Ben and Bawb's Blog

Jihadists Gotta Work Too

2012-01-23T03:54:00.002-06:00

The federal government enjoys bragging that their efforts to sexually assault our children and grandmothers at airports, tap our phones, pull our library records, indefinitely detain us without charges, snoop through our homes without warrants, and assassinate us without trial have been successful in that there "hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil since 9-11." Even for this simple claim, however, it's apparent that the government has had to cook the books as it often does.

For instance, you may recall the 2009 Fort Hood shootings wherein Major Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Ackbar!" ("God is Great" in Arabic) and opened fire on soldiers at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center on base, killing 13 and wounding 29. The Defense Department has classified the incident as "workplace violence" not terrorism.

This may come as a surprise to radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki had corresponded with Hasan via email, bragged about influencing him and declared him a hero to the terrorist cause after the shooting. In September, President Obama blew Awlaki's ass up with a Predator drone, which seems like a bit of overkill if Awlaki was merely fomenting "workplace violence."

The classification was so absurd that even Senator Susan Collins (RINO-Maine) "blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation's Armed Forces at home." (According to a Fox News report.) If Susan Collins thinks something is dumb, it must be really, really dumb.

Hangdog Senator Joe Lieberman (I[mostly D]-Connecticut), who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee has said, "The stark reality is that the American service member is increasingly in the terrorists' scope and not just overseas in a traditional war setting." Indeed several plots to kill service members in America have thankfully been foiled.

One plot that was NOT thwarted was in Little Rock Arkansas. In 2009 two Army privates, both recent basic training graduates, were shot outside an Arkansas recruitment center by a gunman in a passing vehicle. One of the soldiers was killed and one was wounded. The shooter pleaded guilty and proudly declared that he carried out the attack on behalf of al Qaeda in Yemen. The Defense Department has classified the incident as "car trouble." Okay, they didn't. But the incident has been treated like just another gang-banger drive-by shooting, not terrorism.

Testifying before Congress, the grieving father of Pvt. William Andrew Long, the soldier killed in Little Rock, put it poignantly: "My faith in government is diminished. It invents euphemisms ... Little Rock is a drive by and Fort Hood is just workplace violence. The truth is denied."

As a small government constitutionalist and civil libertarian, I've got a lot of problems with the so-called "War on Terror." But I've also got a big problem with slimy, weasel-worded politicians, such as the ones in the current administration, that can call Tea Party activists "terrorists" but can't bring themselves to use the term against actual Islamic jihadists shooting the shit out of our brave service members. Such people shouldn't be in command. Screw 'em!

REVISITING THE RIFLE GRENADE

2012-01-20T11:05:00.009-06:00

Revisiting the Rifle Grenade

Modern MECAR M200 HEDP(High Explosive Dual Purpose) bullet-trap rifle grenade.

Although in existence since the First World War, the concept and use of the rifle grenade never really caught on in American military circles. Simply put, the rifle grenade uses a grenade projectile fired from a rifle to a distance far beyond throwing range.

I suspect a major portion of the reason the rifle grenade never caught on in the U.S. Army was the lack of meaningful training. “Weapons familiarization” involved firing a single inert grenade in basic training. Soldiers were hazed with tales of how bad the recoil would be long before they fired it, so many were actually afraid to shoot the damn thing. Talk to veterans of the M1 Garand era and their only impression of the rifle grenade was how, “It kicked like an SOB!”

Another reason was that earlier rifle grenades were pretty darned inconvenient to use. They required a launcher be attached to the muzzle of the rifle, the grenade slipped over the launcher, and a special grenade-launching blank inserted into the chamber to fire it. Needless to say, trying to launch one with a live round was a fast way for the folks back home to collect some GI life insurance. When the US Army landed in North Africa in 1942, every squad still had one bolt-action 1903 Springfield rifle to be used as a grenade launcher.

The Caliber .30 grenade launching cartridge was NOT interchangeable with the standard blank round, which had a wax wad. Note the "star-crimped" nose.

Some post-war Belgian rifle grenades used propulsive rounds that was not star-crimped. FN offered a short and long range launching blank consisting of a standard 7.62x51mm casing with a thin wad sealed with varnish. The short range launching cartridge had 1.70 grams of (unspecified) propellent and the long-range round 3.30 grams. Whatever the type, a special round had to be single-loaded for every grenade.

While launchers were eventually developed for the M1 Garand and M1 carbine, the launcher blank was still a major problem, especially with the Garand’s 8-round enbloc clip. Later, newer weapons like the SKS, M14 and FN FAL required turning the gas plug on and off in addition to all of the above steps.

Lastly, M9A1 HEAT grenade was touted as an anti-tank weapon, a role in which it was not very effective, especially as tank technology and armor protection increased at a frantic rate during WWII. It only remained useful against light armor like halftracks and armored cars.

An interesting aside, the M9A1 rifle grenade was ineffective against tanks, and the M1A1 2.36-inch (66mm) bazooka was also obsolete against German tanks by the end of WWII. In 1950 Soviet-built North Korean T-34-85 tanks rolled right over ROK and American forces armed with the above weapons. There was a mad scramble to get the 3.5-inch (90mm) “Super Bazooka” and the Energa (detailed below) rifle grenade into the hands of the troops to stop such tanks.

Yet after the Korean War, the US Army adopted the LAWS rocket, in 66mm. It proved ineffective against even the light amphibious PT-76 tank in Vietnam.

US Marine on Peleliu firing rifle grenade in indirect role from his M1 Garand.

Back to WWII. Although not a good anti-tank weapon, those GIs and Marines who became good shots with the rifle grenade, (their good training consisting of firing live rounds in combat) found it quite useful for many other purposes.

I was surprised how many references I found to use of the rifle grenade in the War Department study Small Unit Actions, detailing a battle for Santa Maria Infante in the rugged hills of Italy on the night of May 11/12 1944.

“The rest of the 3d Squad opened up on the two German machine guns with everything they had, shooting rifle grenades and throwing hand grenades at the two positions. When the shower of explosives was over, the machine guns were silent…(p131)” “After firing antitank grenades at the machine guns, Sergeant Eddy and his men decided to wait for reinforcements from the 1st Platoon, which was supposed to be following the 2d Platoon (p137)” “Sergeant Eddy's force tossed hand grenades, then shot an antitank grenade that landed in the enemy group, dispersing the Germans and putting an end to the fire fight (ibid)” [After mortars failed to silence a MG nest]….”Captain Nelson grabbed an M-1 rifle from one of his men and fired a grenade point-blank at the machine gun, knocking it out and killing the two gunners.(p138)” “…Pvt. John Rocke fired several rifle grenades. Their efforts or those of adjacent or supporting units must have been effective, for the fire from the nearest gun stopped.(P141)” “Colonel Champeny sent a squad to wipe out the enemy machine gun and Pvt. Harold W. Saager knocked it out with a rifle grenade. (p149)”

The 5th Army’s official “lessons learned” encyclopedia from the Italian Campaign also noted:

“The fragmentation rifle grenade was also very effective, and with a little training soldiers became very accurate in its use. It was used against groups of personnel in the open, against MG positions, and in clearing houses by firing through open doorways and windows. Frequently it was used in conjunction with AT grenades in attacking occupied houses; AT grenades were fired through doors or windows and the rifle grenades fired close to the house to inflict casualties as the occupants came out. The AT grenade was effectively used against armored vehicles, pill boxes, houses, and dug in gun positions. This grenade had a terrific concussion effect as well as penetrating power. In one instance the use of AT grenades broke up a three tank attack on a company position at a time when artillery support was not available. In another instance a light tank was knocked out and the crew killed by' hits from two AT grenades.”

A veteran of the Normandy hedgerow fighting put it this way: "I think what kept me alive was my love for the rifle grenade. I always had them handy. You know those stories about someone attacking a machine gun with hand grenades? I just took them out using my grenade launcher and a rifle grenade...Normally, you were only a couple of hundred yards away from the target and with a lot of practice [emphasis added] the rifle grenades were very accurate."

Doggies and Jarheads in both the ETO and Pacific soon figured out that the projection adapter designed to launch a conventional “pineapple” hand grenade could be readily adapted to instead launch a 60-mm mortar shell for extra punch. It was particularly popular for street fighting. Lobbing a 60mm mortar round through a window generally took out everyone in the room.

Grenade Adapter M1; it's not just for pineapples anymore.

“Use of 60mm Mortar as Rifle Grenade

From the Twelfth Army Group, ETO: “An infantry regiment has found that the 60-mm mortar shell HE may be fired from the M1 rifle by means of the grenade launcher M7 and the fragmentation-grenade projection adapter M1. Six inches of wire per shell and a pair of pliers are the only additional materials needed."

That same adapter could launch a WP (White Phosphorous) grenade in lieu of the pineapple as well. Later, dedicated WP grenades were introduced. Rifle grenades could lay down colored smoke for signaling, regular smoke for screening, or provide immediate night illumination with parachute flares.

Signal Corps personnel in the mountainous Italian campaign converted rifle grenades into grapnel hooks for stringing communication wire across deep ravines or up steep slopes. This adaptation was also used by infantry and engineers to clear areas of tripwire mines and to snare and pull clear barbed wire entanglements while the soldiers remained safely under cover.

With graduated marks on the rifle sling, rifle grenades could also be used for immediate indirect fire in a commando mortar role.

They discovered other little tricks of the trade as well.

“The bazooka and rifle grenade are very effective against enemy dug in along a tree line. A hit above the emplacement on a tree trunk is highly effective.” (Infantry lieutenant, Normandy.)

“Our men like the WP grenade a great deal because they get the Heinies out of their holes. If you hold your rifle at about 30 degrees, you can get air bursts by using the grenade projection adapters. Our men have learned to burst these grenades over the Heinies’ holes, and PWs say they really hate it.” (G-3, 29th Inf, France.)

GI in the ETO firing the M19A1White Phosphorous rifle grenade from the short-ranged M1 carbine.

In the post-WWII era, the rifle grenade became popular in Western Europe and elsewhere around the globe, with the most widespread weapon in use the Energa rifle grenade.

R1A1 "Super Energa"

Diameter: 73mm
Length: 14-1/2 inches
Weight: 1.58 pounds
Filling: 12 ounces RDX/Wax 97/3
Penetration: 200mm (7.87 inches) steel armor
Muzzle velocity: 203 fps
Range: 375 meters

Originally manufactured by MECAR of Belgium, the Energa was used by England, Belgium, Switzerland, South Africa and other nations through the end of the 70’s. It was a shaped-charge anti-armor grenade designed to be fired from just about any 7.62x51mm rifle. Some required adapters, but most European armies standardized their flash suppressors to 22mm in diameter so that rifle grenades could be used universally between NATO forces. The Yugoslavian SKS also has a 22mm muzzle, as Tito was one of the few Eastern European leaders able to stand up to Stalin, making his country “non-aligned” with Soviet satellite countries. Despite widespread use of the PRG-7 in the former Soviet Bloc, Poland also produced large numbers of rifle grenades for their riflemen and for export.

The Yugoslavian SKS has a 22mm grenade launching flash suppressor to take standard rifle grenades.

From 7.62x51mm rifle the Energa had a maximum range against area targets of around 350 yards and could penetrate, supposedly, eight inches of steel armor plate. Range against point targets such as the vulnerable areas of a tank, was only 75 yards. The nose fuze itself was actually a tiny shaped charge of its own. Upon impact, it fired off its shaped-charge jet down the hollow interior of the nose cone to strike and set off the booster charge which in turn detonated the filling of RDX High Explosive. A slightly improved version, the R1M1, was as of 2000 still manufactured and used in South Africa.

The Energa's shrapnel effect when used against soft targets was nowhere near as good as a fragmentation grenade, but it was often used as such simply because it was the only thing available. SAS troopers in Aden quickly discovered that an Energa fired into a cave full of rebels damped their enthusiasm with the concussion from the blast alone.

The best, however, was yet to come, since the Energa still required a special grenade launching blank. A new breed of Bullet Trap and Bullet-Through rifle grenades were developed. These could be fired with any rifle round, requiring no single loading of special propulsive cartridges. Thus, the soldier had a handy one-shot explosive weapon with the first round, and was instantly ready to open fire with conventional ammunition as the next round chambered.

Tail assembly tube of MECAR bullet trap rifle grenade before and after firing.

While admittedly a sales pitch, MECAR said of their bullet-trap grenades:

“The low recoil of the 40mm grenades permits their firing from any conventional rifle position or by propping the rifle, mortar like, on the ground. Several 40mm rifle grenades can be readily carried by the rifleman without hindering his freedom of action. As a result, the FRG-RFL-40 N extends the rifleman’s capability to handle the enemy in concentrations or in single combat. It avoids the need for light mortars at a corresponding reduction in logistic load on the platoon and the supply lines while substantially increasing the firepower of the rifle squad.”

The Israelis have been particularly fond of the rifle grenade from the FAL of the 70’s to today. I tend to believe that if the Israelis use something, it must work pretty well. A good example of the bullet-trap grenade is the Israeli BT/AT.

Jerusalem, 1967: Israeli grenadier with BT/AT 52 bullet-trap rifle grenades. Such weapons have been useful in street fighting since WWII.

This rifle grenade has a steel tail unit, inside of which is stacked a series of steel discs designed to collapse in succession, slowing the bullet to a stop while using it and the propellant gases to launch the grenade up to 300 meters. As a safety feature in the event of some malfunction with the discs, a hardened steel alloy bullet deflector shoots the rifle projectile out the side of the tube so that it cannot possibly hit and detonate the warhead. It has an impact fuse which can detonate the main charge of RDX/TNT at angles of as low as 15 degrees.

BT/AT 52
Diameter: 50mm
Length: 15.75 inches
Weight: 1 lb 2 oz
Range: 300 meters

Beruit, 1982. The IDF has gone from FALs to M16s but is still using the same rifle grenade.

The Belgian arms firm of MECAR has been manufacturing and selling a variety of bullet-trap grenades for decades. Their BTU series of 35/40mm bullet-trap rifle grenades are compatible with all the standard 22mm launcher muzzles and have been used by 35 countries around the world. Models include HE, HEAT, smoke, illumination, and CS (tear) gas.

The newest MECAR series is the M200 HEDP (High Explosive Dual Purpose) 35mm rifle grenade. It can be used with either 5.56mm or 7.62mm weapons with the standard 22mm muzzle devices. The shaped charge can penetrate 80mm of rolled homogeneous armor yet when used in the anti-personnel role it has fragmentation comparable to conventional hand grenades.

The French firm of Luchaire also manufactures a variety of similar bullet-trap rifle grenades, against standardized for 22mm flash suppressors. Although in the process of adopting a 40-mm under-barrel grenade launcher like the M203, the British Army purchased a large lot of these as the “RGL” (Rifle Launched Grenade) for use in the First Gulf War.

The Bullet-Thru™ rifle grenade

Fabrique Nationale of Belgium, as in FN of rifle fame, makes a really unique rifle grenade called the Bullet-Thru™. With a telescoping tail, it is pulled out to make the grenade safe, not only separating the firing pin from the detonator but also separating the HE charge from the fragmentation sleeve. When fired, the bullet passes through a polycarbonate plug while retaining enough gases to launch the grenade, and as it is fired, a spring retracts the body and tail back together, arming the weapon. Range from a 7.62x51mm weapon is 400 yards.

FN Bullet-Thru

Diameter: 37mm
Length, collapsed: 7.44 inches
Length, extended: 11.4 inches
Weight: 11.3 ounces
Maximum range (7.62mm rifle): 400 meters
Lethal bursting radius: 10 meters

Polyvalent Grenade

Another extremely clever rifle grenade that combines features wanted since Guadalcanal is the Polyvalent Grenade developed and manufactured by Losfeld of France. The Polyvant combines three weapons into one. It can be used as an offensive hand grenade (blast), a defensive hand grenade (fragmentation), or as an anti-personnel rifle grenade. The pieces include the explosive body, a fragmentation sleeve, and a tail assembly. The nose-mounted fuze has three settings; impact, 5-second fuze, or both.

Three different tail assemblies are made to tailor the Polyvalent Grenade to the particular weapon issued. The F1 tail is intended for use with conventional grenade launching blank cartridges. The F556 is a bullet-trap style for use with 5.56mm (.223) rifles and the heavier, stouter F762 model for 7.62x51mm (.308) rifles.

It was used by France and several other countries until the last 10 years or so. The listed data is for a Polyvalent fitted with the F762 tail assembly.

Polyvalent

Length: 14.17in (360mm)
Weight: 1.14 pounds
Muzzle velocity: 310 fps
Range: 225 meters

This is not a completely new idea. German HE rifle grenades of WWII could have the driving band for the rifled spigot grenade launchers removed and be used as a conventional hand grenade. The Japanese had a grenade which could be used in rifle grenade launchers or the 50mm knee mortar and still be used as a hand grenade.

IMI ARG/AP-50

This is another unconventional and very interesting 53mm anti-personnel “rifle grenade” fairly recently developed and manufactured by the Israelis. It doesn’t launch a grenade projectile per se; it blasts out a cloud of flechettes, small, sharp, finned steel darts. The AP-50 shoots a swarm of 160 of these flechettes across a 10-degree arc to an effective range of 50 meters. Such a weapon would be deadly in the jungle, MOUT, night fighting, and other close and dirty situations. It has been referred to as the “Rifle Claymore”.

ILLUMINATION

Another well-liked and often used rifle grenade, in both WWII and Korea, were the parachute flares. The M17A1 illumination round, pictured below, had a powerful thin-cased flare with a folded-up parachute in the nose. A 5-1/2 second fuze ignited a small smokeless powder propelling charge when the grenade was fired. This charge detonated at about 600 feet of altitude, igniting the flare and ejecting it from the thin sheet metal grenade case. The flare burned at 20,000 candlepower and the parachute kept it aloft for up to 30 seconds of illumination.

Smoke

One other special purpose military grenade that comes in handy is the smoke grenade. Smoke screens are used a great deal by infantry, especially in city street fighting, but the standard smoke grenade cannot be thrown far enough to do more than cover the crossing of a street. Obviously, the smoke rifle grenade can lay down smoke in a great many more places and at longer ranges.

Belgium’s MECAR, originator of the Energa, makes an HC (Hexachlorethane) smoke grenade that lasts for 35 seconds. The manufacturer claims four grenades will cover a 200 meter front. I.M.I. (Israeli Military Industries) makes a similar grenade, and also a red phosphorous round good for 20 seconds. The French Luchaire smoke grenades last around 25 seconds.

VC unpack a shipment of Chinese-made rifle grenades.

A detailed read of ground combat accounts in Vietnam reveals widespread use of the rifle grenade by the VC/NVA. In addition to normal combat uses, it was also a handy weapon to lob inside of American compounds. Fired with a fairly flat trajectory, it befuddled counter-mortar radars and the shooter would be long gone before any counter-fire could be laid into the location.

Despite the proliferation of dedicated grenade launchers attached to rifles, such as the American M203, Russian GP, and a host of others, the rifle grenade still soldiers on in some militaries around the world.

The Communist Chinese are still cranking out rifle grenades in large numbers. “Reverse-engineered” from the Belgian MECAR grenade, the Chinese Type 90 40-mm rifle grenade is a bullet-trap design which can be used with live ammunition instead of grenade launching blanks. A disposable ladder-type sight, graduated to 260 meters, is attached to the grenade itself. Models of this grenade include an armor piercing anti-tank round, an anti-personnel fragmentation model, a dual-purpose that works for both of the afore-mentioned uses, smoke and incendiary grenades. Being still an infantry-heavy army despite new modern heavier weapons, this adds considerable firepower to the riflemen of the Hordes.

French FAMAS 5.56mm assault rifle with Luchaire grenade and Chinese Type 95 5.8mm assault rifle with Type 90 grenade. A little "reverse-engineering" going on somewhere?

Don't get me wrong. I really like the M203 grenade launcher and consider it a very good weapon. With practice one can become very accurate with a 40mm grenade launcher. I found the 203 to be quite accurate when using the basic foundational skills of regular rifle marksmanship. Long-range indirect work requires getting the "feel" of the weapon as well as aiming. Perhaps it was just my perception, but I found live HE rounds to be much more accurate than the orange "powder puff" training rounds.

But there is the whole one-weapon-per-squad thing with the 203. I certainly don't advocate getting rid of the 203. Keeping the grenadier with the M203 and adding similar capability to every other rifleman would make a difference in gaining fire superiority over the enemy in the first critical minute of an engagement, or break up enemy concentrations later in the battle.

For instance, in Helmand Province Afghanistan in 2006, a platoon of the Royal Gurkha Rifles was pinned down behind a mud wall by a swarm of concentrated small arms and machine gun fire from a more numerous group of dug-in TAQ insurgents. Raising one's head over the wall to return direct fire was a losing proposition. When other groups of jihadists tried to encircle the Gurkhas from both flanks, they were able to break up these attacks as they formed with rifle grenades firing indirectly. The report didn't mention what kind of rifle grenades; I imagine Luchaires or something similar.

All this, of course requires live fire (or dummy fire) practice with either grenade launchers or rifle grenades, just like the rifle. Ah, therein lies the rub. One argument in favor of the rifle grenade is low cost since one can fire dummies all day, retrieving them and shooting them over and over. Getting the Army to spend a day at the range training with any ammunition is another matter. And, once proficiency is achieved, it has to be maintained.

