.

Sources close to the president's national security team tell Newsmax the order was given to Pentagon brass in the wake of last month's threat by North Korea to fire a ballistic missile aimed at Guam, a U.S. territory.

"The threat provoked the president," one source familiar with the decision told Newsman.

Last Sunday, North Korea detonated a thermonuclear weapon. The communist regime claims they can fit the new device on advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as ICBMs.

This week, South Korean intelligence sources said the North was moving an ICBM in an apparent preparation for another test launch over the northern Pacific and possibly Japan.

The president also is said to be considering a new "shoot down" order for any North Korean missile launched and moving toward Japan or South Korea, another national security source told Newsman.

"This is a clear exercise of self-defense, and there's no question we should do it," former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Newsman.

Bolton said U.S. allies South Korea and Japan "are in jeopardy" and said the United States must take steps to protect them under treaty obligations.

The presidential order came after a flurry of recent provocations from Pyongyang.

In August, President Trump ominously warned the North Koreans that continued threats "will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Soon after, North Korea answered Trump's warning by threatening a ballistic missile strike off the territory of Guam.

The president quickly responded, saying any attack against the U.S. would be met with a fierce response.

"Things will happen to them like they never thought possible," the president said, adding U.S. forces were "locked and loaded.”

The situation appeared to be de-escalating when North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un announced he had met with his military commanders and they would not fire the missile at Guam.

In a threatening move Aug. 29, North Korea launched from their capital Pyongyang what they said was an "ultramodern rocket system" — an intermediate range missile. The missile flew over Japanese territory and landed in the Pacific.

"There is general consensus in the White House and the Pentagon that North Korea is quite close to the 'red zone' and that the U.S. must act soon or lose the upper hand," one official told Newsman.

Bolton, who has advised the president informally on security matters, said the U.S. is being "driven in the direction of a preemptive strike because North Korea won't back down.”

"We are close to the finish line," Bolton said, referring to Pyongyang's recent missile and nuclear developments. "It highlights how little time we have here.”

Just days after North Korea's nuclear test detonation, Han Tae Song, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told a disarmament conference the U.S. could expect more "more gift packages.”

If the U.S. military does act on President Trump's orders to shoot down a missile, this would be achieved through different U.S. anti-ballistic programs under the aegis of the Missile Defense Agency.

Among these programs are the 26-year-old Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, (THAAD), whose "hit to kill" interceptors are designed to shoot down an incoming missile through kinetic energy that explodes the missile on impact.

"It's called stopping a bullet with a bullet," one veteran intelligence expert told Newsman.

The technology appears to be working.

In late August, a day after the North Korea missile flew over Japan, the U.S. Missile Agency conducted a test that successfully struck down a ballistic missile off the coast of Hawaii.

The White House press office and the Pentagon declined to comment on this report.

At Thursday's White House press conference held with the Emir of Kuwait, the president said while "military action would certainly be an option" in dealing with North Korea, he added "nothing's inevitable.”

"I would prefer not going the route of the military," he said.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/09/07/bolton-emp-threat-one-reason-consider-military-option-north-korea-first/

1a) John Bolton: EMP Threat Is One Reason ‘We’ve Got to Consider the Military Option Against North Korea First’

by John Hayward 

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday’sBreitbart News Daily to talk about the North Korean nuclear missile crisis, the threat of electromagnetic pulse attack, China’s relationship with the United States, and the latest news from the United Nations.

Bolton described North Korea as “a 25 million-person prison camp.”

“While I think the leadership might be willing to ‘eat grass’ before giving up their way of life, if anybody bothered to ask the people, I think you’d get a very different answer,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment that North Koreans would rather eat grass than give up their nuclear weapons.

“They are cut off from the rest of the world by the design of their government. Back in the day, when radios were the only way people could learn about the outside world, you could buy a radio in North Korea. It only had one channel on it,” he recalled.

“I think, increasingly, the people of North Korea – we know this from defectors who come out, make their way through China down to Southeast Asia, and then back to South Korea – that they’re increasingly aware that they could have a different kind of life and that the dictatorship of the Kim family really has deprived them of anything like a normal life,” he said.