The jihadists have found that the good old RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade pretty ineffective against modern heavy armor. Their solution is swarming, firing simultaneous volleys from several different RPGs concentrated on a single target. The more hits, the more damage done, and the greater the chance for a crucial hit.

Such concentration of fire from multiple weapons is hardly a new concept.

"M1 Grenade Launcher, Private First Class Paul Hogan [no relation to Crocodile Dundee], 30th Inf Div, Normandy: The M1 grenade launcher is really a perfect weapon. We wiped out two armored cars at about 175 yards with one round apiece from four M1's. The hits tore holes 6 to 8 inches in diameter in the sides, killing the men inside. One shell hit a gas tank and the car blew up."

God knows the modern Western infantryman carries waayyyy too much weight already without the addition of another two pounds for two rifle grenades, however. But a swarm concentration of numerous rifle grenades fired at a single target would work the same as an RPG swarm. Not gonna happen, though. Not even if the infantry's weight in other areas was sacrificed, such as dispensing with the large hard-bound volumes of State Department legal interpretations of the laws of war, which, I believe, one must consult before every shot fired.

Perhaps the best use of rifle grenades would be for folks who don't have access to M203s. Hmmm.

For some good information on rifle grenades see:

Combat Reform

Western Rifle Shooters Association

BY THE BOOK

2012-01-16T10:21:00.002-06:00

BY THE BOOK

OR NOT

In my little dissertations, some are irritated by my assertion that I think doing it “by the book” is not always the best course, and that “the book” is not the end-all and be-all. Especially the American Army’s book.

The idea I’m trying to convey is not that the book is worthless, as there is much to be learned from the manuals. I expound upon the blasphemous idea that just because the American military does something one way does not necessarily make it the way. There is much to be learned from someone else’s book, too. One can even learn from opponents who don’t even have a book.

The lesson is, as Clint Eastwood said, to “improvise, adapt and overcome.” Don’t get bogged down in inflexible cookie-cutter solutions which may be totally inapplicable to the situation at hand. Use what works best for you and your group. Change when change is needed, adapt to the enemy’s tactics, avoid conventional one-size-fits-all thinking.

Think outside the box…always…or you’ll never get out of the box; it will eventually become a cage and ever more limiting. Huge, hierarchical, bureaucratic hierarchies, for the most part, can’t escape from the box, don’t adapt, and refuse to learn from the past or the present.

This attitude is best summed up by a quote from an anonymous American brigadier general during the Vietnam War:

“I will be damned if I will permit the U.S. Army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its traditions to be destroyed just to win this lousy war.”

Fortunately, many military minds throughout history have had a more flexible mindset and approach. I hope that some of these quotes may provide food for thought and inspire outside-the-box thinking.

“The enemy's power of intelligent observation and thought give rise to what Georgetown University military historian Edward Luttwak calls the ‘paradoxical logic of war.’ No matter how sound the rules and procedures in ‘the book,’ the enemy will very shortly know ‘the book’ better than you do and will turn ‘doing it by the book’ into a death trap."

Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D

“If men make war in slavish obedience to the rules, they will fail.”

General Ulysses S. Grant

“The only way to prevent ossification of the mind is to accept nothing as fixed, to realize that the circumstances of war are ever changing, and that consequently organization, administration, strategy and tactics must change also...Adherence to dogmas has destroyed more armies and lost more battles and lives than any cause in war.”

Major General J.F.C. Fuller

“There is no ‘approved’ solution to any tactical situation.”

“It may be of interest to future generals to realize that one makes plans to fit the circumstances, and does not try to create circumstances to fit plans.”

"If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking."

General George S. Patton, Jr.

“Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.”

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel

“Fetishism for battle drills has been largely responsible for sanitizing imagination, creativity and mental mobility in infantry ranks.”

Colonel Arjun Ray

“Modern American war is as easy to script as a ‘B’ movie.”

“If you can't look truth right in the eye and learn from it, then it's going to end up biting you in the ass with a longer casualty list.”

Colonel David Hackworth

"Paper-work will ruin any military force."

Lieutenant-General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller

“One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.”

Marshall Napoleon Bonaparte

“Yet it [the US Army] seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a pre-disposition to offensive operations, and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on.”

Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster

“Basic Field Manual knowledge is fine, but it is useless without common sense. Common sense is of greater value than all the words in the book.”

Brigadier General Amor L. Sims, USMC

“So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

IS THE SWIRLING GETTING FASTER?

2012-01-14T08:55:00.009-06:00

Time to check in on just a tiny sampling of how your government of, for and by the People is serving you. You may wish to grab your vomit bag at this point.

William Randolf Hurst was recently caught building an escape ladder from Hell, such is his jealously of our modern mainstream media and the power they wield via new technology he could never have dreamed of. We've all seen how our modern pillars of journalistic integrity have come to regard "investigation" of news stories to mean regurgitating White House press releases verbatim, presenting editorials of their personal opinions as news, creating news, skewing, omitting, twisting, spinning...you get the idea. Hell, they can even get an unqualified boob elected to the presidency.

Journalists of all people should be wary of giving too much power even to a regime that they worship and indeed helped create. But, as with so many others in our modern society, they don't know history, and thus it is bound to repeat itself once more. Journalists who helped put the likes of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Mao-Tse Tung in power all rued they day they did so when those regimes turned on them. When they support over-reaching, unrestrained unconstitutional powers being given to their current darling, they should stop and think, "What would happen if my worst enemy were in charge of such powers?" But they won't. Not until it's too late.

Whoops, looks like they already missed the bus.

Freedom of speech might allow journalists to get away with a lot in America, but the Department of Homeland Security is on the ready to make sure that the government is keeping dibs on who is saying what.

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.

Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and it Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

We hate to say I told you so but...we told you so.

Bureaucrats within scores of needless and labyrinthine governmental agencies have also over-stepped their bounds with nary a peep from our journalistic defenders of freedom. Any horse's ass in, say, the Environmental Protection Agency can make up some asinine rule to justify his or her unnecessary existence and it becomes the rule of law without having to go through that pesky ol' Congress. In this case, apparently, the bureaucrats weren't moving fast enough, so Congress helped things right along since the fines go into Fed.gov's coffers.

A Fine for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn't Exist

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

Those damn mean greedy oil companies are screwing us again!

When it comes to the Men in Black, the judges of our beloved Federal court system, neither the Constitution, the laws of the land nor the will of the People are apparently any justification for, say, upholding the law of the land. I know "Separation of Church and State" is one of the classic Big Lies...we'll award $500 and a new car to anyone who can find that phrases in the Bill of Rights...but by that argument, how can Sharia law trump United States and State criminal and civil law? That's easy. Find yourself a Federal judge (I can't bring myself to call them "justices").

"DENVER (Reuters) - A federal appeals court upheld an injunction against a voter-approved ban on Islamic law in Oklahoma on Tuesday, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution by discriminating against religion...
The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomed the ruling, calling it, "A victory for the Constitution..."

If that's a victory for the Constitution, I'd hate to see a defeat.

Let me see if I have this right. Ben and I can form our own religion, like Scientology or the Acolytes of Al Gore, and our holy scripture says we can go around kicking Federal judges in the nuts whenever we want, would that then be OK? If so, we need to get cracking on Benandbawbism. May the Great & Powerful 7.62x51mm NATO watch over you and give you peace.

So why is Bawb off again on the whole Sharia law thing? This piece from the American Thinker, with plenty of links, says it better than I can.

10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped.

9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives.

8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge—physical eye for physical eye.

7. Islam commands that a male and female thief must have a hand cut off.

6. Islam commands that highway robbers should be crucified or mutilated.

5. Islam commands that homosexuals must be executed.

4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.

[BTW ladies, you're guilty of adultery if you get raped.]

3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself.

2. Islam orders apostates to be killed.

1. Islam commands offensive and aggressive and unjust jihad.

Hell, that's no reason not to give it precedence over the laws of the land.

But there still flickers an ember of hope, probably too little too late, but warming to us anyways...the County Sheriff.

"The Bureau of Land Management is taking onto themselves law enforcement authority that Congress never gave them. In the Federal Land Policy and Management Act that was passed in the early 1970s it made it clear that Congress said that, first, you must go to your local county sheriff for law enforcement activities.”

“In the BLM proposed rules and regulations, you can’t remove any plants or soil or pick up any rocks or minerals. You can’t drive on any vegetation or soil. You can’t disturb soil at all. Now you can’t set a foot on soil without disturbing it. You can’t set a foot on a ground plant without disturbing it.”

For the sheriff in Nye County, Nevada, BLM abridgments of liberty had gone too far. When BLM threatened to arrest the sheriff if he refused to go along with BLM’s illegal searches and seizures against Nye County citizens, Sheriff Tony DeMeo countered by telling BLM in no uncertain terms that should any agent attempt to enforce BLM’s unconstitutional policies, he would have his deputies arrest them. DeMeo even had his SWAT teams standing by to enforce the law AGAINST THE OUT-OF-CONTROL FEDERAL AGENCY. To put it in Sheriff DeMeo’s words, “We’d be standing between them [BLM] and my constituents [county residents].” At the last minute, BLM backed off and the confrontation between the Nye County sheriff’s office and the federal agency was averted.

Check out and support Sheriff Mack, one of the brave few Peace Officers (not a Law Enforcement Officer!) still wearing a white hat.

ANGUS ANGST

2012-01-04T05:57:00.004-06:00

Yes, our dear friends at PETA, aka Looney Tunes Central, have come up with yet another pressing issue we should all be concerned about...roadside memorials for dead cows.

Chicago - An animal rights group wants Illinois to install highway signs in memory of cattle that died when trucks hauling them flipped in two separate wrecks.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to buy the markers, one in suburban Chicago and one northwest of Peoria. PETA's request to the Illinois Department of Transportation says the signs would pay tribute to the more than 20 head of cattle killed as a result of negligent driving in Illinois this year.

That's right folks. Cows. The hell with all the people who died on those same roads. They don't count for shit in the world of PETA. Soon, they'll probably introduce legislation for seat belts in stock trailers. It's for the calves!

Out west here, where a being vegetarian means you eat only grass-fed beef, the various kook organizations are trying to get rid of the white crosses (Indian Exits) along the road which commemorate where people have died in fatal traffic accidents. Maybe in their place they could put up markers for all the deer, elk, antelope, etc which have become road pizza over the years. It would look like a picket fence.

We here at das blog are also deeply concerned about this bovine bloodbath, so I have submitted these architectural designs to commemorate the Hereford holocaust.

Dang, all this is making me hungry. I think I'll go get a burger.

HOW IMPORTANT IS THE IOWA CAUCUS?

2011-12-31T07:24:00.002-06:00

Well, that depends on who wins it and if the media likes him.

Nope, no media bias. Nothing to see here. Move along.

THEY STILL DON'T GET IT...

2011-12-28T09:16:00.004-06:00

...OR THEY GET IT AND DON'T CARE

Don’t these morons know there’s a deficit out there?

Separate but Equal

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.) has proposed legislation that would let fire stations around the country apply for grants of up to $100,000 to build women's restrooms, showers and changing facilities.

The Fairness in Restrooms Existing in Stations (FIRE Stations) Act says these grants would help promote gender equity in fire houses (VIA the Department of Homeland Security). The findings of the legislation says most were built with a "single-gender workforce" in mind, that 50 percent of all fire departments do not have any female employees, and that women make up just 3.7 percent of all firefighters.

The bill limits grants to $100,000 per fire station, but does not put any final limit on the amount that could be spent. Instead, it authorizes the appropriation of "such sums as may be necessary to carry out this Act."

Vere Are Your Papers?!?

“The TSA isn’t just for airports anymore. TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country…

The TSA's 25 "viper" teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year.

According to budget documents, the department spent $110 million in fiscal 2011 for "surface transportation security," including the TSA's viper program, and is asking for an additional $24 million next year. That compares with more than $5 billion for aviation security…

But critics say that without a clear threat, the TSA checkpoints are merely political theater. Privacy advocates worry that the agency is stretching legal limits on the government's right to search U.S. citizens without probable cause — and with no proof that the scattershot checkpoints help prevent attacks.

"It's a great way to make the public think you are doing something," said Fred H. Cate, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who writes on privacy and security. "It's a little like saying, 'If we start throwing things up in the air, will they hit terrorists?' ''

Oh, Never Mind the Papers

The United States Senate, as always upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, gave us a Christmas present in the form of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA), passing it by a vote of 86-14. This odious act, “…allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.”

Tiny ray of Sunshine: Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill, but nothing will come of it.

For Me but not for Thee

Santa Obama gave himself and his poor little deprived family a little gift over the holidays, a 17-day vacation at the Moana Surfrider in Waikiki, one of Hawaii’s most luxurious resorts. Estimated (known) cost to you and I: $4,113,038.

Right there with him in the Aloha State was our gal, that great crusader for the poor, Nancy Pelosi (net worth $58 million). This was her third Christmas vacation at the exotic Four Seasons Resort Hualalai, where she had to put up with a lousy $10,000 per night suite. Local taxpayers costs for police protection: $34,000. Cost to U.S. taxpayers?????

Nancy had planned to attend a Christmas midnight mass at St. Michael’s in Kailu-Kona, but she kept bursting into flame when she got within 100 meters of the church. Firefighting costs unknown.

Remember when the Press used to bitch about Nancy Reagan spending too much money? Where are they now?

The Haves and the Have-Nots

By the way, it’s easier to see how politicians of all stripes can piss away money in such large sums so quickly. They’re right up there amongst those evil, idle rich who don’t create jobs.

"...wealth of members of Congress has TRIPLED in 25 years-while average U.S. family has suffered a DROP in their worth.

Median net worth of member of Congress rose from $280,000 to $725,000 between 1984 and 2009

Over same 25 years the wealth of the average U.S. family slipped from $20,500 from $20,600

The Solution? Spend Mo’ Money!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government's debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

The Republic is on life support, they’re about to pull the plug, and they just don't give a rat's ass.

HOME LOAN HORRORS

2011-12-26T09:47:00.001-06:00

So, having not owned a home since about 1995, and that one having had axles underneath it, my beloved Wife Mk. II and I recently learned the ins-and-outs of the new & improved home financing system. I was not amused.

Part of the problem, actually a great big fat part of the problem, was the lending institution we chose; Crapital Mortgage in Missoula, MT. We went in a couple of months before we even started looking at homes to get a pre-approval on a loan and see what price-range we could qualify for, filled out all the reams of paperwork, jumped through all the hoops. All was fine ‘n’ dandy we were told. OK, we figured we were good to go and went shopping in our price range.

In hindsight, I should have known it was going to be a clusterfudge. The little gal who processed our pre-approval did indeed have great assets, but her math never seemed to come out the same twice in a row. That and the fact that the first time we visited that mortgage company, I peeked in the window before we entered and saw everybody running around the place poking each other in the eye balls and going, “Woop! Woop! Woop!” and “Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!”

Anyway, as I said, we went through the whole nine yards of pre-approval which one would think meant a loan in a certain price range would be, well, pre-approved. It is, until you actually make an offer on a house and it’s accepted. Then all of a sudden, all these little details start popping up, the need for this paperwork or that form or the other statement. Ours came up two days before closing, when the previous owners had already moved out, the moving company was coming, the electric and gas and mail and phone was changing over, etc.

It seems we needed Form # 4782A1 Mk. IV, (w/winch), 1 ea, or whatever the hell it was. One might imagine that a company in the business of processing loans and had been doing it for years might have, say, a checklist of the necessary forms, credit checks, assets, statements, etc. required. That way, they could actually look at the checklist ahead of time and request the documents needed, perhaps even prior to the closing date. One would be wrong in thinking that.

So anyway, months after we were “pre-approved” and finally put an offer on a house in our price range, this kind of shit kept ("No, that was Form # 4782A1 Mk. IV without winch.") coming up at the last minute. Two days before Closing Date #2 something else came up we had to rush to get via fax at the last minute. By then the movers weren’t going to reschedule at the last moment AGAIN, so I stayed home with them while my wife drove 3 hours to Bozeman to sign a paper which, of course, wasn’t actually there yet, so she had to drive 3 hours back. Finally, the next day, with all our possessions in a moving truck somewhere on I-90, we finished closing on the home. We got there at 0830 in the morning and quickly had the keys by 1600 that afternoon.

In addition to the paperwork, we were distressed that the numbers the mortgage company giving us never once matched or added up the same way twice. Being mathematically impaired, I can see the numbers not always adding up. In such case, however, even I’m smart enough to run the numbers over and check the math. Kind of like that old carpenters' adage, "Measure twice, cut once." But then I’m not a state-licensed blonde with huge “tracts of land”.

The whole ordeal was almost like dealing with a government bureaucracy. Almost, but not quite, and some of the hang-ups came from the government.

For instance, there is apparently a new government regulation designed to help the long-since floundered and capsized real estate and lending industry stay submerged. It stipulates you have to cancel your credit cards to get your loan. WTF? It doesn’t matter if you pay your credit down to ZERO at the end of every month and have never had so much as a late payment. So, by buying your own home, you actually hurt your credit score and have to go re-apply for the same credit you’ve had for years a week or so later.

I guess the Nanny State doesn’t want you to take out a big home mortgage and then immediately max out all your credit cards by running off on a “fact-finding junket” to the Caribbean or a “diplomatic” visit to South Africa. It’s not like you, my dear peasant, can cover such expenses with kick-backs, lobbyists, abuse of taxpayer funds, or running a gay prostitution ring out of your posh Washington, D.C. apartment.

Speaking of gay prostitutes, it was our old pal from Taxassachusetts, Rep. Bawney Fwank, who helped the whole housing market collapse right along by refusing to plug the drain when the water started swirling. A certain previous administration wanted to create a new regulatory agency within the Treasury Department to keep a tighter rein on what Fannie and Freddie were up to. Normally, I’m against any new regulatory agency, but at the time Fannie & Freddie were "supervised" by CONGRESS, which, to paraphrase P.J. O'Rorke, is like teenage boys “supervising” the liquor cabinet and the car keys. Opposing the very thought of someone other than Congress "supervising" these entities, Bawney Fwank, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee at the time, assured us this was not necessary. And I quote:

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Fweddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financiaw cwisis. The mowe people exaggewate these pwoblems, the mowe pressuwe thewe is on these companies, the wess we wiwl see in tewms of affowdable housing.''

While I have no doubt the Fannie & Freddie CEOs were greedy little bastards not adverse the fudging figures and intent on lining their own nests, let's not forget that Fanny & Freddie are GSE's, Government Sponsored Enterprises, and thus required to meet "affordable housing goals" set annually by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and approved by Congress.

In plain and simple terms, they had to approve subprime loans to the kind of people who list food stamps and an old Camaro up on blocks in the yard as "assets" and a meth lab as "source of income". Lo and behold, such people defaulted on said loans, toppling the whole house of cards.

Government stepped right in to fix things, by backing up a line of dump trucks to pour taxpayer money into Fannie and Freddy. The CEOs were accused by Congress and the MSM of "Knowing and approving of misleading statements." BWAHAHAHA! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Yes, the CEOs were a bunch of despicable pricks but, like a bookie who shares his income with the local Mafioso, they thought they could get away with it because they "had protection." That protection came from (surprise!) Congress.

The book All the Devils Are Here took a long hard look at how GSE's, Fannie in particular, operated hand-in-hand with Congress in a case of what might be called symbiotic crony capitalism.

"Tactics included a massive lobbying effort, neutering the OFHEO (its 1992-created regulator), creating a 'partnership office' network to court the politically powerful with pork, giving high level employment to the well connected, giving out campaign contributions, creating a charity foundation, and threatening critics like FM Watch with retaliation. One [source from book] compared Fannie's activities to Tammany Hall."

No matter the root cause, I figured the collapse would have culled the herd so to speak, weeding out the sick, lame and lazy, leaving only solid lending institutions who knew what they hell they were doing. This is why I get in trouble for thinking.

Apparently, since the government stepped in to "fix" things, the pendulum has swung wildly in the other direction when it comes to us "under-represented" demographics qualifying for a loan. Formerly, a single mother with 17 kids who listed employment as "part-time exotic dancer" could get approved for loans in excess of $500,000. Now apparently you have to own two blocks in downtown Manhattan for collateral and attend at least three $5,000 per plate "charity" dinners supporting your favorite politician (check the sub-clause; one of those dinners had to serve Endangered Chilean Sea Bass au Gore.) I can tell you that credit scores in the high 700's, no debt, and owning all your own assets doesn't mean shit.

So I must advise you strongly to do your homework on your lending institution. Just because they’re all licensed by the state and have a nice office with realistic-looking diplomas from the Las Vegas School of Business & Blackjack on the wall doesn’t mean much.

Rather than Crapital Mortgage Co., I would recommend a much more efficient lending institution known as Vito & Vinnie. They have a small office on Third and Elm; just look for a late-model white Cadillac with the trunk open. Be aware, as a rather exclusive firm, their business hours are limited, right around shift-change time for the local police department IIRC.

Their math always comes out the same way twice, especially if it involves the number of fingers broken. But at least you close on your new home the first time around.

VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE NEW HOUSE

2011-12-26T08:19:00.009-06:00

Aside from the ordeal of actually closing on our new home and land, detailed above, I have been getting many requests (hi Pat!) for pictures of the new digs. SO, to shut folks up, here is a short "virtual tour" of the new place.

In keeping with Owl Gore's admonishments to "go green", we decided to make the home "aesthetically pleasing" to the natural setting.

The living room window has an awesome view and field of fire.

It is an older model home, as you can see from the 75mm gun instead of the 105mm gun now used to accessorize.

You know those ceiling fans designed to look like the nose of a P40 Flying Tiger? Those are for pussies.

I found the basement a little cramped for my reloading bench and gunsmithing hobbies.

Unwanted guests? Just pop out the back door.

I even had room to set up a little riding trail for my ATV.

Although the back yard is a bit restricted, I did manage to set up my own small rifle range to play with my toys. I got an, "I told you so!" from my wife, though. The neighbors do bitch about the noise for some reason.

MERRY X-MAS FOLKS

2011-12-24T09:03:00.003-06:00

LAST RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE?

2011-12-11T11:27:00.004-06:00

Why might this by the last Religion of Peace Update? Well, because the OIC and the UN (and of course the Obama Regime) are taking the first steps to OUTLAW CRITICISM OF ISLAM.

The OIC is the largest head of state organization in the world after the United Nations (UN) itself and comprises 56 Muslim countries plus the Palestinians. It claims to be the "collective voice of the Muslim world," i.e., the ummah, and speaks on its behalf in effect as the seat of the next Islamic Caliphate. In 1990, the OIC membership adopted the "Cairo Declaration," which officially exempted all Muslim countries from compliance with the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights and replaced it with Islamic law (shariah).

One of the fundamental laws of Islam deals with "slander," which is defined in shariah as saying "anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike." At the OIC's Third Extraordinary Session, held in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in December 2005, the organization adopted a Ten-Year Programme of Action to Meet the Challenges Facing the Muslim Ummah in the 21st Century." A key agenda item of that meeting was "the need to counter Islamophobia" by seeking to have the UN "…adopt an international resolution to counter Islamophobia, and call upon all States to enact laws to counter it, including deterrent punishments." The word "Islamophobia" is a completely invented word, coined by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) front group. OIC adoption of the term reflects the close operational relationship between the OIC and the Ikhwan.

Six years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to host OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Washington, DC in mid-December 2011 to discuss how the United States can implement the OIC agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam.

There you have it boys and girls. Soon you may not be able to say anything a Muslim might dislike. And of course the Obama Regime wants to hop on board to see how the U.S. can "criminalize criticism of Islam." Pay no attention to that First Amendment behind the curtain!

Of course you already figured the good ol' United Nations, which hasn't really done anything worth a shit since about 1950, was in on it. UNESCO recently voted 107 to 15 to admit the Palestinians as a member. Why the United States taxpayer has to fund 22%--roughly $80,000,000 a year--of this for-shit do-nothing organization that hates our guts is waaayyyy beyond my pay grade. Sure makes you miss Ronald Reagan. He cut American funding to UNESCO; it was not Bill Clinton but "conservative" George W. Bush who re-instated that funding after 20 years. Well, we have so much extra money just lying around collecting dust, why not?

For those who don't know how the UN actually works, here is a simple synopsis which explains it, short and sweet.

"White man come in great iron bird. Slay simba with fire-stick. Make Chief Umbulla senior member of United Nations Security Council."

So, while you can't say anything a Muslim would dislike, if you are a Muslim, feel free to kill and butcher thousands of Christians around the world, or anyone who pisses you off, or merely annoys you, or happens to be present when you set off an IED. To paraphrase the most cerebral president's well-thought-out and intellectual call to action in 2008, "Yes you can!"

Meanwhile, here's your Religion of Peace update thus far for December 2011, while I can still mention it with being arrested and beheaded.

2011.12.10 Sham, Pakistan: Terrorists take down a child and injure three women with a landmine.
2011.12.10 Jos, Nigeria: Islamists bomb an outdoor bar showing a soccer match on TV, killing at least one fan.
2011.12.10 Khakrez, Afghanistan: Sunni bombers murder three civilians riding a taxi.
2011.12.10 Kunduz, Afghanistan: Islamists attach a bomb to a bicycle that manages to kill two innocents.
2011.12.10 Landikotal, Pakistan: Religious extremists tear down two Sufi shrines and murder an elderly caretaker.
2011.12.09 Karachi, Pakistan: A 45-year-old Shia man is gunned down in his own home by Wahhabis.
2011.12.09 Yala, Thailand: Militant Muslims shoot a 28-year-old man to death outside a rubber plantation.
2011.12.09 Ghazi Abad, Afghanistan: A Shahid suicide bomber detonates inside a mosque, killing six.
2011.12.07 Dammaj, Yemen: Sunni Islamists open fire on a group of Shia, killing three. 2011.12.07 Pattani, Thailand: A Buddhist cop is murdered by a Muslim drive-by.
2011.12.07 Sangin, Afghanistan: Holy Warriors massacre nineteen bus passengers, including five children, with a landmine.
2011.12.07 Kaduna, Nigeria: Very young children are among the casualties of a Shahid suicide bombing in a commercial district.
2011.12.06 Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan: Four Shiites leaving a mosque are sent straight to Allah by Sunni bicycle bombers.
2011.12.06 Kabul, Afghanistan: About eighty Shiite pilgrims, including women and children, are torn to shreds outside a shrine by a Sunni wearing an explosives vest packed with ball bearings.
2011.12.06 Kirkuk, Iraq: Sunnis fire mortars at a Shia mosque, killing one occupant.
2011.12.06 Mogadishu, Somalia: Fedayeen suicide bomber scatters the body parts of at least four victims along a city street.
2011.12.06 Pulwama, India: Islamic militants abduct and murder a civilian.
2011.12.05 Baghdad, Iraq: A Sunni roadside bomb attack on a Shia procession leaves eight pilgrims dead.
2011.12.05 Maiduguri, Nigeria: Two people praying at a mosque are gunned down by Religion of Peace rivals.
2011.12.05 Hillah, Iraq: Two dozen pilgrims, mostly women and children, are ripped apart by three Sunni car bombs.
2011.12.05 , Kohat, Pakistan: Muslim militants fire a rocket into a market, killing two people. 2011.12.05 Bosaso, Somalia: al-Shabaab extremists gun down a rival cleric at a mosque. 2011.12.05 Chora, Afghanistan: Four children and a woman are dismantled by a Taliban roadside bomb.
2011.12.05 Latifiyah, Iraq: Sunni bombers take down two Shiite pilgrims on foot.
2011.12.04 Bayaa, Iraq: Sunni bombers manage to take down a Shia pilgrim on foot.
2011.12.04 Bauchi, Iraq: A boy is among six people killed by a Boko Haram bombing and shooting attack..
2011.12.03 Jaffarabad, Pakistan: Two people are shot to death on suspicion of 'illicit relations'. 2011.12.03 Boraldai, Kazakhstan: Two policemen are shot to death by a group of Muslim radicals.
2011.12.03 Zakho, Iraq: Thrity-two people are injured during a rampage by fundamentalists against Christian-owned businesses.
2011.12.03 Zinjibar,Yemen: Five local soldiers are taken out in a brutal al-Qaeda ambush. 2011.12.03 Baghdad, Iraq: A man and his wife are murdered by Islamist gunmen.
2011.12.03 Baaj, Iraq: Three brothers are shot to death in their home by Sunni militants. 2011.12.03 Maiduguri, Nigeria: Boko Haram Islamists fire into a wedding ceremony, killing the groom and a guest.
2011.12.03 Karachi, Pakistan: Two men are shot to death by sectarian Jihadis.
2011.12.03 Iskandariya, Iraq: Three innocent people are killed by an 'insurgent' roadside bomb.
2011.12.02 Taji, Iraq: al-Qaeda bombers take down four Iraqis, including a man and his mother.
2011.12.02 Landi Kotal, Pakistan: Two peace committee members are murdered by armed radicals.
2011.12.02 al-Sharqat, Iraq: Three civilian defense volunteers are machine-gunned at a checkpoint by al-Qaeda.
2011.12.02 Ghayl, Yemen: al-Qaeda gunmen spray the inside of a coffee shop with bullets, leaving at least two dead.
2011.12.02 Logar, Afghanistan: A suicide truck bomber kills a carpenter and injures about eighty others.
2011.12.02 Khyber, Pakistan: Three women and two children are killed in the crossfire between two Islamist groups.
2011.12.01 Iraq Khalis 10 25 Ten patrons at a vegetable market are ripped apart by a well-placed bomb.
2011.12.01 Jil al-Said, Iraq: al-Qaeda gunmen pull eight people from their homes, line them up against the wall and shoot them.
2011.12.01 Yala, Thailand: A local soldier is killed by a bomb planted by Islamic 'insurgents'.

2011.12.06 Kabul, Afghanistan

And remember, gang. Only thirteen killing days left 'til Christmas. Before it's outlawed too.

EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN MILITARY MARKSMANSHIP

2011-12-01T07:54:00.013-06:00

The evolution of the American military rifleman.

1776

1864

1918

1942

1951

1968

Present day

“When they started out, they couldn’t shoot. They didn’t know their weapons. They had not had enough training in plain old-fashioned musketry. They’d spent a lot of time listening to lectures on the differences between Communism and Americanism and not enough time crawling on their bellies on maneuvers with live ammunition singing over them.”

Colonel John “Mike” Michaels, 27th "Wolfhounds" Infantry Regiment, Pusan, Korea, 1950.

To most folks, that would sound like a training and doctrine failure. Pentagon weenies are not most folks, though. Their solution to every problem for the past few decades has been to spend billions on super-duper high-tech wonder weapons capable of taking the individual soldier’s ability out of the equation as much as possible. Anything but better training, especially in marksmanship, which might expend too many rounds costing a quarter apiece.

As one modern marksmanship trainer who has been trying to jam in an intense 1 or 2-day shooting refresher for troops deploying overseas noted recently, it seems the Pentagon would rather pay for USGI Life Insurance benefits than small arms ammunition. I know that in 4 years of active Army and 9 in the Guard I never, ever, once had any refresher marksmanship training...even when I offered to give it.

The myth of the American male being a “natural shooter” died hard. I know of plenty of guys who still haven’t gotten the word. To my mind, the Korean War sounded the death knell for the American infantryman as a real rifleman. Troops initially sent to stop the North Korean invasion were men stationed on occupation duty in post-WWII-Japan. They were out-of-shape, poorly-trained, ignorant of their equipment, much of which was in poor repair, and just plain soft. When it came to the art of the rifle, even the reinforcements and recruits fresh from training who were rushed to the conflict weren’t much better.

Military historian General S.L.A. Marshall, after numerous studies and interviews, came to the statistical conclusion that, “The great killing zone for the rifle is at less than 200 yards.” Which was no doubt true in Korea. Those who latched onto the 200-yard-range figure used it as proof that the soldier did not need a weapon capable of an effective range beyond 300 meters, such as a small caliber assault rifle.

But SLAM also added a few caveats that seem to have been ignored.

“But an arm which was not reasonably accurate at ranges well in excess of that would shift too large a part of the burden to the heavier weapons of the infantry during the enemy approach and withdrawal…Rifle practice at the longer ranges is still desirable. But the rifleman needs about five times the amount of practice now given him with live ammunition if the weapon’s potential is to be fully exploited in combat.”

Increased training? Expending live ammunition on the range? Surely, he jested. What kind of solution is that?

From men who could already shoot well…long-time hunters, high-power match competitors, or simply self-taught shooters…being able to “shoot up to the rifle” meant something with the M1 Garand.

“The engagement range could run from 500 yards down to right outside my hole. I knocked people down right outside my foxhole and I shot them at 500 yards.”

“With the M1, you could engage targets out to 500 yards. Since I had qualified expert with the M1, I could hit targets that far out.”

“I made shots out to 600 to 700 yards…There was no doubt about it; I was good with the M1. It just fascinated me that the rifle could do those things at those ranges.”

With the exception of some Marine Corps units, marksmanship training and abilities of the average GI was almost universally piss poor. One post-war analysis by an American Army officer found:

“Firepower was also degraded by the failure of training to focus on marksmanship. ‘During World War II and the postwar period, there was a tendency in the Army to substitute volume of fire for marksmanship.’ During the Korean War many infantry units did not place effective fire on the enemy. Effective by means of ‘the old “shoot to kill” tradition.’ One study concluded that 67 percent of the men questioned said that they aimed, on average, only one round out of an 8 round clip.

‘One infantryman expressed a theory, apparently held by many, that the job of the M-1 carbine rifleman is primarily to pour out as much lead as possible to keep the enemy’s head down.’ The study also discovered that one third of the soldiers questioned never zeroed their weapons while stationed in Korea. Although infantrymen indicated that weapons training was the most valuable skill they acquired, the lessons of rifle marksmanship were lost on the battlefields of Korea.”

A great many soldiers were just handed a rifle and never even got the chance to zero it. Even if they knew why and how, it was often no thanks to their training if they did. Firing a rifle that has not been zeroed for the individual, even the best marksman could potentially miss a man-sized target at 100 yards, and the error increases exponentially as range increases. If one is 4 inches off at 100 yards, he is 8 inches off at 200, and 16 at 300, 32 at 400, etc. Which doesn’t even take into account the individual shooter’s proficiency.

"Sight picture is no good without a zero."

The stories of poor small arms training during the Korean War era are endemic.

Basic Training at Fort Dix, NJ in 1947:

“We did very little weapons training there. We didn’t even have weapons until two weeks before range firing. Before that we just had sticks…The marksmanship training we got wasn’t very good. Most of it was on proper sight alignment, which was the most important thing. We also did a lot of dry firing behind the range. The bad thing was that they didn’t reach us proper zeroing techniques. The problem was they didn’t have experienced cadre, most of the trainers were corporals.”

Camp Breckenridge, KY, 1952:

“We trained on all the infantry weapons, but very little. Not enough to say we were experts on any of them. It was more a familiarization on most of them.”

Camp Crowder, MO:

“If you shot expert [a basic trainee], they made you cadre. That’s how hard up they were to find people to train the new troops who were being drafted.”

Ft. Dix again:

“The training wasn’t that good; the sergeant and corporal instructing us did not know how to shoot. All they did was rattle off a bunch of instructions and scream and holler at us. If the NCO’s didn’t know how to shoot, how could you expect them to teach us how to shoot?...At Dix, they were more interested in us scrubbing them in hot, soapy water and standing inspection with the damned things.”

Other veterans made statements such as:

“I was issued a rifle and allowed to fire 50 rounds familiarization with it.”

“We were issued some weapons in California and everybody fired different weapons off the tail of the ship [en route to the Korean battlefields]…They’d throw trash over the side and we shot at it…We zeroed our rifles while we were on the ship, or we attempted to zero them…It was real flaky…”

“We took a Merchant Marine ship to Japan. I remember we did some rifle training on the ship. We practiced our firing techniques from different positions firing live ammo into the sea.”

Needless to say, with this kind of training, the average GI’s shooting wasn’t exactly Sergeant Alvin York-ish.

Another of the Army’s own official post-war studies concluded: “The costly design precision and long-range accuracy of the M1 rifle are of doubtful value to the average infantryman…A marked decrease in the hit probability for all types of riflemen occurs at ranges between 100 and 300 yards.”

“Data on the incidence of gunshot wounds (as well as study of the visibility of man-size targets on the battlefield) show that there is actually a limited requirement for delivering rifle fire at ranges exceeding 300 yards. This does not mean, however, that there is no requirement for such fire at greater ranges.”

“Fully automatic or rapid semi-automatic fire does not increase the burst hit probability beyond that of the single (first) round. [emphasis added]”

SLAM again:

“Suffice to say now that any trend toward eliminating the semi-automatic, hand-carried weapons in favor of full-automatic weapons in the hands of all infantrymen should be vigorously combated....
On the basis of their experience, they would not concur in any suggestion that the line could be strengthened by fitting it exclusively with full-automatic power."

Such was based upon the fact than in numerous infantry battles in Korea, the full-automatic weapons...the machine guns, BAR's, and M2 carbines...had burned up all their ammo fairly early in the firefight and gone dry, leaving the issue to be settled in the last few minutes and last few yards by the semiautomatic M1 Garands.

In addition to the poor marksmanship training, troops of the era also had pretty bad training in maintaining their weapons in the field, understanding how their weapons worked and knowing what they could really do.

The solution to such a dilemma? Well, some damn fools such as yourself or myself might think that increased training and live-fire practice would fix the problem. That’s why we don’t get paid the big bucks and have stars on our shoulders like those guys working in the Pentagon, and don’t get even bigger bucks after retiring from the military to work as a “consultant” for a large defense contractor.

No sirree, Bawb. The solution lies in multi-gazillion dollar uber techno weapons development that tries to take the human equation, i.e. the soldier, and his abilities or lack thereof out of the picture altogether, or at least as much as possible. And remember, as Jeff Cooper summed up the modern military definition of firepower, "If you can't shoot well, shoot a lot!"

To get a feel for just how our military-industrial weapons "development" and "procurement" process works, see the the multi-billion dollar fiasco of the 1980's M247 Sergeant York DIVAD SP anti-aircraft gun, which thankfully died before it could perform in combat as it did in testing. The Sgt York, BTW, never even came close to the existing off-the-shelf West German Gepard Flakpanzer (adopted in 1972) or the Soviet ZSU-23-4 Shilka (1965), both of which are still in use around the world even today. No matter how much you polish a turd (and throw money at it) it's still a turd.

For the best and most entertaining example of how the Pentagon-Defense Industry symbiotic relationship truly works, get the movie Pentagon Wars starring Kelsey Grammar and Cary Elwes. It's definitely worth the watch.

Meanwhile, us ignorant hicks can just go attend an Appleseed, put in more dry-firing and launch more bullets downrange and make our old-fashioned "junk" weapons quite effective.

LET'S HOPE SO

2011-12-01T05:11:00.002-06:00

The Great Global Warming Fizzle

The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom.

"Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

This week, the conclave of global warming's cardinals are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for their 17th conference in as many years. The idea is to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire next year, and to require rich countries to pony up $100 billion a year to help poor countries cope with the alleged effects of climate change. This is said to be essential because in 2017 global warming becomes "catastrophic and irreversible," according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.

The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece."

PSSSSTTT! Somebody tell the Aussies.

Gun Nut Rounup Nov. 2011

2011-11-28T22:00:00.002-06:00

Right-To-Carry Reciprocity Bill Passes House

H.R. 822, the “National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011” a bill being championed by the National Rifle Association, recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “This legislation requires states that currently allow people to carry concealed firearms to recognize other states’ valid concealed carry permits, much like states recognize driver’s licenses issued by other states." Several anti-gun amendments to the bill were defeated.

The bill may now be voted on by the Senate and if it passes there would have to be signed into law by the president.

Operation Iraqi Subjugation

After America spent God knows how much blood and treasure on "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the new Iraqi government seeks to strip the Iraqi people of the freedom to own firearms, according to a recent Radio Free Europe (RFE) report.

According to the article, the proposed bill would lay down "strict requirements for licensing the possession of arms to ensure that the state and its respective security organs have a monopoly on the use of weapons." Never mind that in these third-world shitholes "the state and its respective security organs" are the ones often committing violence and the ones that the people need arms to defend themselves from.

RFE says that Abbas al-Bayati, the deputy chairman of the parliament's Security and Defense Committee, said that "the army, police, and security agencies alone will be responsible for protecting the people, whose sole duty is to cooperate with those forces and report any suspicious activity to the authorities." Glad we got rid of that pesky dictatorship and replaced it with parliamentary democracy! Let us remember the 1992 words of Marvin Simkin: "Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote." (No, Benjamin Franklin never said that.)

Survey Says: Guns Are Awesome

The latest annual Gallup Crime poll showed continued declines in support for restrictions on gun ownership among Americans. Key findings in the poll:

"A record-low 26% of Americans favor a legal ban on the possession of handguns in the United States other than by police and other authorized people. When Gallup first asked Americans this question in 1959, 60% favored banning handguns. But since 1975, the majority of Americans have opposed such a measure, with opposition around 70% in recent years."
"For the first time, Gallup finds greater opposition to than support for a ban on semiautomatic guns or assault rifles, 53% to 43%. In the initial asking of this question in 1996, the numbers were nearly reversed, with 57% for and 42% against an assault rifle ban. Congress passed such a ban in 1994, but the law expired when Congress did not act to renew it in 2004. Around the time the law expired, Americans were about evenly divided in their views."
"Additionally, support for the broader concept of making gun laws "more strict" is at its lowest by one percentage point (43%). Forty-four percent prefer that gun laws be kept as they are now, while 11% favor less strict laws."

So to Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, Michael Bloomberg, Josh Sugarmann, et al: Eat my shorts!

Vet Kicked From Class On Vets Day

2011-11-20T15:34:00.007-06:00

On Veterans Day, a day we typically honor veterans, an Iowa two-time Iraq war vet was being kicked to the curb by Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) staff. The veteran was turned away from class at the Ankeny campus because he had a service dog assisting him and the teacher felt it may be a distraction to other students. By law service animals must be admitted unless they are behaving inappropriately.