“This is kind of a laboratory study. You don’t get this around the world. It’s very rare to have a North Korea and a South Korea. I think word has gotten into North Korea that life in South Korea is very different,” he said.

Bolton said China particularly fears the consequences of the Kim regime collapsing.

“Although the dictatorship in North Korea looks very strong, like many authoritarian governments, it’s really kind of like a rotten door frame. If you kick it hard enough, it would come down,” he judged.

“I don’t want to see the United States have to use military force against the North Korean nuclear weapons program any more than anybody else, but I also don’t intend to allow America to be vulnerable to it as far as the eye can see, once they are able to hit any target in the continental United States,” Bolton said of his policy recommendations to resolve the crisis.

“I think we’ve got to go to China,” he advised. “I think you can see, increasingly, the Chinese recognizing North Korea is an ugly piece of baggage. China has got to apply the pressure that they uniquely have.”

“My view is the best thing to do is reunite the peninsula, effectively under South Korea, but I would take as a second-best solution China knocking off the Kim family and putting in someone else,” he said.

“I think North Korea is much like East Germany: when the Communist rule goes, its life expectancy goes with it. It would be better just to eliminate North Korea entirely by merging it with South Korea. That’s the natural course of history. Failing that, getting rid of the current dictatorship would at least be a step forward,” said Bolton.

Bolton predicted the U.S. was “unlikely to get a meaningful oil sanction against North Korea” from the U.N. Security Council.

“Let’s say they do, just hypothetically. Do you think Iran is going to let North Korea fall?” he asked. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Iran couldn’t care less about U.N. sanctions. That’s why this fascination with sanctions really is not just ineffective; it’s misleading and dangerous because it gives a lot of people – especially in Congress – the kind of warm and fuzzy feeling that they’re dealing with the North Korean threat, when, in fact, they’re not.”

As for China, widely seen as the key to solving the North Korean problem, Bolton said they are “pursuing a mercantilist trade policy in a free trade organization like the WTO.” He added, “And I think for years we haven’t called them out on it.”

“There’s no doubt they’re in massive violation. We could spend hours talking about it. But the notion that the United States can exert economic pressure on China, to, in turn exert economic pressure on North Korea, I think is doomed to failure,” he anticipated.

“Not that it’s not a worthwhile idea, but imagine this: Let’s say you impose really powerful sanctions on China – not pinprick sanctions, sanctioning Bank X or Bank Y. Let’s just say we’re going to exclude the Chinese banking system from the United States to get their attention. Within minutes of that being announced, the chairman of Goldman Sachs, the chairman of JP Morgan, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, the chairman of Citibank are going to be on the phone to Steve Mnuchin, and probably the president himself,” said Bolton.

“Amazon, Facebook, Google – all these people are saying, ‘You’re taking that market away from us!’ That’s what people have to understand about sanctions. To impose pain – and that’s what we’re talking about, pain – on a big economy like China, you’ve got to be willing to bear some corresponding amount of pain in our economy. America’s business leadership, I am sorry to say, isn’t into pain,” he said.

Bolton viewed China’s latest crackdown on dissent, rife with human rights violations, as evidence that President Xi Jinping “for years, has been planning, with many allies in the Chinese Communist Party, a re-authoritarianization of the government there.”

“Increased political control, increased economic control – it may not be in strict compliance with Marxist ideology, but it’s classic authoritarianism,” he noted. “Westerners have just been goo-goo over Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption efforts, thinking, ‘Oh, how wonderful this is’ – not realizing that since the entire governmental system in China is fundamentally corrupt, this was a way for Xi Jinping to go after his political enemies because you can pick and choose who you’re going to prosecute for corruption.”

“We’ve been pursuing, I think, a very misguided policy on China, strategically and economically, for decades. The human rights piece, honestly, it’s been there that entire time. Look at what China’s doing to Tibet. I’m not overstating this: it’s a kind of cultural genocide. What has the United States said about it in the last 20 or 25 years? Almost nothing,” he observed.