DMACC Professor:
"Screw you, baby killer, and
your little dog too!"

The dog helps the veteran with his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nicole Shumate, the executive director of a local nonprofit that trains service dogs explains: "A lot of times what the dog will do, is sometimes they will stand right in front of you so no one can approach too closely. They will watch behind you so if someone approaches behind you they will wag their tail, so the recipient will only see the tail wagging and it's just awareness that someone is close behind you.”

Although the instructor has since apologized, local veteran's groups remain livid. Harry Goldsmith, president of the local VFW post told us, "I can't believe my generation fought the Japs, Krauts, and both Italian soldiers for some fascist shenanigans like this to... Zzzzzzzzzz." The commander of the Des Moines chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Association, Huey Smith said, "I'd like to frag that teacher's commie ass!" The Des Moines chapter of the Fraternal Veterans of the Great War did not return our calls.

Mr. Snuggikins:
Dreaded scourge of academia

However some were supportive of the teacher's decision. Richard Johnson, spokesman for the DMACC Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, or Attracted to Sock Puppets Alliance (GLBTASPA) told Ben and Bawb's Blog that the teacher made the right call. "Our group was sponsoring our second annual Carmen Miranda dress-up week. One of our members was in that class and had adorned his shoulder with a colorful live macaw, which would have been frightened by that big brute's dog."

Check back here often for fair and objective reporting on this and other issues.

[Proffesor's quote based upon actual words he has probably spoken in the course of his life, though probably not all once.]

BARACK OBAMA THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES VOLUME II

2011-11-18T17:33:00.001-06:00

Well, what do you know. There is a sequel.

BARACK OBAMA: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

2011-11-17T09:53:00.000-06:00

Here's a pretty cool little video I found on youtube full of all the little gaffes, lies, and sheer stupidity of the Obamassiah the MSM gave him a pass on. Looks like the guy who made it must be some kind of genius. I'll bet he makes a sequel.

OBAMA THE CONSTITUTIONALIST

2011-11-16T08:09:00.004-06:00

In roving about, I happened to find a few quotes from the Obamessiah on how he thinks about and interprets the U.S. Constitution that are, to me, truly chilling. But first, one of his many, many unreported gaffes:

The Constitution was, "...put to paper nearly 20 centuries ago.”

Can you imagine the hullabaloo if Sarah Palin had said that? Instead, you never heard of it.

Anyway, with the Constitution apparently being some 2,000 years old, it's no wonder Barack finds it so "flawed". Here are some quotes direct from the horse's a..., uh mouth, some from a radio interview and some from a college thesis, before Mr. Transparency was able to use the office of President to seal all of his own records by Executive Order. Not that he has anything to hide, mind you.

"But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH wealth, and of more basic issues such as POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE in society."

"It [the Warren Court] didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution...the CONSTITUTION IS A CHARTER OF NEGATIVE LIBERTIES."

"Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state GOVERNMENT MUST DO ON YOUR BEHALF."

"While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH is not even mentioned. "

"While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

Yeah, I've often wondered why the Founding Fathers never invoked Karl Marx myself. At any rate, the quotes above certainly explain this:

NOW IT'S THE PICNIC POLICE

2011-11-13T05:48:00.002-06:00

ACHTUNG! VERE ARE YOUR PICNIC PAPERS?!?!

As if the Cow Cops and Goat Gestapo weren't bad enough, now we have the Picnic Police. If anyone still thinks the government is not insanely out of control raise your hand. You, the Monsanto guy, you don't count.

Authorities Raid Picnic in Nevada--Force Chef to Pour Bleach on Good Food.

Once State authoritarians learned that the farm was hosting a picnic without their permission, they descended like flies upon a dying carcass. The authoritarians demanded the farm purchase permission from them to host the event or face an enormous fine; which the farm agreed to do. But clearly, this just wasn’t good enough for the authoritarians.

After purchasing permission to host the event from the Nevada Health District, the farm was told that the permit would be delivered by a health inspector on the day of the event. So the farm went about preparing for the event as it normally would, fully expecting to be issued a permit on the day of the picnic. Well it turns out that Mary G. Oakes, the health inspector for the event, didn’t show up until their guests were arriving!

By the time the inspector showed up, the farm had already begun preparation of the food for the event. This threw the inspector into an authoritarian rage, who began yelling “NOTHING TAKES PLACE UNTIL YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION!” When the farmers asked why they couldn’t continue preparing food as the inspection was underway, the inspector simply stamped her feet and said “because I said so.” – no valid reason was ever provided.

VETERAN'S DAY CHUCKLE: The Corpseman Cometh

2011-11-12T06:57:00.003-06:00

For the benefit of those who get their information from the MSM, one of Barack's s many, many, many "overlooked" gaffes was to refer to a Navy Corpsman as a "Corpseman" (more than once) during a speech. Some days he can't even deliver coherent speech when reading from the TOTUS.

What? You didn't hear about that little gaffe? But I'll bet you heard all about how Dubya pronounces "nuclear", didn't you?

I wonder if the most cerebral president can say "potato" without a teleprompter.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Visits Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-04T21:13:00.001-06:00

MANLY FIGHTIN' SONGS: BAWB'S DIRTY DOZEN

2011-11-03T08:00:00.006-06:00

So, there's no real reason for this post other than my wife got me an i-pod and dragged me kicking and screaming into the present century. Searching about for songs to fill my i-pod, I came up with a playlist entitled "Kick ass and March". Here are a few of the strange variety of tunes on that list that'll make you want to kick ass and/or march.

12. Long-Haired Redneck. A bizarre choice for most people, no doubt. David Alan Coe could be filthy and offensive or he could write beautiful lyrics, probably dependent on the amount of whiskey consumed. This one is a favorite of mine from my beer-swilling rough and rowdy days which, thank God, are now long gone. Still, it reminds me of a few places I’ve been:

“Country DJs knows that I’m an outlaw

And they’d never come to see me in this dive

Where bikers stare at cowboys

Who are laughing at the hippies

Who are prayin’ they’ll get out of here alive.”

This song just makes me want to confront some obnoxious bastard and “knock him off his chair”.

11. Big Iron. Marty Robbins. Like watching a classic old Western, with the silent, gallant Ranger facing down the notorious gun-fighter Texas Red on the dusty Mainstreet of the town of Auga Fria. Back when the good guys wore white hats and triumphed over the bad guys in the end. Not the reason I carry a “Big Iron” on my hip, but it makes me feel really good about it.

Too bad we can no longer settle things with pistols on Mainstreet or challenge dishonorable men (such as both Houses of Congress) to duels. As Robert Heinlein once noted, “An armed society is a polite society.”

Twenty men had hated this song, twenty men had made a slip. Twenty one will be the poster who gives this choice some lip.

10. The Ballad of the Alamo. Marty Robbins again. A stirring ballad of the Texians at the Battle of the Alamo, back when it was acceptable to be patriotic and speak English in the Southwest, and part of the reason the former Republic of Texas can (and probably should in this day and age) secede from the Union. In one of the world's greatest last stands, 185 poorly-equipped American rebels such as Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Colonel William Travis. holed up in an old mission near San Antonio, TX and successfully held off 5,000 Mexicans (they only had three cars) under General Santa Anna from February 23rd to March 6^th of 1836 before finally being overwhelmed.

9. Garry Owen: Originally an Irish drinking song adopted, appropriately, by the United States 7^th Cavalry, General George Armstrong “Oh shit!” Custer’s old unit. Also an official Regimental March for some British and Canadian units long before Custer, but most commonly associated with the Cav here in the ‘States.

Heard in numerous good ol’ Westerns like They Died With Their Boots On, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Fort Apache. More recently used in Son of the Morning Star and John Milius’ The Rough Riders. Makes you want to grab your .45-70 Springfield and saddle up.

8. Ballad of the Green Berets. Tribute to the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War. Singer/songwriter Barry Sadler had been there, done that, got the T-shirt. In his later writing career some of his “tools of the trade” supposedly included a cocked and locked Colt 1911A1 and a bottle of Jack Daniels on his writing desk.

7. Great Escape March. Composed by Elmer Bernstein. The movie, based on the true story, of Allied airmen escaping from the toughest POW camp in all of Germany (no, it was not Stalag 13). Manliness quotient? Steve McQueen and James Garner. ‘Nuff said.

6. Marine Corps Hymn. Manly? It’s the U.S. Marines! You know, the guys at Belleau Wood, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Chosin, Khe Sahn, Fallujah. Every Marine is still a rifleman first. Quote attributed to a Marine aviator in Korea, “I’m a rifleman, but they’ve got me flying a jet right now.”

5. Scotland the Brave: Ah, the pipes and the Scots. You have to be manly to wear a kilt. There’s a good reason why the Germans called them the “Ladies From Hell” during the First World War. This is one march that makes you want to by-God march.

There’s a good version of the Canadian Contingent marching to the pipes the movie The Devil’s Brigade, the story of the joint American-Canadian 1^st Special Service Force of WWII, fore-runner of the Special Forces. Marching at the head of the Canadians is Cliff Robertson as Major Alan Crown. In real life, Robertson weathered the torpedoes and U-Boats as a merchant mariner in WWII, has long held a private pilot’s license, and owns and Messerschmitt and a Spitfire. Manly.

4. Men of Harlech: Welsh, commemorating the 7-year siege of Harlech Castle in 1461. Used as an official march for units such as the Royal Welsh Regiment, Royal Canadian Hussars, and Aussie Royal Victorian Regiment.

The song is most commonly associated with the movie Zulu, one of the greatest war movies of all times, although they changed the lyrics some. Zulu commemorates the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, January 1879, where 150 men of the 2^nd Warwickshire Regiment of Foot fought off some 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors with their single-shot Martini-Henry rifles (and bayonets). Best character: Neil McCarthy as the unflappable mutton-chop wearing Colour Sergeant Frank Bourne. “Steady, lads.”

3. Flight of the Valkryies. Classical music from an opera, yes an opera, composed by Richard Wagner. Few people can hear it now without thinking of helicopters, again associated with a movie, Apocalypse Now. The best part of the whole weird, incoherent movie is the Air Cav Hueys attacking the VC village with rockets and gunships.

Ah, Robert Duvall in a blue cavalry Stetson and yellow ascot, and the two best lines in the movie. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” and “If I say it’s safe to surf the beach, it’s safe to surf the beach.” Robert Duvall by himself is pretty manly; (like Eastwood, he was in the Army during the Korean War but did not see action). Best manly movie roles include outlaw “Lucky” Ned Pepper (True Grit), LTC Bull Meechum (The Great Santini), Gus McRae (Lonesome Dove), Boss Spearman (Open Range) and, manliest of all, General Robert E. Lee in Gods & Generals. My all-time favorite Duvall movie ever? Secondhand Lions. Watch it and you’ll see why.

Duvall's Apocalypse co-star Martin Sheen also tried to play Robert E. Lee but couldn't pull it off because he's a Leftist pussy.

2. Onward, Christian Soldiers. Now most likely now considered militant, politically incorrect, and islamo-phobic. This bacon-eating infidel will probably be on yet another “domestic terrorist” watch list for even mentioning it.

Sir Winston Churchill chose the hymn for a service when he met with President Franklin Roosevelt on the HMS Price of Wales to hash out the Atlantic Charter.

We sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers" indeed, and I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high. When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals ... it swept across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure hope, of saving the world from measureless degradation.

1. America, Why I love Her: John Wayne. No, the Duke doesn’t sing, but speaks the lyrics in his famous gruff, gravelly voice with background music. Don’t worry, it’s nothing like Shatner’s “dramatic readings”. Once again from a long-gone age when patriotism was still in style, and one had reason to be proud of the country before it slid completely into a Socialist Nanny/Police State. This one will make you feel proud of what we once were.

There they are, boys. Now's your turn to tell me why your choices are better and why mine suck.

Don't make me knock you off your chair.

SELLIER & BELLOT AMMUNITION: YOU SHOULD CZECH IT OUT

2011-11-02T05:53:00.001-06:00

CZECH IT OUT

I rarely buy factory ammunition. For plinking, it’s military surplus ball. For hunting, I roll my own. On the rare occasions I did buy factory ammunition for hunting it was the “good stuff”, Hornady and Federal. I’ve always glanced at the attractively priced Sellier & Bellot ammunition in Shotgun News and on Gunbroker, but never really could justify buying more ammo when reloading filled most of my needs.

Like a bolt from the blue, Caleb at Ammo For Sale.Com contacted me and wanted to know if I would write a review on one of his products. So, I asked for some S&B in .308 so I could finally put it through the wringer and see how it stacked up to other ammunition. Two days later, Caleb emailed me, “The Czech’s in the mail.”

I was hoping for a good product. Sellier & Bellot’s been in business since 1825 so they must be doing something right. For us history buffs, one of the big reasons the Nazis wanted Czechoslovakia was to get their grubby little mitts on the renowned Czech armament industries, which had a world-wide reputation for building quality products especially, at the time, artillery. The Western Powers, British Prime Minister Neville “Peace in our time” Chamberlain in particular, met with the Nazis at Munich and, without even consulting the Czechs, basically just handed Hitler the country on a silver platter if he promised to be good. As Sir Winston Churchill said, "Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.” Not much later, the Allies found themselves on the receiving end of many tanks, artillery pieces, and rifles of Czech manufacture. During WWII itself at the Yalta Conference, again over Churchill’s protests, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a “Chamberlain moment” and basically gave all of Eastern Europe to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin after the war, so the Czechs were forced to manufacture weapons for the Commies too, with a reputation for being the best built of the Warsaw Pact nations.

The Czechs decided they’d finally had enough of the corrupt Communist regime that ran the country without input from or concern for its citizens in the spring of 1968 and tried to “throw the bums out.” The result was Soviet tanks quickly rumbling across the border to show them the error of their ways. Warsaw Pact troops remained stationed in Czechoslovakia until 1989 when the Communist regime collapsed. In 1993, Czechoslovakia as a nation voluntarily and peacefully split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Let’s hope they can finally live in peace. And sell American gun nuts some quality shooting stuff.

History lesson over. The point is the Czechs have made good stuff for a long time, from the famous Bren Gun to the Hetzer.

So I found myself in the possession of a single box of Sellier & Bellot .308 Winchester 180-grain round nose soft points. Caleb had said two boxes, but I guess wires got crossed somewhere. But free ammo is free ammo.

A few days later I made it out to my “range”, a full section of state-owned land with a nice mountain for a safe backstop, where I put up portable targets. With my rifles sighted in for 147-grain ball surplus, I restricted my shooting to only 100 yards due to the difference in trajectory.

No two rifles are the same, which is what makes them so much fun and fascinating, finding out all their little quirks. For instance, my wife’s 03A3 Springfield sporter spits out 125-grain and 150-grain bullets with disgust and sprays them all over dinner-plate sized groups. Feed it 180’s or even 220’s (my wife drew a moose tag once) and the Springfield will put five shots cloverleafed into tight sub-MOA groups. So I brought two rifles, in case one didn’t particularly like the 180’s.

The first was an Ishapore Lee-Enfield that I turned into a scout rifle with a 17-inch barrel and wearing a Burris 2.75x forward mounted scope. Rifle number two was my FAL with the free-float Entreprise handguards and the German Hensoldt 4x ZF24 military scope. Neither rifle is anything you would take to win a high-power match and there's no bench rest at my informal range; I shoot prone from sandbags. My shooting is a gray area between benchresting and field shooting.

The S&B’s competition was some Australian military surplus 147-grain ball which I have always found to be "good shooters". Since I found to my chagrin that I was out of white box Winchester 147-grain ball, I also shot my "ersatz 7.62 NATO", stuff I loaded to 7.62 specs with the flatbase 152-grain FMJ bullets from the old .30-06 military loads instead of 147-grain boattails. Alas, I did not have anything else loaded with 180-grain bullets to compare directly to the S&B.

Range was 100 meters, not yards, and the bullets fired over my rather elderly F1 Shooting Chrony approximately ten feet from the muzzle. Temperature was about 62 degrees, with only a slight breeze (when I started), and we were at 5,300 feet elevation.

The first thing that jumped right out at me is S&B’s sheer consistency. Average velocity was 2,247 feet per second (remember it’s a 17-inch barrel and 180-grain round nose) but the individual numbers were amazingly consistent; only sixteen fps difference from the highest to lowest velocity. Just look at these numbers:

2,248 fps

2,236 fps

2,252 fps

2,251 fps

2,252 fps

Consistency is the key to accurate shooting. My reloads had a spread of 39 fps from highest to lowest and the Aussie ball, to my surprise and disappointment, had a variation of well over 200 fps. I'm still not sure what the hell went on with that. The S&B shot a group size equal to that of the Aussie ball, 3-1/2 inches, but with one flier called. The reloads didn’t do too bad at 2-1/2 inches. This performance might seem mediocre, but then my Enfield truck/brush rifle is a mediocre shooter.

100-meter 5-shot groups from the Lee-Enfield scout. One flier called right on the S&B group no doubt opened it up a bit.

Next up at bat was Queenie the FAL, a Century FrankenFAL on an Imbel receiver, with the standard 21-inch barrel. Like my other Century FAL, I’ve never had so much as a hiccup out of it in several hundred rounds. Many folks consider a Century FAL a crapshoot, varying from horrible to pristine. I am not one to have good luck; I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to draw a moose, goat, or sheep tag, building up bonus points every year, since 1992 with no luck. So I figure if I can draw two beauties from Century in a row, perhaps they aren’t as bad as the keyboard commandos say they are.

Velocities varied a bit more in the gas-operated semiautomatic, but were still pretty darn good with a high to low spread of 32 fps, compared to 50 fps for the Aussie and 24 fps for my reloads. The FAL found the S&B to be quite delicious and wanted more; a five-shot group went inside of two inches. FALcohalics know that’s pretty good for a FrankenFAL. The Aussie had about a 3-inch group and my reloads a 5-inch group, which was pretty pathetic even with one flier called.

The FAL obviously liked the S&B. I see they also make a 147-grain ball load that would be just right for military 7.62x51mm rifles.

By this point in the shooting, the wind was building fast as a snow/rain squalls moved in from out of the mountains. I was going to shoot some groups at 300 meters, the range at which I like to “confirm” and “tweak” things, but by then the wind had come up high enough that tumbleweeds, pets, and small children were blowing around. So I called it a day.

I would use the 180-grain round nose most certainly for elk, especially in the timber where ranges are pretty limited. Depending on bullet performance, it would do on moose, which are generally shot at closer ranges, always assuming the shooter puts the bullet where he' supposed to. With a 210 yard zero, it would shoot flat to 250 yards, which is just about ideal for a scout rifle in the woods.

If I had more rounds I would do some more testing and perhaps carry them for elk hunting in the black timber to see how they would perform in action. S&B says the round is: "A semi-jacketed bullet consisting of a metallic jacket and a lead core. The lead core is bare in front. When hitting the target, it gets deformed and produces a mushroom-like shape, which enhances the lethal effect. It is used for most types of rifle cartridges and, depending on caliber weight, it is used for cloven-hoofed game hunting in particular." I would like to see how the S&B bullet holds together, as I don't know much about the jacket thickness or material, so if I shoot something with one I'll do a post mortum.

In addition to their own bullets, I see that S&B is now also offering hunting loads with the "brand name" bullets...Sierra GameKing soft points and boattail hollowpoints, Barnes Triple Shock X-Bullets, and Nosler Partitions.

For two years I hunted with the Nosler green-tip BT's and while my interpretation of performance is strictly anecdotal, I was underwhelmed with the performance on deer. They did massive tissue damage to the critters' boiler room, but more often than not the deer stayed on its feet and kept going. I have since gone back to good old-fashioned Sierra and Hornady 165-grain boat tail softpoints.

Thus far, I am very pleased with the S&B ammo. I can recommend it and wouldn’t be afraid to buy some on the next rare occasion I have to resort to commercial hunting loads. I would like to see what the ammunition could do with a good accurate bolt gun, but unfortunately my good accurate bolt gun is in .30-06. I suspect the S&B ammo could be MOA shooters out of an accurate bolt action sporter.

I’ll be testing the remaining ten cartridges the next chance I get. I suspect I will be happy with them at longer ranges too.

MORE CZECH FIREARM PRODUCTS WE NEED TO SEE ON THE SHELVES

2011-11-01T14:22:00.004-06:00

During the writing of the last post on Czech ammunition, I strayed slightly into blithering about the history of the Czechs' armament industries over the years. So, sure, now you can get some good stuff in the American shooting market…ammo, Cz pistols, VZ24 Mausers, etc.

But what about the really good stuff? The stuff I think we should see on the American shooter and surplus market. Stuff that should be readily and legally available to the ordinary citizen, not just given to Mexican drug lords by the ATF on the taxpayers’ dime. Just a few more of these things would provide hours of fun and a good source of income for the Czech Republic. So, in order of preference, here are Bawb’s Top 5 Czech shooting products which should be on the American market for the benefit of mankind, as well as to entertain the hell out of me and kooks like myself.

Then we wouldn’t have so much time to bitch about Obama and the government destroying the nation. (Hint, hint!)

#1 The Bren Gun

Okay, while the Bren Gun itself as we know it was not made in Czechoslovakia, it was designed there and originally manufactured as the Zb vz. 26. The British Army conducted trials for a new light machine gun and the Zb vz. 26 won. With a couple of modifications to the barrel and magazine to take the standard .303 British rimmed service cartridge, the Brits started manufacturing the Bren under license (fortunately for them before they gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich). The name Bren came from Brno, the city where it was first designed and built, and Enfield, the British small arms factory.

The Bren was an air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine fed machine gun weighing 23 pounds in its original form. It had a cyclic rate of around 500 rounds per minute and fed from 30-round magazines. It had a bipod as well as a tripod and was also used to arm the open-topped, fully tracked Universal Carrier, which quickly became known as “Bren Gun Carriers”. Adopted in 1938, the Bren was a staple of British & Commonwealth forces throughout WWII and Korea. It was later converted to 7.62x51mm NATO and continued in active British service through the 1982 Falklands Conflict.

A version is still being manufactured by the Ordnance factories in India, hopefully with better quality control than their 7.62x51mm ammunition.

Soldiers and Marines who served with the Bren Gun loved it. And, as much as I am a fan of John Moses Browning, it was probably a much better choice than the Browning Automatic Rifle used by American forces at the same time. Even the Gunny thinks so.

There’s absolutely no reason, IMHO, why every gun owner shouldn’t be allowed to have one or two.

#2 vz. 61 Skorpion

Cool & Sexy

I’m not a big fan of shoulder-fired full-auto, even in poodle shooting calibers, but I have to admit that the vz. 61 Skorpion machine pistol is awful sexy and cool. With a telescopic bolt and folding wire shoulder stock, the thing is only 10-1/2 inches when folded. With 10 or 20-round magazines, you can fire either semi-automatically like a regular pistol or flip the safety one more notch and hose ‘em out at 850-900 rounds per minute.

Name your flavor. Since its introduction in caliber .32 ACP in 1961, they have since been made in .380 ACP, 9x19mm Parabellum, and 9x18mm Makarov. I’m not too sold on the stopping power of any of those cartridges, but with their low recoil and ability to put fifteen rounds out in a second multiple hits would probably make up for it.

Did I mention it’s just so cool and sexy?

#3 The Hetzer

Let's go hunting the ultimate big game...panzers!

The Skoda LT vz 38 tank was, at the time of its adoption, considered a medium tank and a dandy example of tank technology of the late 1930’s. It was being built for both a lucrative export market as well as for the Czech military. Then came Munich, and the LT vz 38 became the German Panzerkampfwagen 38 (t), and was used in Poland, France, and the early days of Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Russia. The Panzer 38 (t) was actually superior to the two most widely-used German-made tanks at the time of its adoption/theft; the Panzer Mk I, which had only twin machine guns, and the Panzer II with its 20-mm cannon. The 38 had a 37-mm main gun, the standard anti-weapon of the day, and boasted great mechanical reliability and maneuverability.

Eventually, the little tank was obsolete against the newer Soviet tanks, but the reliable chassis was adapted to a variety of other roles. My favorite was the Jagdpanzer 38(t) tank destroyer. With a solid frontal hull with 60mm of armor sloped at a good 60-degrees, the little hunter had the equivalent of 4-3/4 of armor protection. It’s 75-mm Panzerjagerkanone 39 (L/38) main gun, while not as impressive as the dreaded “88”, was good against most Allied tanks with the exception of the Soviet monsters like the JS-1 Stalin, firing a hard-cored AP round at 2,500 fps which could penetrate 82mm of armor (sloped at 30-degrees) at a thousand meters. Other rounds included HE for those pesky infantrymen, as well as a roof-mounted MG34 7.92mm machine gun on top, which was fired via remote-control from inside the vehicle. As a big bonus, the Hetzer was barely seven feet tall and just over eight feet wide, making it easy to hide while lying in wait in ambush and providing a small target to hit as well.

After WWII, the Swiss decided the Hetzer was custom-made for the defensive military strategy and purchased 185 of them, while the Czech Army kept 180 in service, both armies using the weapons up to the early 1970s. I see no good reason why you or I can’t own one of these things to go tooling around in. It would make a helluva great elk hunting rig.

#4 DANA

8x8 = twice the fun as 4x4

What’s that you say? Your elk is out of range of the little Hetzer’s 75mm gun? No problem! You've got a date with DANA. DANA's a Delo Automobilni Nabijene Automaticky (self-propelled auto-loading gun). No matter how reliable, tracked vehicles are a bit of a pain in the ass in the maintenance department, especially if relying on a government re-supply system such as the Army Quartermaster Corps. Wheeled vehicles, on the other hand, are relatively cheap, easier to maintain (with civilian truck parts in the case of the DANA), and can really move on down the road at 50 mph. Mercy sakes, looks like we got us a convoy.

The DANA was built in the early 80s on the chassis of the Tatra 815 military truck, a HEMMITT-looking 8x8 rig, which was then the best off-road military truck around. Eight-wheel-drive, tire pressure regulation for cross-country travel, a 350-horse V-12 diesel engine, power assist on the front two steer axles, air-conditioning (I shit you not) in both cab and turret, and the ability to cross a 5-foot vertical obstacle or ford 4-1/2 feet of water. What’s not to like?

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to the good part yet; a handy-dandy 152-mm gun/howitzer in an armored air-conditioned turret with a traverse of 45-degrees, elevation of 70-degrees, and a 20 km range. Say you spot a coyote on a distant mountain top. No problemo. Just start lobbing 96-pound high explosive projectiles at him at the rate or 3 rounds per minute until you whack him, or rearrange the terrain features enough that he gets hopelessly lost. For those little pests at short range, you also have the good old DShK 12.7mm machine gun, aka the “Russian Ma Duece”.

Uh-oh. You can’t find enough 152-mm and 12.7mm ammunition at the local sporting goods store on the Mexican border? Not to worry. There are also export versions fitted with the popular 155-mm cannon and a 7.62x51mm NATO machine gun. So there's no reason not to rush out and buy one today!

#5 M53/59 Praga

Without the option for a jumping front axle, the M53/59 has not been popular with Mexican drug cartels so I think the ATF should sell them surplus to American citizens.

Let’s say you’re also a duck hunter, and an increase in gas prices has you looking for something a little more economical in the mileage department. The Czechs have you covered there as well with the M53/59 Praga self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.

Based on the ”indestructible” V3S Praga 6x6 truck chassis, aluminum armor helps keep the weight down and the Tatra 6-cylinder 110-horse diesel gets you 500 klicks on a single tank of fuel, roughly 9.8 miles per gallon, or the equivalent of my old F350 work truck. Just don’t let the DOT catch you using red dyed agricultural use only diesel fuel.

In back of the cab, you’ve got one hellva gun rack, mounting twin M53 30x210mm auto-cannon in an open-topped turret. Each gun carries only a 50-round magazine but don’t worry, you’ve got 800 more spare rounds stored. With High Explosive rounds you can pick off ducks and geese at up to 3,000 meters. With Armor Piercing Incendiary you can take out prairie dogs using light armored vehicles to 2,000 meters.

No legitimate sporting purpose my ass.

WARNING: Ben just emailed and said this column isn’t up to our usual obnoxious and irreverent standards, so I'll close with an insensitive ethnic joke.

Czech guy goes to the optometrist to see if he needs glasses.

The doctor points to the eye chart, the lowest line of which reads Z-B-R-O-K-Y-X, and asks the patient if he can read it.

“Read it!” The Czech exclaims. “Hell, I know the guy.”

OWS V. TEA PARTY; THE HYPOCRISY CONTINUES

2011-10-30T13:44:00.003-06:00

I have long since grown weary of pointing out the sheer hypocrisy which oozes from the Looney Lefty, the media, and the Obama Regime. But I repeat myself.

Thank God for the Real World Libertarian. Jim has a post that says it all, short and sweet.

Richmond Tea Party wants its money back.

RINOS: OBAMA DOESN'T HAVE A MONOPOLY ON STUPID

2011-10-24T08:07:00.004-06:00

They're baaacccckkkkk! Top RINO idiots, our old pals Juan McStain (R: Sonora) and Lindsey Grahamnesty (R: Wolkenkuckucksheim), angry that the Dems are trying to gain a completely monopoly on stupidity and waste, are trying to make a comeback...and some m0ney, I'm sure...and get some face time on TV.

Figuring we haven't butted into everyone else's business around the globe and pissed enough countries off yet, and that we have too much taxpayer money and need to spend some more, these two RINOs are leading the charge to have the U.S. rebuild Libya. More "nation building"! Yeah! It worked so well in Iraq and Afghanistan, let's try it again.

Wasn't Einstein's definition of insanity doing the exact same thing over and over again but expecting a different result?

Ah, there's nothing to make you feel powerful like a little "nation building". Bomb the shit out of them, force some good ol' American "democracy" and "freedom" down their throats whether they want it or not, spend billions of borrowed money we don't have rebuilding their country, wind up occupying it for a decade or two until not just the new regime, which has already adopted Sharia law, but the man in the street also starts blowing up our troops and exporting terrorism here because we've long since worn out our welcome, if any. Meanwhile, our own debt skyrockets and our own infrastructure crumbles while whatever regime in power in our own country slides swiftly towards a police state to assure the government keeps accumulating power and money no matter how badly they &$%# things up. Did I miss anything in the process?

Oh yeah, "nation building" calls for lots of no-bid contracts for "entrepreneurs" like Halliburton, Brown, and Root to send in their "private contractors" to make obscene amounts of money hand-over-fist, much of which will probably find its way into the pockets of people like, well, like...McCain and Graham for instance. Happy ending again.

McStain, putting down his crack pipe, told Faux News “They’re willing to reimburse us. It’s not a matter of money."

Senator Grahamnesty apparently dropped acid before explaining, “So we’ll get our money back, but the one thing we can’t get back is an opportunity. And this is an opportunity to take a dictatorship, the mad dog of the Mideast, and replace him with people who live in peace with us. “We can do business, have economic ties that will allow American business to prosper from a free Libya. So I know we’re broke [obviously he doesn't], but if you disengage the world, you’ll regret it and if we miss this opportunity, we’ll regret it.”

McCain then said, "It won't cost the U.S. taxpayer a dime!" Both Senators stifled laughs.

"The check's in the mail." This, from Grahamnesty, caused them both to snort and snigger.

"I won't come in your mouth!"

"We won't raise taxes!"

The senators then chanted in unison, "Free trade with all, entangling alliances with none!" Immediately afterwards they rolled on the floor in uncontrolled mirth and laughter."

Finally they were able to regain their composure and take their seats again, gasping and still wiping tears of helpless laughter from their eyes. Before the commentator could ask them another question, McCain leaned toward Grahamnesty and whispered, "Constitution."

At which point they again fell out of their chairs doubled over with weeping, hysterical laughter, clutching at their sides and kicking their feet in the air.

Finally, they ended the interview by picking up a pair of fiddles. "This is a little number I like to call Rome is Burning," said McCain, "And a one, and a two..."

At least their fiddles were in tune with Obama's.

Australian 101

2011-10-22T15:15:00.001-06:00

In an exchange a while back with Jim (me and Bawb's unofficial liaison to Australia) I joked about our blogs "countless legions of fans Down Under." But after I thought about it, I realized that we here at Das Blog are not doing nearly enough to make our Aussie friends feel welcome and separate them from their money (or "pesos" as they say). I therefore set out to change that. First I figured I must learn as much as I could about Australia.

So, in the name of sociology and international goodwill, I began my study. After watching the Mad Max trilogy and all 11 seasons of The Paul Hogan Show back-to-back, drinking Foster's at an Outback Steakhouse and spending countless hours of close analysis of an Elle MacPherson swimsuit calender, I dare say that I now know so much about the country that I should rightfully be declared the new king of Australia (or President or chieftain or whatever they have down there).

Australians (Photo of entire population.)

Since studies have shown that many American graduates can't identify their own country on a map, much less someone else's, I set out to prove my worth by finding Australia on my globe. (One has to be able to do that sort of thing if one is to be king.) My efforts were quickly frustrated when I realized that, like most good Americans, I only had a globe of the United States. So I trekked to the local Walmart, got myself a fancy world globe and my search for Australia began in Earnest (my hometown).

Unfortunately, I must have purchased an out of date world globe because I was unable to find Australia on it. However, I was able to find Madagascar or Italy or some shit. I quickly claimed this new found land for myself. (It is now called Benonia. Please use a permanent marker to update your own world globes at home.)

In my research I found that one of the main differences between the Australians and the Americans is our language. For instance the Australians call a fight a "blue" and a sandwich a "sanger." When you string words and phrases like these together into what we masterful wordsmiths call "sentences," the end result can be quite different in Australian and American. Consider the following two examples:

Example 1

In American: "I almost hit an Indian with my truck and the drunk bastard puked on the hood."

In Australian: "I nearly struck an Aborigine with my ute and the pissed up lil' bugger chundered on the bonnet."

Example 2

In American: "I had an enjoyable Sunday morning."

In Australian: "I got pissed up and punched out a 'roo!"

Since our blog is obviously a written medium, it is all about the language. So I'm announcing that henceforth Australian subtitles will appear in squiggly brackets (these things:{}) for our hemispherically challenged readers.

We hope that this will make the blog more enjoyable for everyone, especially guys in Australia {blokes here}. Oh, and keep sending us those pesos. Thanks! {Walla-walli dinky doo!}

GUN WALKER TO MISSILE RUNNER

2011-10-21T08:19:00.006-06:00

U.S. Government Threat Priorities

Terrorists with thousands of Surface-to-Air Missiles. Nothing to worry about.

A 95-year-old man's rectum. Danger! Danger! Danger!

Nope, it just wasn't enough for fed.gov to arm drug dealers and street gangs on the taxpayer's dime with the Fast & the Furious. With the ATF vying hard for the prized honor of the Most Incompetence Government Agency Award, the US State Department is stepping up its own efforts to get back in the running.

First, we just can't keep our nose out of other people's business, and the U.S. supplied conventional arms to the rebels and "liberators" (which included al Qaeda) who sought to overthrow crackpot Libyan dictator "Hey Moe" Gadhafi's regime. In the aftermath of the fighting, unguarded Libyan military warehouses and arms depots were looted at will. And just what kinds of weapons have the righteous warriors of the Religion of Peace gotten their dirty little mitts on? Among lots of other ordnance, SAMs. From ABC News:

"Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch first warned about the problem after a trip to Libya SIX MONTHS AGO. He took pictures of pickup truckloads of the missiles being carted off during another trip just a few weeks ago.
"I myself could have removed several hundred if I wanted to, and people can literally drive up with pickup trucks or even 18 wheelers and take away whatever they want," said Bouckaert, HRW's emergencies director. "Every time I arrive at one of these weapons facilities, the first thing we notice going missing is the surface-to-air missiles."

That's right folks, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. As many as twenty thousand of them. They used to just call them SAMs, but now they are MANPADs, Man-Portable Air Defense Systems. I really doubt they will see much "defensive" use.

For those unfamiliar with the SA-7 missile, the originally Soviet weapons were right up there with the Kalashnikov for exporting to Third World Hellholes. Now copies are made in numerous countries. Known as the Strela (arrow) by the former USSR, and dubbed SA-7 Grail by NATO, these are undoubtedly the improved Strela-2M or SA-7b models, weapons so simple even a jihadists can run one.

The gunner visually acquires the target, powers up the electronics, and tracks the aircraft with either open sights or improved optical sights. When or if the missile's IR heat-seeker locks onto the target, the gunner gets a light and buzzer to tell him to launch. Sa-7s are "tail chasers"; the aircraft has to have already passed by for the seeker to lock onto the hot exhaust. Then the 22-pound missile chases the aircraft for over 4 kilometers or to a 7,500 ft ceiling, where a 2-1/2 pound warhead detonates by impact or graze fuse or a timer. They're not too big of a threat to fast movers, unless fired in large numbers, but they're rough on helicopters and hell on civilian airliners. Which, of course, is a terrorist's favorite target.

Vickers Viscount

One of the most infamous examples of this was the September 1978 shoot-down of Air Rhodesia Flight 825, a Vickers Viscount passenger plane out of Kariba, a popular tourist and vacation spot. The glorious "freedom fighters" of Joshua Mqabuko Obama Nyongolo Nkomo's Red-backed ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army) fired a Soviet-made Sa-7 and hit the Viscount shortly after take-off, destroying both starboard engines and setting the bird on fire. The crew made a good belly landing in a farm field, but then hit an unseen dry creekbed, causing the plane to flip over and burst into flame.

Amazingly enough, of the 56 passengers, 18 in the tail section of the plane survived. Five of these survivors set out hiking for a nearby village to get help. While they were gone, the ZIPRA thugs showed up; they shot or bayoneted the survivors, men, women and children, and then looted the bodies and what was left of the plane. The Rhodesian SAS parachuted in at first light but by then it was too late.

Aftermath of Air Rhodesia Flight 825 shoot-down.

In February of 1979, ZIPRA shot down another regularly scheduled passenger flight with an Sa-7. All 59 civilians aboard were killed when the plane crashed into a ravine and exploded.

So now there's 20,000 of these damn missiles floating around Libya (or already out of the country). Gee, you think maybe terrorists might just get their hands on a few of these things?

Not to worry, though. At the end of September, the White House assured reporters that they had ONE State Department official and FIVE private contractors on the ground in Libya looking into the problem. That comes out to about 1.1 million people, 113,226 square miles, and 3,666 missiles for each one of them to check. No problem.

Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro comfortingly reassures us that the government, "does not have a clear picture of how many missiles they're trying to track down." Not to worry, though. Now that the horses are all gone over the horizon, our government is talking about maybe considering looking into closing the barn door. A White House spokesman assures us:

"We expect to deploy additional personnel to assist the TNC [Libya's "transitional government"] as they expand efforts to secure conventional arms storage sites. We're obviously at a governmental level -- both State Department and at the U.N. and elsewhere -- working with the TNC on this."

Wow. The State Department, the United Nations, and a bunch of Muzzie revolutionaries all working together. If that's not a recipe for a giant cluster fudge, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile, TSA is probing toddlers at the airports, INS and the Border Patrol have instructions from on high to "catch-and-release", the ATF is arming criminals, the USDA is going after children's bunny rabbits, the FDA is beating down Amish dairy farmers, the FBI continues to investigate and/or create crimes by clowns like the Hutaree Militia, New York City Police are framing people on drug charges to make their arrest quotas, and the White House and DOJ are deeply concerned about "islamaphobia" and "domestic terrorists".

Don't you feel safer now that the government's on the job? You may have to worry about your flight being shot down in flames by a terrorist missile, but at least you know you're not carrying a bomb attached to your junk.

OWS: GRASSROOTS MY ASS

2011-10-18T08:43:00.003-06:00

Well-known spontaneous Grass Roots volunteer demonstrators who have no political agenda or organization and certainly wouldn't do stuff just to get on TV.

While the Tea Party has long been dismissed as an “Astroturf” movement, marching in lockstep to a secret cabal of Republicans pulling strings behind the scenes, the media has gone out of their way to either vilify members or squelch coverage of Tea Party events.

But lo and behold, the Occupy Wall Street gang is being touted as a popular “Grass roots” movement that just happened to spring up spontaneously without any political agenda or professional agitators and organizers involved. Yeah, right. You probably won't recognize the names of any of the totally objective, agenda-less, non-partisan everyday citizens involved.

"Big Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy Wall Street email distrop public and searchable. The names in the list are a veritable who’s who in media.

Journalist 2.0 includes well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear. The list also includes a number of radical organizers, such as Kevin Zeese.

In these emails we see MSNBC’s Ratigan, hawking his book in the footnotes, instructing occupiers on how properly to present their demands and messages while simultaneously appearing on television reporting “objectively” on the story (when he’s not taking part in the protests himself as content).

...We’ve only begun to discover the full scope of MSM’s involvement and are still combing through the archives after the list was brought to our attention late last night. (If you find something interesting that we have missed, please leave us a note in the comments.)

We know that the original movement was kicked off by a [George] Soros-funded group called Adbusters; that union groups and radicals routinely overthrow leadership unfriendly to an occupation of the occupation (check out how Occupy St. Louis was hijacked by ACORN off-shoot MORE); and now we know that media, including MSNBC itself, is apparently helping occupiers better influence the public by both writing their messages and giving them a platform.

So how long are we going to pretend that this is a “grassroots” uprising?

And how can the media continue to report on the occupy movement objectively when it’s part of it?"

PMSNBC's Joe Scarborough has gone so far as to defend rioters for creating jobs. I thought only government could create jobs. Anyway, H/T Jim at Real World Libertarian for this.

"MIKA BRZEZINSKI: … 951 cities in 82 countries were scheduled to take part in demonstrations after online organizers called for a worldwide rally. The mayor of Rome said $1.4 million in damage was caused after rioters who broke away from a peaceful protest smashed windows and torched vehicles around the city.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Now, see, that will help with the construction industry in Italy.

(Cross talk)

SCARBOROUGH: No, you have to rebuild Rome because people burned it down. That’s actually a plus up. This Occupy Wall Street group, look at that, they are creating new jobs."

That's right up there with a general in Vietnam saying, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

The ghost of William Randolph Hearst, who boasted a tad bit more integrity than our current mainstream press manipulators, also briefly flickered onto the screen at one point, saying, “We should invade Cuba, too!”