Marlow asked for Bolton’s opinion of the electromagnetic pulse attack threat from North Korea, a permutation of nuclear terrorism about which analysts such as Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, another frequent Breitbart News Radio guest, long warned.

“It absolutely is a threat,” Bolton replied. “A high-altitude nuclear detonation that could bring down a substantial part of the electrical grid of the United States, at least in particular geographic regions, would have a huge impact on us.”

“It’s one of the things people have said, ‘Well, North Korea doesn’t have the range in its missiles, it doesn’t have the thermonuclear capacity, it doesn’t have the reentry vehicle, and it doesn’t have the guidance systems. EMP, you don’t need really precise guidance systems. If you just detonate something, let’s say, over the West Coast of the United States, the EMP effects could be significant,” he explained.

“It ties into the strategic question of what happens if North Korea fires a nuclear weapon at the United States. People have said, ‘Look, North Korea is never going to commit suicide. They would never do that.’ Well, what if the attack is not obliterating Los Angeles? What if it’s an EMP attack, where actual destruction on the ground from the blast itself is minimal, maybe no casualties at all, but the knock-on effects of impairing the electrical grid could be very substantial? What do you do then?” he asked.

Bolton said there was no good answer to that question, which is “why we’ve got to consider the military option against North Korea first.”

“It’s why I wrote about Franklin Roosevelt’s famous statement made in a fireside chat on September the 11th, 1941 – 60 years to the day before our 9/11 – when he said, ‘When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until it has struck before you crush it,’” Bolton recalled.

“People say, ‘But my goodness, if you use a military option, terrible things will happen on the Korean Peninsula,’” he continued. “And I agree that this is an enormous concern, and we would have to do everything possible to mitigate that. But these same people also say, ‘Well, of course, if North Korea attacked the United States, then we should respond with devastating force,’ which would likely have the same consequences in South Korea.”

“So if you’re with me this far, what is the difference between their position and mine? It’s their insistence that before we strike, there have to be dead Americans. I reject that,” he declared.

Marlow asked Bolton about Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s sudden refusal to attend a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, contrary to previous commitments.

“One of the proudest moments in my government career was in 2006, voting against the creation of the new U.N. Human Rights Council,” Bolton replied. “It was a mistake, and it was a wise decision by President Bush to vote against it. It was a wise decision to stay off the Human Rights Council.”

“We should withdraw from it now,” he advised. “I’m very surprised the Trump administration hasn’t withdrawn. It’s an outfit with no legitimacy. It’s our presence that gives it what little legitimacy it has. We should get off of it.”

“Let me make one other point if I could, coming back to the nuclear stuff: Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of Israel destroying a nuclear reactor being built in Syria,” Bolton observed. “Being built by whom? Being built by North Koreans. Why did the North Koreans build a nuclear reactor in Syria? Was it because of their close cultural and historical relationship? Of course not. It was because somebody, quite likely Iran, was trying to hide their illicit activities where they thought nobody was looking.”

“This is the sort of thing that people don’t like to talk about, the connection between Iran and North Korea, but I believe it’s real, and I believe that Israel – which has twice in its history destroyed nuclear projects in hostile states, that one in Syria and in Iraq in 1981 – has shown that if everything else fails, preemptive military force is required to defend your people from nuclear extortion,” he contended.

“It’s terrible that we may be at the last ditch here and that our options are limited, but if you believe that the fundamental duty of the President of the United States is to protect Americans, that option has to be on the table,” said Bolton.

John Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and head of his own political action committee, BoltonPAC.

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2) These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts and are things people actually said 

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?

WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
______________________________ _
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
___________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
______________________________ _______
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
______________________________ ___
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
______________________________ 

 ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
______________________________ ______
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.
______________________________ _____________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
______________________________ ___________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
______________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
______________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
______________________________ _______
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________ ________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
______________________________ ___________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral...
______________________________ ___________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
______________________________ ______________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________
And last:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law

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