PMSNBC also brought in their often used “expert” Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy “Malaise” Carter’s National Security Adviser and, by mere coincidence, host Mika Brezezinski’s daddy. He waxed eloquent on the "distribution of wealth", aka Socialism. Guess what his favorite word is:

Brzeznski said we need a “list” of the rich to be publicly disclosed by the media because, “Public pressure, public condemnation, public shame can be very effective.”

“When it comes to government…Congress has to realize the fact that the financial economic system cannot operation autonomously.

“We have to have disclosure.”

“We have to have transparency.”

“We have to have control.”

“So, more control over banks.”

“More control over hedge funds earnings particularly.”

“We need more control over earnings.”

“More fair distribution of social responsibility through taxation…”

“And Pressure even on the rich to avoid flaunting their wealth.”

This, of course, would not apply to rich politicians, the lobbyists who own them, Hollyweird celebrities, or media figures, such as his daughter Mika, who’s worth $4 million.

At a Saturday rally, with no hate-filled rhetoric or calls of violence like those nasty Tea Party folks, Professional “Grass Roots”™ Agitator the “Reverend” Al Sharpton fired up the crowd.

A succession of speakers [including completely spontaneous non-agenda-driven apolitical “Grass Roots”™ concerned citizens such as] American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, offered support.

“They warmed up the crowd for Sharpton, whose raspy voice rang out, “No justice? No peace!” as the crowd shouted along with him, over and over.

“If you won’t get the jobs bill done in the suite, we will get the jobs bill done in the street!”

“This is not about Obama! This is about my mama!”

[Another speaker at the rally said, without any hate-filled rhetoric], “I’m not sure why the Republican Party has become such a mean and vicious entity in this country.”

As an aside, notice the appeal to the Left’s well-known towering intellect with short, semi-meaningless easy-to-chant phrases, often with rhymes. Catch phrases similar to, “Yes we can!” “Hope and change!” “I wants money!”

So, as I've said before, I must conclude with "Grass Roots" my ass.

RANGE ESTIMATION PART II: GUESSTIMATION

2011-10-17T10:35:00.007-06:00

No matter if you’re packing a poodle shooter or a real rifle, getting a hit at long range requires accurate range estimation, which has traditionally been one of the hardest things for a solider or hunter to learn.

It goes back to ballistics why this is all so important at ranges beyond your battle sight zero, ranges which are being encountered every day in Afghanistan where the average engagement range in the hinterlands is 500 meters.

Even being 50 meters off on your estimate makes a big difference when you get to shooting “way out past Fort Mudge”, as Jeff Cooper would say. Say you’re shooting a .308 at a target you estimate to be at 400 meters, but it’s actually 450 meters. Due to that seemingly small error, your trajectory at the target will be a full foot lower than your aim point. Still close enough for minute-of-badguy (shoot him in the nards) but not close enough for a shot into the vitals of a deer.

Further out, estimating a 650 meter target to be 600 meters, you’ll be shooting two feet low. A fifty meter error at 800 yards is a 32-inch difference in your bullet’s trajectory.

As Dirty Harry says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Which is why I consider myself perhaps a designated marksman; I don’t shoot over 600 meters and that’s the limit of the BDC on both my scopes anyway. I might try a 700 meter shot with hold-over in an emergency, but that would be the absolute max.

At those ranges, a real sniper, which I’m not, with a real sniper rifle, which I don’t have, is just coming into his own. I leave that to the experts. I’m not that guy who wants to “make a 1,000-meter shot so I’ll look cool on the Internet”.

Nowadays, we have very affordable and compact laser rangefinders as well as the Mil-Dot system in some optics. But let’s say you don’t have a scope with Mil-Dots because you’re not a sniper type. Neither do you have a laser rangefinder. Or the battery in you rangefinder goes dead in the cold or you drop the thing down a scree slope into a creek or the darn thing just stops working.

I had a GPS for all of two weeks. I accidentally dropped it on a gravel road once and it never worked again. Good thing I wasn’t five miles back in the mountains and depending on the thing to get me home. As for myself, I have always been adept at land navigation via map and compass, especially terrain association here in the mountains. I’m weird enough that I look at topo maps and Google Earth for fun, finding good places to hunt or places to explore deep within my warped little brain.

If you’re good at land navigation, a map can be right handy to estimate range pretty close. Here’s what I mean with the following example.

Your position is in the center of the black circle as you sneak through the low point of the saddle in the ridge to take a peek at the country beyond. You see Bruno the Great Wapiti come ambling out of the woodline down by the creek bottom, the middle of the red square. With a piece of paper or any straight edge you can put a mark on, you measure the distance from the circle to the square and then slid your straight edge down to the distance scale at the corner of your map and measure it. The blue line represents this. So, ol’ Bruno is about 800 meters away, too far for a shot.

The most common unaided eyeball method of range estimation is the “Unit of Measure” method, which was the first one taught when I was in the service, going on the theory that every red-blooded American boy should have been on a football field and know how long it looks. One hundred meters is a football field with both end zones included.

100-Meter-Unit-of-Measure Method. To use this method the sniper team must be able to visualize a distance of 100 meters on the ground. For ranges up to 500 meters, the team determines the number of 100-meter increments between the two objects it wishes to measure. Beyond 500 meters, it must select a point halfway to the object and determine the number of 100-meter increments to the halfway point, then double it to find the range to the object.

FACTORS TO BE CONSIDERED IN DETERMINING RANGE BY EYE	OBJECTS APPEAR CLOSER THAN THEY REALLY ARE	OBJECTS APPEAR FURTHER THAN THEY REALLY ARE
The target—Its clearness of outline and details.	When most of the target is visible and offers a clear outline.	When only a small part of the target is visible or is small in relation to its surroundings.
Nature of the terrain or position of the observer.	When looking across a depression, most of which is hidden from view.	When looking across a depression, all of which is in view.
	When looking downward from high ground.	When looking upward from low ground.
	When looking down a straight, open road or along a railroad track.	When field of view is narrowly confined, as in city streets, draws, or forest trails.
Light and atmosphere	When looking over uniform surfaces like water, snow, desert or farm fields. In bright light or when the sun is shining from behind the observer.	In poor light such as dawn and dusk; in rain, snow, or fog, or when the sun is in the observer’s eyes.
	When the target is in sharp contrast with the background or is silhouetted by reason of size, shape, or color.	When the target blends into the background or terrain.
	When seen in the clear atmosphere of high altitude.

The British and former Commonwealth nations still use the appearance method. And have been doing so for a long time. I first became aware of it from an episode of Sharpe’s. It’s mentioned in American manuals, but it’s vague as hell and doesn’t sound too useful, not made simple and easy like the Canadian Army example below.

The appearance method compares the way an object looks at 100 metres and at greater distances. By comparing the appearance of a man in several positions—at 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 metres—observers can establish a series of mental pictures. They will find that, as distances increase, a man's figure becomes smaller, his outline becomes increasingly blurred and his other features gradually fade out. The following may be used as a rough guide to determine the distance a soldier is from the observer:

a. 200 metres—all parts of the body are distinct;

b. 300 metres—outline of the face becomes blurred;

c. 400 metres—outline of the body remains, but the face is difficult to distinguish;

d. 500 metres—the body appears to taper from the shoulders; movement of the limbs can be observed;
and

e. 600 metres—the head appears as a dot with body details invisible and tapering noticeably.

That’s pretty easy to remember with some practice. In the same way, the appearance of other familiar objects can be learned. For instance, I know if I can no longer see Ben’s willy, he is beyond 500 meters.

This is from the 1942 Red Army sniper manual, but I don’t find it very useful. I mean “400-1000” meters or “8-11 klicks” is not real precise.

Something else I never heard mentioned, except at an Appleseed shoot, is the use of the front sight of your M1/M14 to measure range fast and easy for the average rifleman. If the body of the target is as wide or wider than your front sight post, he is within your 250 meter battle sight zero and you don’t even have to worry about elevation, just hold center mass and shoot.

The Brits took this method a step further, using the front sight blade of the Lee-Enfield rifle to help measure range.

You can figure out the same thing for your own rifle, whether using open sights or a scope. I placed man-size silhouette targets at known distances in 100 meter intervals then move around sighting in on them. You may find, for instance, that the small part of a duplex crosshair up from the horizontal wire is the height of a standing man at 100 meters or that the thick portion of a duplex reticle covers the width of a man-sized target at 300 meters, or whatever. It’s something you have to figure out in practice not in theory.

I was lucky with my German Hensoldt Z24 scope on my FAL, as it has a goofy multi-line vertical post reticule. I figured out how many lines were needed to span the width of a silhouette target at what ranges.

I don’t have a manual for my old Z24 Zielfernrohr fur Sturmgewehr (1 each), and my German isn’t good enough to be of much help if I did, but I have found that at 300 yards, a man-sized silhouette fills all the pointer lines. At 500 yards, a silhouette fills three of the lines.

For quite some time, a common military method used in range estimation was averaging. Every man in the squad estimated the range to the target and the total was averaged. This can provide a more accurate estimation, but only if the individuals at least generally know what the hell they are doing.

One should know one’s own pace count, the average number of steps required to cover 100 meters, counting each time the left foot hits the ground. Mine is 65, and pacing distances to place targets I find, upon verifying with the range-finder, I am almost inevitably within 10 meters of the desired distance.

With a pace count, in a static position, you can figure ranges with a pretty decent amount of accuracy. Of course, this method won’t work too well in a tactical situation. At any rate, you can pace out the ranges to various landmarks in your field of fire, and these landmarks provide “key ranges” from which you can much more easily estimate the range of any target which appears in the vicinity. I’ve used this hunting before, pacing and marking and then setting up on a good vantage point well before dusk to wait for the deer to come out.

Something I’ve always used is what I call the fenceline method. Growing up on a farm and in farming country, I kind of take for granted the size of a piece of land; quarter section, half section etc. Fenceline to fenceline on a quarter section field is exactly a quarter mile, or 440 yards. For the half sections it’s a half mile or 880 yards.

I have heard often of knowing the standardized distance between telephone or powerline poles, which is pretty much the same thing. It does work pretty well, where such things are present. I used it on antelope once by counting highline poles. If the target is in between the fencelines or power pylons, the bracketing method can be used.

Bracketing. If the target is known to be located between two reference points of known distance then the bracketing method may be used. Simply add the two known distances (X and Y) and then
halve the sum for a close approximation of the range. For example, if X is 1000 metres and Y is 600 metres, the sum is 1600 metres, halved is 800 metres, which is the range. The further away the
target, the larger the bracket should be.

Obviously, if the target is visibly closer to X than to Y you would have to take that into account to get a more accurate fix, using more the key range method.

Here’s a few handy methods you can use if you have the distinct displeasure of someone shooting at your ass.

NOISE AND MUZZLE FLASH
FLASH TO BANG

Since sound travels through the air at a fairly constant speed (330 metres per second), it is possible to estimate the distance from a weapon that has been fired if the traveling time of the sound from the weapon is known. The traveling time is the period between observation of a muzzle flash, backblast, smoke or dust raised by the concussion and hearing the round being fired. The time can be measured accurately by counting at a rate of three beats per second during the period. Counting starts as soon as the visual effects of the weapon firing are observed and cease when the report of the weapon is heard. The number reached will be the approximate distance to the
weapon in hundreds of metres. If the count of eight has been reached when the report is heard, the distance to the weapon is approximately 800 metres.

CRACK AND THUMP

(No, crack and thump does not relate to being constipated in the field.)

When a bullet passes near, one hears two noises: first, the crack of the bullet passing, then the thump of the weapon being fired. The crack is heard before the thump because the bullet travels faster than sound. The thump indicates the direction of the weapon. The distance to the weapon can be estimated by timing the interval between the crack and the thump. The further away the weapon, the longer the interval between the crack and the thump. The time between the crack and thump at the following ranges is:

a. 300 metres — 2/3 of a second;

b. 600 metres — 1 1/3 seconds; and

c. 900 metres — 2 seconds.

If it only takes a quarter of a second, you’d better have bayonet your bayonet already fixed.

Undoubtedly the least desirable method of range-finding is the bullet hole technique. This comes into play when someone is not just shooting at your ass, but coming real close to outright hitting it.

After an enemy bullet parts your hair, you can find the bullet hole, hopefully in a wall or the dirt rather than your buddy’s head, and insert a pencil, stick, section of cleaning rod, etc. into the hole. The stick, of course, points straight back at the shooter. You either visually use the stick to determine the correct direction of the enemy or, better yet, stay hunkered down under cover and shoot an azimuth of the direction with a compass or GPS.

Then you can use the angle at which the bullet struck to get a rough estimation of the distance from which your opponent is firing. I got these angles using a ballistics graph of a 7.62x54R 174-grain heavy ball round’s trajectory, assuming some goat-smelling jihadist is firing at you with an SVD, PKM, Mosin, etc.

So, an example. You and your partner are sitting in the old barn marked “A”, minding your own business, warm and dry for once, and observing traffic on the road across the creek. Then a bullet whips past your head and into the wall behind you. Of course the first thing you do is hit the deck and stay there and say a bunch of bad words. After the cussing, you crawl over to the bullet hole, put a pencil in it, the angle of which indicates a 400-500 meter shot. Then you get a compass azimuth of 38-degrees (just an example: I’m not going into back azimuths and magnetic declination today) from the direction the pencil is pointing.

With the direction and distance plotted out, you can figure out on the map that the little bastard who took a potshot at you is probably up in the trees on that finger spur marked “B”. You can do roughly the same thing by Mk. I Eyeball, provided you don’t stick your head out to do so. At any rate, you have a pretty good idea where he’s at now so you can move to better cover and/or concealment to start glassing the area to find him.

I am very happy to say I’ve never had to make use of this method, although one time a nice mule deer buck tried to lay down fire on me with an old Russian Goryunov machine gun. But that’s a whole other story.

TSA TO OUTLAW SATIRE?

2011-10-15T08:25:00.002-06:00

"The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny."

Edward Abbey

I generally take the hysteria of Alex Jones with more than a few grains of salt as I think the guy is about a half a bubble off plumb. I do read some of his articles, however, and there is sometimes considerable wheat mixed in amongst the chaff. Such as this discourse on a new House Bill, H.R. 3011.

House Bill Would Criminalize Satire of TSA.

On September 22, 2011, H.R. 3011 was introduced in the House. It is entitled the “Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act of 2011” and it contains some curious language.

Two thirds of the way through the ponderous bill, in Sec. 295, we find the following:

Whoever, except with the written permission of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Security (or the Director of the Federal Air Marshal Service for issues involving the Federal Air Marshal Service), knowingly uses the words ‘Transportation Security Administration’, ‘United States Transportation Security Administration’, ‘Federal Air Marshal Service’, ‘United States Federal Air Marshal Service’, ‘Federal Air Marshals’, the initials ‘T.S.A.’, ‘F.A.M.S.’, ‘F.A.M.’, or any colorable imitation of such words or initials, or the likeness of a Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service badge, logo, or insignia on any item of apparel, in connection with any advertisement, circular, book, pamphlet, software, or other publication, or with any play, motion picture, broadcast, telecast, or other production, in a matter that is reasonably calculated to convey the impression that the wearer of the item of apparel is acting pursuant to the legal authority of the Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service, or to convey the impression that such advertisement, circular, book, pamphlet, software, or other publication, or such play, motion picture, broadcast, telecast, or other production, is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service .(Emphasis added.)

In other words, if you print a t-shirt or produce a publication with a TSA logo, the government may soon be able to arrest and prosecute you.

The language states that it would be illegal to “convey the impression” that you are representing the TSA, but this interpretation would likely be left to federal prosecutors.

In the past, satire was protected under the First Amendment, but it may soon be illegal to poke fun at the TSA or use its logo or even utter its name. Notice there is no exception in the above language for parody.

Political satire is as old as the Greeks and the Bible. But it may now become a punishable crime if this legislation is enacted.

The TSA and the Justice Department are obviously serious about making sure we don’t criticize their Gestapo operation. Since they began irradiating citizens with naked body scanners and shoving their hands down the pants of old ladies and grade school kids, public outrage has reached a crescendo.

Some scoff at the idea that this law could be used to outlaw parody and satire, but I wouldn't be so sure. If it's left to Federal prosecutors (persecutors?) and judges, even the most unambiguous prose in a law can be twisted and warped and stretched so that it hardly resembles the law's language, let alone intent.

Case in point: The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition to government for a redress of grievances."

Now, carefully examine the above for these phrases.

"clear and present danger"

"imminent lawless action"

"separation of church and state"

"free speech zone"

"commercial speech"

"primary right"

"secondary right"

"foreign trade zone"

"reasonable restrictions"

"hate speech"

I must be pretty out of it, as I cannot find a single one of those court/government-approved "interpretation" phrases in there. It all seemed to be written in plain English and pretty clear cut to me. But then, unlike the vast majority of Congresscritters, I am not an attorney, as evidenced by the fact that I don't chase ambulances nor excrete slime from my pores.

When Jim and I commented on the current American administration putting satirists out of business, this isn't what we were thinking of. This one is truly dangerous.

WARNING! NO COFFEE IN YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU WATCH THIS!

2011-10-12T06:22:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Mattexian for finding this hilarious video of the elite and much-feared Kenyan Special Forces in action.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

HOW FAR IS THAT YODIE IN THE HAY FIELD?

2011-10-12T05:38:00.004-06:00

RANGE ESTIMATION PART I:

RANGEFINDERS

"That prairie dog is at precisely 327 yards...and next time you get to carry this sonofabitch!"

Rangefinders actually aren’t a brand new thing. They’ve been around for better than a century. Unfortunately, they were coincidence rangefinders, also known as stereoscopic or parallax rangefinders. These worked by triangulation, just as you would use with a compass, with a prismed lens on each end of a long tube with a central eyepiece. The longer the tube, the more accurate the rangefinder.

Sure, they worked great and could be accurate indeed, but you needed a nice battleship or an artillery battery to lug them around with. They weren’t very well suited for use by the average infantryman or hunter.

Years ago, before laser rangefinders, when pterodactyls ruled the skies, I actually had a commercial sporting coincidence rangefinder. It was about a foot long and light enough, but when it came down to ranging it performed in a manner experts refer to as a “big pain in the ass”. You absolutely needed a straight line to range on, and it seemed like you had to recalibrate the fool thing every other day.

Now, I have a laser rangefinder. Yes, despite all my preaching about not relying on things that use batteries in the field, I have and use a laser rangefinder all the time. But remember Murphy? A few years back, I lost my Bushnell rangefinder out in the middle of a hay field despite the aptly-named dummy cord. Long story.

Fortunately, this turned out to be a good thing. I replaced it with the Nikon ProStaff 550 and I am much happier with that rangefinder. It’s only rated to 550 yards, but I’ve occasionally gotten ranges out to 750 under good conditions with it. It’s light and compact and handy, measures for yards or meters (me and my furrin’ military rifle scopes), and also calculates actual ranges on up and down angles, always handy in the mountains. I can highly recommend it.

Fits in the palm of your hand.

In hindsight, I would have gotten a 1200-yard model, but they cost about twice as much and it would have just been for playing with my toys. The average hunter has no business shooting beyond 300 yards, if that.

I’m not to person to explain the inner workings of any electronic device. There’s stuff like diodes, non-visible wavelengths, infrared spectrums, nano-seconds and nano-meters, and, I think, dilythium crystals involved. (Ach, she canno’ take it, Cap’n. The toilets are backed up in the warp drive now!) Ben says it’s magic, but I lean more towards sorcery.

Anyway, here are just a few observations I’ve noted from using a laser rangefinder for several years now, mostly in hunting situations. They apply to pretty much any laser rangefinder. I hope some of these notes may be of use to some of you. Just my opinion and observations though; worth what you paid for ‘em.

As with your rifle or binoculars, the steadier the better. I often carry a walking stick while antelope hunting out in the big wide open, and can brace the rangefinder on the top of that to steady it. Going prone, sitting down with your elbows on your knees, bracing on a fencepost, whatever is going to make it much easier to get a precise reading.

It can be hard to range an actual animal, especially as range increases, as their pelt kind of soaks up the laser light rather than reflecting it. I often find it’s more effective to laze a juniper, clump of sagebrush, big rock or patch of bare dirt in close proximity to the critter.

Reflectivity is a weird thing. They say the more reflective, the better. I’ve found that ain’t necessarily so. I have a helluva time lazing my own truck, which is dark blue. I can laze and laze, trying different areas and the shady side, and get no reading off it. An instant later I can laze my range bag sitting on the ground near the truck or a nearby sagebrush and get a good reading right off the bat.

In bright sunlight, a rangefinder loses a bit of performance. On the other end of the spectrum, fog and mist disperses the laser and degrades performance to varying degrees. Dropping your rangefinder down a steep, rocky slope into a mountain stream really degrades performance.

Rangefinders work well in the dark. Unfortunately, the commercial models have an LED read-out inside the tube which you can’t see in the dark. I’ve found I can laze in very little light, then point the rangefinder at the sky and be able to read the LED against that lighter backdrop. Thus I can set up on my shooting position long before daylight and laze various objects to determine general ranges and have a pretty good idea of what I’m dealing with well before shooting light rolls around.

Of course, I’m not talking an overcast moonless night when it’s blacker than the inside of a cat; you have to be able to see what you’re lasing too. You have to have some light. This paragraph just made me think I should try using my rangefinder under a full moon some night. I’ll bet it would work. Update at a later time.

In a tactical situation, however, it should be noted that laser rangefinders show up bright and clear to someone with night vision device, pointing a straight line right back to your location.

While laser rangefinders work just fine in the dark, most commercial models have an unlit LED readout. While you may be able to laze the target, accurately, you can’t read what it says. In these situations, you can laze the target, then raise the rangefinder up to the sky to be able to read the LED numbers against the lighter background.

Usually, you cannot laze a game animal directly at a distance due to the non-reflectivity of it’s hair. The solution is to laze something very close to the actual target to get the range. We have a lot of dark green juniper bushes where I hunt and I find I can laze these quite well when nothing else seems to work.

Angle has some effect, too. You want to try to laze something as close to 90-degrees flat on as you can. Like a bullet ricocheting at a flat angle, the laser kind of can too.

The more solid the object ranged the better. If you have a choice of say an exposed rock, a juniper, and a clump of sagebrush you’d obviously try to laze the rock first since it will reflect the most light without diffusing it like the multiple small branches of a sagebrush.

Tall grass between you and the target can be a pain in the ass, too. You have to make sure you’re high enough so that the laser doesn’t hit those barely visible stalks and give a false reading.

A field of fresh snow is also a problem. Look for some kind of dark object like a tree, bush, or dead Commie which stands out in sharp contrast to laze.

One of the best things you can do with your rangefinder is to just carry it along with you on your walks. Estimate the distance to some point by eye, and then check the range with the laser to see how accurate (or inaccurate) you are. Constant practice playing like this will do wonders for calibrating your own Mk. I Mod 0 Eyeball if you have to estimate range the old-fashioned way someday.

I don’t know if this is worth anything, but I am more used to hunting wide open spaces so I tend to greatly over-estimate ranges when I’m in the dark timber high up bow hunting. I look at a certain tree up ahead along the trail and think, “That’s about 40 yards.” Nope. Nikon says 23. D’-oh! In the big wide open, however, I tend to under estimate range. That’s why it’s so good to take your rangefinder along on your hikes and test yourself.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE

2011-10-11T11:57:00.002-06:00

Well, it's been awhile since we talked about the good ol' Religion of Peace spreading its goodwill and cheer. Let's take a quick look at a few of the things our poor, oppressed, fun-loving and tolerant brothers have been up to with their zany shenanigans lately.

SPAIN

These guys never cried when Ol' Yeller died.

In Spain lately, Muslims have been killing other folks' pets because their Religion of Peace considers them "unclean". They are forbidden to own them and now, it seems, the are "offended" by dog owners and feel perfectly justified in killing them. The dogs, not the owners, but it appears they will be next.

Muslims are suspected of poisoning dogs in Spain because of the Islamic teaching that such pets are unclean, according to a report from Soeren Kern, an analyst with the Strategic Studies Group based in Madrid.

“All of the dogs were poisoned in September … [in] Lérida's working class neighbourhoods of Cappont and La Bordeta, districts that are heavily populated by Muslim immigrants and where many dogs have been killed in recent years.”

Dog owners in the city say the dogs are poisoned because Islam regards them as “unclean.” Indeed, Islam teaches that dogs are “najis,” meaning ritually unclean, and that “Islam forbids Muslims to keep dogs,” according to the Islam Q&A website.

Unsurprisingly, Kern reported, “”Residents taking their dogs for walks have been harassed by Muslim immigrants opposed to seeing the animals in public. Muslims have also launched a number of anti-dog campaigns on Islamic websites and blogs based in Spain.”

So bad has the Muslim jihad against dogs become that more than four dozen residents have formed six-man patrols to escort dog walkers.

For their part, the city’s 29,000 Muslims, about 20 percent of the city’s population, want dogs banned, Kern noted, citing a newspaper report. “In July, two Islamic groups based in Lérida asked city officials to regulate the presence of dogs in public spaces so they do not ‘offend Muslims,’ ” Kern said, adding, "Muslims are demanding that dogs be banned from all forms of public transportation including all city buses as well as from all areas frequented by Muslim immigrants."

Nothing like that peaceful assimilation of cultural diversity.

EGYPT

The practitioners of the Religion of Peace in Egypt have decided it's not enough to kill 4-legged infidel dogs and are moving on to killing two-legged infidel dogs known as Christians. Bombing their churches combined with frequent beatings and the occasional stabbing just ain't enough. Now they're shooting them and running them over with armored vehicles.

"The military regime ruling Egypt is under fire after it responded to weekend protests by Coptic Christians in Cairo with deadly force, leaving hundreds wounded and dozens dead. An official investigation is ongoing.

Following another church attack last week blamed on Islamist extremists, Christian activists marched to the state-run TV station headquarters in the capital. The demonstrators were demanding government protection from Muslim attacks and the resignation or firing of a provincial governor...

According to news reports, thugs in civilian clothing unleashed a wave of violence against the Christians using swords, clubs, and other weapons. The government then sent armored personnel carriers and mowed down dozens of protesters. At least 25 were killed, probably more — some crushed under tanks, others shot.

"Several reports, citing witnesses, said club-wielding men were helping to brutalize Christians, shouting slogans such as “No God but Allah” or “Islamic, Islamic.” The New York Times reported that some Muslim civilians appeared to be working with police and soldiers while chanting “The people want to bring down the Christians.”

Being ground into the pavement is, apparently, perfectly acceptable as long as you're not Muslim and not "offended" by the action.

This sort of thing has been going on for many years now, and not just in Egypt. The press just doesn't want to bring it up. Here we see how Egyptian Muslims "celebrate diversity" and "show tolerance" by helping a Coptic Christian "assimilate" into their culture.

SWITZERLAND

Speaking of being "offended", Muslim immigrants to Switzerland, whose confederacy of cantons was formed in 1291, are offended by the white cross on the national flag. The white cross first came into use with the Old Swiss Confederacy as an identifying mark for their uniform-less militia soldiers in the Battle of Laupen in 1339 and first appeared on a red flag at the Battle of Arbedo in 1422. Well, say the Islamists, screw your history, it "offends" us and it has to go.

"An immigrant group based in Bern has called for the emblematic white cross to be removed from the Swiss national flag because as a Christian symbol it "no longer corresponds to today's multicultural Switzerland."
.
In a September 18 interview with the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung, Petrusic [the guy who started all this] said the cross has a Christian background and while the Christian roots of Switzerland should be respected, "it is necessary to separate church and state" because "Switzerland today has a great religious and cultural diversity. One has to ask if the State wants to continue building up a symbol in which many people no longer believe."

In the interview, Petrusic said Switzerland needs new symbols with which everyone, including non-Christians, can identify. As an alternative to the current Swiss flag Petrusic proposed the former flag of the Helvetic Republic...which consisted of green, red and yellow colors. "Those colors are similar to the current flags of Bolivia and Ghana and would represent a more progressive and open-minded Switzerland," Petrusic said.

[Progressive and open-minded!?!?Ghana and Bolivia!?!?]

The proposal to change the Swiss flag has been met with outrage across the political spectrum and is sure to fuel anti-immigrant sentiments in Switzerland.

BELGIUM

In Belgium, they are also spitting on the history, traditions, government and law. In fact, they wish to supplant Belgian civil law with (surprise!) Sharia Law under which, if a woman gets raped, she is guilty of adultery and can be killed for it and other kinds of "honor killings" are also legal.

"An Islamic Sharia law court has been established in Antwerp, the second-largest city in Belgium.

The Sharia court is the initiative of a radical Muslim group called Sharia4Belgium. Leaders of the group say the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium in order to challenge the state's authority as enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.

The Sharia court, which is located in Antwerp's Borgerhout district, is "mediating" family law disputes for Muslim immigrants in Belgium.

The self-appointed Muslim judges running the court are applying Islamic law, rather than the secular Belgian Family Law system, to resolve disputes involving questions of marriage and divorce, child custody and child support, as well as all inheritance-related matters.

Unlike Belgian civil law, Islamic Sharia law does not guarantee equal rights for men and women; critics of the Sharia court say it will undermine the rights of Muslim women in marriage and education...

Sharia4Belgium says the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.

The Sharia4Belgium group consists of Islamists who are committed to bring everyone living in Belgium (including all non-Muslims) under the submission of Islamic Sharia law."

What can you ladies look forward to under Sharia law?

IRAN

Ask Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr.

Iranian actress gets one-year jail, 90 lashes for part in Aussie film.

"She was arrested in June after black market copies of the film began circulating in Tehran, showing Vafamehr in some scenes without an Islamic hijab which covers the hair and neck

The movie's plot is based in part on (the Director) Moussavi's own life and that of her friend Vafamehr but also on stories the Flinders University film graduate was told when she volunteered as a translator at the Woomera detention centre.

Internet images of officially administered lashings in Iran show victims being placed face down in a prone position and then being whipped with a long stick on the upper legs, back and buttocks. …

Vafamehr plays the character of a young actress in Tehran whose theatre work is banned by the authorities. She is then forced to lead a secret life in order to express herself artistically while at the same time trying to migrate to Australia.

The 2009 film was highly controversial in Iran only because it showed footage of uninhibited modernised Iranians at Western-style rave parties. Footage of those scenes would normally be censored by authorities for being subversive."

Here's what an Islamic lashing is all about. This Sudanese woman was sentenced to 40 lashes for being convicted of the terrible crime of wearing pants. Just last month, a Saudi Arabian woman was sentenced to 10 lashes for driving a car. And this stuff goes on all the time all over the world.

And, as always, from the mainstream press and the women's lib gang...THUNDEROUS SILENCE.

Yes, practitioners of the Religion of Peace are just assimilating like hell over in Europe, wanting to supplant constitutional law with Sharia law. Why would anyone object to that? At least a few European leaders are starting to speak out.French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called the left wing cult of multiculturalism a "clear" failure. He's also said:

"If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France."

“The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women ... freedom for little girls to go to school.”

“We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him.”

Boy does that sound familiar. Other world leaders such as British Prime Minister David Cameron, Australian ex-Pime Minister John Howard, and ex Spanish Premiere Jose Maria Aznar have expressed similar sentiments.

Last year about this time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared, "Multiculturalism utterly failed in Germany." It would seem that an rapidly increasing number of the country's citizens agree.

GERMANY

The German government is debating whether to increase surveillance of German citizens who are trying to prevent the spread of radical Islam in Germany.

The move comes in reaction to a three-week-long smear campaign by members of the German mainstream media, who have been relentless in their efforts to discredit the so-called counter-jihad movement in Germany...

Opinion polls show that growing numbers of Germans are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged mass immigration from Muslim countries.

Germans are especially concerned about the refusal of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into German society, and about the emergence of a parallel legal system in Germany based on Islamic Sharia law.

In an effort to reverse this tide of public opinion, the guardians of German multiculturalism have been working overtime to regain the initiative, mostly by trying to intimidate the critics of Islam into silence.

A particular object of wrath is a highly popular German-language Internet website called Politically Incorrect (PI), which over the years has grown into a major information resource for people concerned about the spread of Islam in Germany.

PI's motto reads "Against the Mainstream, Pro-American, Pro-Israel, Against the Islamification of Europe" -- which represents everything the German left abhors. Not surprisingly, many German media elites want PI shut down...

And OF COURSE Politically Incorrect is being treated about like the Tea Party by the lamestream media, complete with the allusions to Hitler and Nazism. Typical "news" article about PI are stories with titles such as these.

"Politically Incorrect: Vulgar, Uninhibited, Racist."
"PI News: Prototype of the New Right."
"Politically Incorrect: Where the Internet Stinks."
"Rightwing Populists: United in their Hatred of Muslims."
"Politically Correct Hatred."
"Politically Incorrect: Inside the Network of Islam Haters."

Numerous polls conducted in Germany show that the average Klaus on the street is not a big supporter of multiculturalism. For instance:

Less than a third of Germans have a "positive view" of Muslims.
Fewer than 5% of the Germans think Islam is a tolerant religion,
Only 30% say they approve of the building of mosques.
Only 7.5% of Germans believe Islam is a "Religion of Peace."
79% think Islam is "the most violent" religion.
Only 20% of the Germans believe that Islam is suitable for the Western world.
More than 80% of the Germans agree with the statement "that Muslims must adapt to our culture." (More than one million immigrants living permanently in Germany cannot speak German.)
54% say the impact of immigration is negative rather than positive.
60% say it has placed too much pressure on public services.

What can be gleaned from these numbers?

Der Spiegel magazine, in an article titled "Germany's Anti-Muslim Scene: Authorities Debate Surveillance of Islamophobes," asserts that right-wing populism is a new form of extremism: "Islamophobes in Germany could come under increased surveillance by the country's domestic intelligence agency. There are concerns that the anti-Muslim scene is becoming increasingly dangerous. In essence, the question is whether the hatred of Muslims is enough to endanger freedom of religion and international understanding, or whether it is a radical but legitimate expression of opinion by individual authors within the limits of the constitution."

That's right folks, it's just a handful of right-wing extremists who refuse to listen to their liberal betters. Time for law enforcement to crack down on those "domestic terrorists" who dare to express their opinions. Just because they're not actually engaging in violence, rioting or bomb-throwing (like Muslims in France) is no reason not to put those Nazi bastards in jail. Maybe Janet Incompitana and Eric Holder can work weekends in Germany to show them how it's done.

AFGHANISTAN

Moving on to Afghanistan, which we "liberated" so we could station occupation forces there, apparently, for as long or longer than we have on the Korean DMZ. Since we "freed" the people from the mean nasty old Taliban and shoveled in some $440 billion to prop up "good" Islamic warlords, there is no longer a single Christian church left in the country, according to the State Department.

No need to worry, though because the State Department also said:

“The U.S. government regularly discusses religious freedom with government officials as part of its overall policy to promote human rights.”

WISCONSIN

And right here at home, right here in River City, well actually in Wausau, Wisconsin:

Wis. Muslim Allegedly Beats Man With Tire Iron for Insulting His Islamic Faith

"A Wausau man was hospitalized Friday after he was attacked and beaten with a tire iron in what witnesses said was an argument over religion, according to police...

A witness told a Wausau Daily Herald reporter at the scene that he was sitting on the back porch of a home when the suspect pulled up in his vehicle, got out and accused the victim of criticizing his Islamic religion.

The victim denied that he had been critical of Islam, but the suspect then grabbed a tire iron, hit the victim in the head and punched him before speeding off in his vehicle, witnesses said."

There are moments when I'm tempted to covert if it means I get license to go running around beating or killing anyone who's ever "offended" me. Then again, that whole "eternity in Hell" thing is always enough to bring me back around.

FAST & FURIOUS RUCKUS DOESN'T STOP BACKDOOR FEDERAL GUN CONTROL IN STATES WITH MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAWS

2011-10-09T08:54:00.006-06:00

Bringing out the Big Guns:

Troubled by continual fallout from the asinine Fast & Furious ATF operation, the most cerebral president ever calls in the "A-Team" of his best and brightest advisers and appointees, his intellectual peers, for a late night damage control strategy session.

In it's never ending quest to expand its powers and funding, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives, Knives, Pointy Scissors, and Sharp Sticks' undercover "sting", Operation Fast and Furious, was so outrageous and out-of-line even for an agency already seen as rogue and incompetent by other Federal law enforcement agencies, that even the mainstream media was forced to cover it. This brilliant sting operation, apparently planned with the full coordination of such ATF senior officials as Wile E. Coyote, Colonel Wilhelm Klink,and Boris (Say da name!) Badinov, had the end result of creating more crime, more deaths, and arming drug dealers and street gangs on the taxpayers' dime.

Shyster General Eric Holder and his ilk are squirming like a den of rattlesnakes with gasoline poured on them, doing their best to obfuscate, duck, avoid, scapegoat and slither away from the issue, but it just won't go away. Holder was caught "misleading" Congress and it appears even the Whitehouse may have known about the plan. The Arizona Sheriff's Association and more Senators are jumping on Senator Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) bandwagon looking into the malfeasance,. There's even talk (probably just talk to appease us gun nuts until the storm blows over) of disbanding the ATF. Of course, as in the Randy Weaver case, the high-ranking imbeciles who came up with the plan will escape unharmed. Some have even been promoted.

In the midst of this shitstorm, instead of lying low, those wily DOJ bright boys & girls have cleverly decided to stir up even more shit and piss off the 16 individual states (including Montana) which have passed medical marijuana laws!

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A federal ban on selling guns or ammunition to medical marijuana users raises constitutional concerns and complicates matters for states where medical use of the drug is legal, Montana's attorney general said Monday.

Steve Bullock wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a letter in which he says the federal government should act carefully "when its laws and policies involve conflicts with those of the states."

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives last month notified firearms dealers nationwide that medical marijuana users are not exempt from a federal law making it illegal for a drug user or addict to possess a gun or ammunition, even if they are registered in a state-sanctioned program.

The ATF's Sept. 21 letter to federal firearms licensees said dealers can't sell a gun or ammunition if they have reasonable cause to believe the buyer is using a controlled substance, such as if the buyer uses his medical marijuana card as identification or talks about drug use.

Bullock said the ATF's "unilateral proclamation" raises Second Amendment and Fifth Amendment issues about gun rights, equal protection and due process. [Personally, I'd include the 10th Amendment in there as well]. In addition, the letter creates policy and practical concerns, such as the responsibility placed on firearms dealers, he said.

As if that wasn't stupid enough, state fish & game agencies, which are already pretty limited on their game control options, have been told to stop using "Scarecrow" shotguns shells. These are essentially a shotgun shell which launches an M-80 firecracker a couple of hundred feet where it explodes. They are used for such things as chasing bears out of campgrounds or running elk off of hay stackyards. There hasn't been much resistance from our state agency as far as I can tell, even though it has pissed them off too. With any luck, that may become a running sore for the Feds too if the states get off their butts.

Here's hoping the jack-booted thugs reap what they have sown and get a nice big kick in the nuts.

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2011-10-07T09:40:00.003-06:00

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BEST JOKE SO FAR OF THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY, OTHER THAN THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF

2011-10-07T06:21:00.001-06:00

A Socialist, an illegal alien, and a Muslim walk into a bar.

The bartender says," What'll you have, Mr. President?"

Gun Nut Roundup Sept. 2011

2011-09-30T20:31:00.001-06:00

Two Concealed Carry Reciprocity Bills In Congress

Two separate bills designed to help gun owners be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights when traveling outside their home state are winding their way through the U.S. Congress.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) recently introduced H.R. 2900, “The Secure Access to Firearms Enhancement (SAFE) Act.” This bill is being championed by Gun Owners of America (GOA) which says the bill "allows law-abiding citizens who can legally carry concealed in their home state to carry all across the country, as well." GOA also says: "The SAFE Act also respects the Constitution and states’ powers in that it does NOT establish national standards for concealed carry, nor does it provide for a national carry permit or require a state like Vermont to move to a permit system (in order for its citizens to carry out-of-state)."

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is putting its support behind H.R. 822, the "National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011," introduced by Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Heath Shuler (D-N.C.). According to NRA-ILA, H.R. 822 "would allow any person with a valid state-issued concealed firearm permit to carry a concealed firearm in any state that issues concealed firearm permits, or that does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms for lawful purposes. A state`s laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within its borders. The bill applies to D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories. It would not create a federal licensing system; rather, it would require the states to recognize each others` carry permits[.]"

DOJ To Eliminate ATF?

Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com reports of rumors that the Department of Justice may try to scrap the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Last week ATF offered 400 agents early retirement and sources say a plan is circulating in the DOJ to eliminate the agency and transfer its functions to other agencies.

While many gun nuts may cheer the elimination of the ATF, Pavlich suggests that DOJ may have ulterior motives. "ATF field agents weren’t the problem with Operation Fast and Furious, high ranking officials within ATF and the Department of Justice were and still are," writes Pavlich. "DOJ would eliminate ATF only to take the heat off of the Obama Administration. By eliminating the bureau, it makes it seem like DOJ is taking Operation Fast and Furious so seriously, they decided to 'clear out the corruption, clean house,' however, it would only be a distraction away from the people at the top of the investigation."

Court Allows Wolf Hunts To Proceed

Seeking to "win a stay of execution for wolves," several bunny hugger groups sued to halt wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho. In late August however the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied their motion, allowing the hunts to proceed on the animals which are no longer considered "endangered" in the area. (For a more in-depth analysis of the Western wolf issue, read Bawb's post here.)

Mike Garrity of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (one of the groups involved) said of the ruling, “We will continue to fight to protect the wolves and enforce the separation of powers doctrine in the US Constitution.” Garrity made no mention of the Tenth Amendment however, nor of protecting the moose and elk being eradicated by wolves, nor of protecting the livelihoods of local ranchers.

JUDGE: "NO FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO PRODUCE AND CONSUME FOODS."

2011-09-30T05:47:00.005-06:00

What in the hell are they putting in the cheese these days? From Wisconsin, of all places.

In a court case sure to go down in history for one of the most bizarre rulings, a Wisconsin judge has held that American citizens do not have a "fundamental right to produce or consume foods of their choice."

The plaintiffs in the case argued that their right to privacy — which allows them to decline medical treatment, allow abortion, view pornography, and engage in consensual sex — should also translate into the right to “consume food of his/her own choice.”
Judge Patrick Fiedler remained unconvinced, claiming that the constitutionality of food rights is “wholly without merit.” He added that the plaintiffs' use of the Roe v Wade case as a precedent does “not explain why a woman’s right to have an abortion translates to a right to consume unpasteurized milk…. This court is unwilling to declare that there is a fundamental right to consume the food of one’s choice without first being presented with significantly more developed arguments on both sides of the issue.”

Judge Fiedler went on to clarify his ruling further:

“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;
“no, the … Plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the State’s police power;
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice.”
Now why do I get this mental image in my head of a top Monsanto executive in a lavish office somewhere tapping his fingers together and crooning, "Excellent."?

YOU REALLY CAN'T COMPARE OBAMA TO HITLER

2011-09-28T10:16:00.007-06:00

By my count, and I’m sure I missed a few million, leftists created approximately 387 hillion bajillion pictures of Bush as Hitler. Bush as a Chimpanzee was a distant second. We were not a big fan of Bush pissing away our tax dollars, but now we long for the good old days when the president pissed away the equivalent of schoolyard milk money in real people dollars while the current denizen of the Whitehouse pissed (and continues to piss) away the equivalent of Palm Springs, with less to show for the money. Maybe Bush’s economy was a K-Car missing on two cylinders, but Obama’s is more like a heavy stone chiseled into a crude wheel being pushed up a steep grade.

As an aside, Jim and I once discussed how in the hell the loony left could portray Bush as a retarded half chimpanzee who had to have help putting on his pants in the morning on one hand, while portraying him as some kind of Machiavellian evil genius bent on ruling the world on the other. But that's beside the point.

We wouldn’t even still be talking about Bush 43 anymore except for two reasons. (A) Obama and his usual crony suspects are still trying to blame the bad economy on him, despite having had three years and roughly 10.479 trillion dollars in spending to “fix” the Shrub’s screw-ups and (B) While the loony left is still comparing Bush to Hitler, any comparison of Zero the Hero to Hitler is strictly verboten and considered racist, hateful, violent, wicked, terrorist, bigoted, evil, unfair, vicious, immoral, etc., etc., etc.

Not wishing to be offense, here at Das Blog we agree to stop comparing Obama to Hitler. Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is a more apt comparison. After all, despite being evil Hitler did at least fix the German economy and make the trains run on time, which is much more than Zero has accomplished. So, let’s take a look at why Benito and Barack are comparable. Hell, with Obama’s krummholz family tree, they could be related for all we know. So here we go. Let's see how the two stack up.

Barack v Benito
or
Il Duce v Il Dunce

Vain, melodramatic narcissist who craved adoration and attention

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Bankrupted national economy

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Army of thugs

Mussolini: Blackshirts

Obama: Purpleshirts

Voter intimidation at the polls

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

State control of industries

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Unsuccessfully tried to fight a depression with public works programs

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Public Schools should be for indoctrination before education.

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Made his country a laughingstock internationally.

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

Motto:

Mussolini: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Obama: Pretty much the same

Knew how many states/provinces in his own country

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: No

Knew what language is spoken in Austria

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: No

Stance on Islam

Mussolini: "Fascist Italy wants to ensure the Muslim population of Libya and Ethiopia peace, justice, prosperity, respect the laws of the Prophet and also wants to demonstrate his sympathy to Islam and the Muslims the world over"

Obama: "Islam has always been part of America.""These rituals remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings."

Claimed his country built an Intercontinental Railroad

Mussolini: No

Obama: Yes

Bowed to foreign leaders

Mussolini: No

Obama: Yes

Veteran

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: No

Incompetent buffoon as military leader

Mussolini: Yes

Obama: Yes

So, there we have it folks. I don't know about you, but I think this one is just too close to call.

A SPECIES OF EXERCISE

2011-09-27T11:00:00.006-06:00

“Give about two of them [hours] every day to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.”

Thomas Jefferson

So, last week I took my gun for a walk and my dog Griz came with us. The gun in question was an Evil Black Rifle, my FAL Queenie with the Hensoldt scope. The lake where we were heading had generated reports of a big aggressive problem black bear getting into camps the last two autumns. If I spotted a bear on a far hillside foraging, I could reach out and touch him with the Hensoldt’s BDC. And if a bear waddled into camp at three o’clock in the morning, it’s nice to have twenty rounds of semiautomatic .308 close to hand and not have to mess around with all that silliness of working a bolt.

We hiked five trail miles up into the local wilderness area to our destination lake. While I was hardly adverse to filling my bear tag if the opportunity presented itself, the trip was more just to get out in the boonies for awhile.

As you can see, it was a pretty high mountain lake. We (the gun and I, the dog had no say in the matter) had originally intended to hike up and over the pass in the background of this photo, to get above timberline and spend another night up there somewhere. However, I ran into a couple of bow hunters who had come all the way from Minnesota for their grand Rocky Mountain elk hunting trip. They were hunting hard, but we were having record high temperatures in the 80’s, so the elk weren’t exactly sprinting to their calls and I figured the last thing they needed was for us to go tromping through the middle of their hunting area.

Below the lake there was a burned over area from an old forest fire, kept fairly well watered by a series of spring and seeps trickling down through the rocks. It was a berry bonanza; red raspberries, thimbleberry, black currants, elderberry, mountain ash, and rose hips, the last not a berry but a good source of Vitamin C which stays on the plant all winter. I really feasted on thimbleberry and raspberry. They were both just about done for the year. I had to be careful with the raspberries, as the ripe ones would fall off the vine at the lightest of touches. Actually, I got more berries by picking them up out of the crevices in the rocks where they had fallen. Eventually, I decided I’d better stop lest I wind up able to shit through a screen door at 20 paces that night. Griz kept pushing in and sniffing around trying to figure what I was eating, but couldn’t quite grasp the idea of eating berries.

Further up, in the shade of the timber, there were wild strawberries, Oregon grape and dwarf huckleberries. As usual, I could find no strawberries on the plants. Oregon grape are as sour as those hideous candies the kids eat which make your face shrivel and pucker up, but they are supposed to be “better” and “sweeter” after a frost. It had gotten down to 22 degrees a couple of nights before so, as usual, I tried a few grapes but certainly couldn’t discern any sweetness to them. The huckleberries were done for as well, and I only found dry shriveled up ones, but at least they still tasted good.

So as not to disturb the Uff Da’s bow hunting, we set up camp at the far end of the lake and just chilled. I had planned to have a fire-less camp and just eat my home-made survival food (pemmican, survival bread, hardtack and pinole…not as bad as it sounds and I’ll share the recipes one of these days), but I got to casting a line here and there and landed this nice rainbow. The lake was full of fish this size; you could see them cruising around in the crystal clear water. I should point out also that my K-Bar knife, used for size reference in the photo, is actually the Super Rambo He-Man Special K-Bar and is 28 inches in length. Honest.

As the sun went down behind the 8,600-foot peak behind us, I glassed for animals. I try to set up camp on a slope facing east or southeast so I can get the morning sun right away. It’s tempting to set up in the warm afternoon sun on a west slope, but you regret it in the cold air the next morning as you shiver in the dark shadows waiting for the sun to finally clear the mountain and give you a little warmth.

As the evening coolness began to seep into the air, I sat on the lake shore rocks in my Crazy Creek stadium seat with my compact binos and glassed the far shore and hillsides for wild critters as the single big shadow of the west ridge slowly moved and spread across the lake and into the mountains to the east. I didn’t see hide not hair of a damned thing. Trying to glass the old burn and the berry mother lode for my bear didn’t work well as the white bones of the dead lodgepoles were mostly still standing and pretty thick; one’s view couldn’t penetrate far into the dead timber. The dog enjoyed paddling around in lazy circles in the lake.

Not sure whether there was a fire ban in effect or not (there wasn’t) I built a tiny fire about dark using “squaw wood”, small sticks no larger than a pencil, to make an all but smokeless fire to cook the trout and make a cup of coffee in my canteen cup.

Lest I make it sound like the mountains are some kind of cornucopia of wild edibles just waiting to be picked up off the ground and stuffed into your face, I must stress this was an unusual case. I can usually find something in the high country…glacier lilies, wild onions, Oregon grape…but not enough to fill one’s belly, especially not on a regular basis. I usually end up putting some lily corms and onions in with a canteen cup of rice and soup mix as a “bonus” but that’s about it. Sometimes, you can’t find shit, but if you were starving you could peel the bark off a lodgepole or Doug fir and scrape off the soft inner cambium for a treat that tastes about like you’d expect. Hint: not ambrosia. Glassing for an hour or more and seeing absolutely nothing in the way of critters also goes to show you can’t and shouldn’t plan on living off wild game or fish on a trip into the wilds either. You sure don’t see Survivor Man coming home having gained 25 pounds after a week in the bush.

I broke the Crazy Creek chair down flat for a ground pad in lieu of an Ensolite sleeping pad or Therm-O-Rest. We used to call these things “snivel pads” in the Army when we were young and dumb and full of cum. Their purpose, however, is not to cushion the rocks and roots you’re sleeping on. It’s insulation from the cold ground. The real world’s not like ol’ John Wayne laying down on the bare ground with his saddle for a pillow, his hat pulled low over his eyes, and a trade blanket over him. You’d freeze your nards off that way in the high country.

At times packing ultra light and going without a snivel pad, I’ve built old-timey browse beds from pine and fir boughs and they work pretty good as insulation. I’ve also piled up pine duff and spread it out into a bed between a couple of lodgepole lengths.

With clear skies and no rain forecast, I just spread my East German shelter half and poncho liner on the pad and folded it over me and we slept under the stars. The shelter half has a button and eye system( rather than snaps like American, Brit or former West German shelter halves) to connect to other shelter halves or to close up the side and bottom. Those damn Commies from the former “Democratic Republic’s” Workers’ Paradise no doubt manufactured them under some kind of Collective 5-Year-Plan, kind of like Obama and Geithner running GM, and the buttons come off about as fast as you can use them. My next project is to sew some Velcro along the bottom and the edge.

I don’t take a watch with me into the wilderness, preferring to go by Boonie Standard Time, so I can only guess that it was about three or four in the morning when a small herd of elk moved through the dead timber across the hillside on the far side of the lake. When they’re just ambling along you can hear the cows and calves “talking” the whole time. An hour or two later, they ambled back the other way. Of course there was no moon so it was blacker than the inside of a cat and we never actually saw them.

In the morning, an adult bull moose came out of the dark timber on the far side of the lake and slowly worked his way through the shallows. The rack was nothing to brag about, but it was very nice to actually see a moose these days. These days, the vast majority of the moose in our neck of the woods are wolf shit. Eventually, the moose waded ashore and worked his way up the lake towards us. The dog, of course, while used to stock animals, went nuts over his first moose. He sure sounded tough and fierce, but he showed no inclination to actually run over there and tangle with the thing. His growling and barking did make the moose kick it up a gear and he trotted right past camp, although at a speed and through timber that kept me from getting a good photo.

Oddly enough, the moose was accompanied by a flying squirrel, but I shot it with Queenie and Griz ate it; a satisfying experience for all three of us.

AM I SAFER TEN YEARS LATER?

2011-09-20T08:18:00.004-06:00

FROM

For many years I had refused to fly since 9/11, but awhile back I twisted my ankle while fighting a forest fire in Washington State and had to fly home instead of driving back later with the rest of the 20-man crew.

Into the airport I went. I was still wearing my salt-stained yellow-and-green Nomex firefighter uniform because I had no “civvy” clothes with me. My ticket had been purchased by the Federal government. I had my Federal employee scannable Smart Pass identification. This was insufficient, so I also had to show my driver’s license, National Guard military ID, passport, birth certificate, DNA sample, retina scan, and a note from the local sheriff. While fumbling around with all this paperwork, my NRA membership card fell out of my wallet. Much to my naive surprise, the TSA agent said I fit a “terrorist profile” and needed an “enhanced” search.

As I entered the scanner, which had a sign on top that said, “Arbeit macht frei", I couldn’t help but notice the fellow behind me in the cattle chute. He was a thirty-ish fellow of Middle-Eastern origin, wearing a turban from which was coming an odd ticking noise. He was sweating profusely and his eyes were darting furtively about. For identification, he showed the TSA thug an underwear label and a blank cashier’s check from the Bank of Somalia.

“Okey-dokey, g’wan through, bub” said the skinny, officious little TSA agent, sniffing and hiking up his pants.

“What about that guy?” I asked the TSA agent, nodding at Turban Man.

“We can’t use race, country of origin, religion, appearance, lack of identification or weaponry as criteria in our terrorist profiles,” he replied. "Unless, of course, you're a male WASP."

I was herded into a small room where I had to disrobe completely. For some reason, they had to search my bunghole twice. I can’t figure out how that squirrely little agent with the bad lisp was able to do that with one of his hands on each of my shoulders, but I complied like a good little sheeple.

My small revenge was that I had been living in a firefighter spike camp in the mountains for several days without a shower. When this little blue-haired female 60-plus-year old TSA agent examined my boots for explosives, the stench sent her reeling backwards, knocking down a partition and revealing my nakedness to a few dozen passengers. Several agents jumped on me and pummeled me with billy clubs while another hustled my boots away to check them for Nuclear, Biological, Chemical weapons.

When the boots came back, carried with a set of long tongs by an agent in a protective space suit, the head TSA agent came out and said, “Tough shit for the inconvenience.” Then he cited me for indecent exposure.

Having finally crossed the River Styx, I saw that, since I had reported to the airport five hours early as instructed, I still had a good three minutes to catch my flight. I hadn’t eaten since the previous evening, so I decided to grab a sub sandwich at one of the airport kiosks.

Behind the counter, a Middle-Eastern guy in his mid-twenties, displaying an airport security pass around his neck asked, “What you fuggin' want, imperialist Yankee pig-dog infidel?”

So I wasted a couple of minutes talking louder and louder in short phrases and then in single words, pointing and gesturing at the overhead menu signs, until I was able to order a deli ham and bacon sub, on white bread. After a long wait, my sub arrived, carried with a set of long tongs by another young man of Arabic-descent in a protective space suit. The guy at the counter spat on the sandwich before handing it over to me. Then we had to haggle over the price for awhile before he would accept the amount listed on the menu, and even then he kept on insisting on being paid in Saudi Riyal rather than American Dollars.

The sub was, of course, completely inedible, the bacon raw, the bread limp and wet, and the condiments unidentifiable. On the fireline, I had eaten a pine beetle on a bet, so when I say it was inedible, it was in-friggin’-edible. I tossed it into the trash can after one bite.

Now rushing to my departure gate, a janitor, in his late 20’s and of Middle-Eastern descent, looking furtively back over his shoulder as he exited from a door marked: SECURE AREA: NO ADMITTANCE, unexpectedly pushed his mop bucket out into the corridor ahead of me. I tripped over the bucket, from which protruded a mop handle and what looked suspiciously like the wood-sleeved barrel of an RPG-7 rocket launcher. The janitor hastily gathered the objects while screaming curses at me in Arabic, making sure he kept hold of his airport security pass before scuttling away.

As I arrived at the departure gate, I was the last person in line. Up ahead, in the middle, I could see two thirty-ish men of Middle Eastern descent, sweating profusely in the air conditioning and glancing nervously all around, being waved on through. When I got to the counter, the airline employee said she was sorry but that I fit their terrorist profile list and would have to go with the nice Customs and Immigration officer looming nearby. Oh boy. I was subject to another body cavity search.

This, of course, caused me to miss my flight. With a heavy sigh, I purchased a paperback book at a nearby kiosk to kill time while I waited for the next flight, six hours later. The novel made for tedious reading. The highly unlikely plot was something about Nazis hiding underground since 1945 smuggling an atom bomb into the U.S. and detonating it under the United Nations’ Islamic Peace Conference.

Growing bored with the paperback tripe, I gazed out the window. It was a hot August day, so I wondered why the baggage handlers, who appeared to be men in their late 20’s and of Middle Eastern descent, were wearing ski masks in addition to their airport security passes. I dozed off.

I was awakened by a plainclothes agent who identified himself as a Federal Air Marshall. He said that another Federal agency, despite my injury, had requested I return to my firefighting crew ASAP. A huge new forest fire had unexpectedly erupted in the mountains, already threatening two small communities and closing the Interstate. Something about a plane crash.

As I stood up, I winced in pain. In addition to the sprained ankle, I now had to walk carefully as my junk was bruised and battered from repeated searching. As I made to head out, the Federal agent explained that I fit their terrorist profile and he would have to subject me to another body cavity search before allowing me to exit the airport.

Days later, when the fire was finally contained, my employing agency offered to upgrade me to First Class if I wished to fly back home. I declined. Despite the sprained ankle and swollen balls, I started hobbling down the highway with my thumb out.

It took me three days to get home. Even though the guy in the primer-gray old van with no windows who picked me up, a man who punctuated his sentences by waving a meat cleaver and kept asking me if I liked fava beans and Chianti, made me a wee bit uneasy, I still felt much more secure than I had with the Homeland Security forces at the airport

M1 GARAND MARKSMANSHIP

2011-09-19T06:22:00.003-06:00

Old U.S. Army training film on how to shoot "the finest battle implement ever devised"...correctly. Works for little girlie rifles too. Learn it, live it, love it.

Linkie to Sourcie.

THE BIGGEST CRIME THREAT IN MEMPHIS: GARDENING

2011-09-16T06:48:00.008-06:00

The Morgan Quitno Awards have, for the last eleven years, rated the 25 safest and most dangerous cities to live in per crime rate statistics. This year, Memphis made the list as the second most dangerous Metropolitan Area in the nation. In the past, they have made #1, and seem to continue jockeying to reclaim that spot. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 2007:

"The Memphis metropolitan area, after coming in second last year, tops this year's ranking of metro areas by the rate of violent crime -- homicide, rape, aggravated assault and robbery."

So, what are the city fathers doing about all this crime? Going after backyard gardeners, of course! I can't even comment on this without blowing a gasket, so here is the full story from Hannah Sayle of the Memphis Flyer.

Seeds of Discontent

Code enforcement targets urban garden.

by Hannah Sayle

Adam Guerrero and three kids from his neighborhood, Jovantae, Jarvis, and Shaquielle, hardly seem like lawbreakers as they turn over soil at Guerrero's Nutbush home.

But the city's code enforcement department has deemed their urban garden a nuisance, and a judge has ordered them to remove the small ecosystem they've been working on for the last two years.

According to the court summons, Guerrero, a math teacher at Raleigh-Egypt High School, was cited for violating city ordinances 48-38 and 48-87: He failed to "remove personal property" that is "unsightly" or a "nuisance," and he failed to maintain "a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage."

Shelby County Environmental Court judge Larry Potter upheld the citation, ordering Guerrero to get rid of the "debris and personal property" stored outside his home and trim overgrown vegetation — including cutting down his 7-foot-tall sunflower plants.

"He said it's considered a neighborhood nuisance," says Guerrero, who is a member of the GrowMemphis board. "I asked him to define nuisance for me, and he said basically if it generates a complaint, it's a neighborhood nuisance."

Guerrero's home is certainly unique: eggplant, tomato, and pepper plants grow in the front yard; the backyard is lined with rows of wooden worm bins; barrels for collecting and storing rainwater are stationed next to his backdoor; his garage is stocked with equipment for making biodiesel and soap; and behind his garage are beehives quietly humming with industry. Elsewhere, passionflowers, butterflies, elderberry bushes, and sunflowers fill out the garden.

But with no visible trash or garbage and plants kept off the sidewalk and driveway, Guerrero doesn't understand why a judge would bring his operation to a halt.

"These are direct applications to math, biology, engineering," says Guerrero, who uses his garden as a sort of continuing education for Jovantae, Jarvis, and Shaquielle, the latter of whom is a former student of Guerrero's at Kingsbury High School. Jovantae and Jarvis attend the Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering (MASE). "I'm proud to know that the students I work with are probably the only students in Memphis City Schools who know how to make their own biodiesel," Guerrero says.

With the glycerin by-product from the biodiesel, the kids have learned to make soap. They suit up in beekeeping gear and harvest honey. They fill worm bins with kitchen scraps from Central BBQ and Huey's — a contract they have with Project Greenfork — and watch as it turns into nutrient-rich soil. Guerrero and the boys have also installed solar panels at the Midtown North Community Garden.

"One aspect of the schools is teaching that every child should be college-bound but [without] teaching them any skills. The kids don't even know how to use a ruler. I'm taking a different approach and teaching them skills," says Guerrero, who has his students at Raleigh-Egypt help with the garden as well, using geometry and basic tools to help craft worm bins, beehives, and small greenhouses from recycled materials.

Jovantae, a junior at MASE, estimates that he and his friends spend three or four days at the garden when school is out and at least one day a week during the school year. They are none too pleased with the judge's decision.

"I don't understand why it's a problem if it's in the backyard," says Shaquielle, a senior at Kingsbury. "We like coming here. We don't want it to go away."

Guerrero returns to court on September 23rd to demonstrate that he has complied with the judge's orders. Last Friday evening, staring out over his backyard, Guerrero was still hesitating to dismantle the project into which he's poured so much time and energy.