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To Mel, the better half of Anarchangel, who just joined what currently passes for the armed Militia.
I stand, face So'So'East towards central AZ, and render a snappy salute.
Good on you, Mel.
Bully for you, Chris, gently getting her ready for her duty in mind and prowess.
I am proud to call her a Comrade in Arms.
If all goes well, I should be able to make these kudos into a hug, personally delivered, in two weeks or so.
This one has Clinton War Room stamped all over it. Hard to believe, the man's in his seventies, but I'll hold judgment until it plays out.
If not true, McCain needs to quickly link this to the Clintons (both of them), and if he succeeds, doing so will put her out of her misery because the nation was waiting for the first provable dirty trick to let HRC's negatives swamp her campaign, and him as holding any power in an Obama administration, which he wants very badly to do. UPDATE: McCain denied, but did not counter-accuse. Dumb.
If true, McCain needs to apologize to those of us he tried to bamboozle (honorable man, war hero, etc), and get the hell out of the race, NOW.
Either way, it's also an interesting test for Obama, who will have to play these cards close to his vest in order to come out looking "Presidential".
We know how Bill Clinton handled this sort of thing, he hired Don Bennett to front for him.
Oopsie.
So has McCain.
(cue "Dragnet" music and fade to black)
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UPDATE: 022008 2052 PST: OK, this seems like it's less about any romance between Ms. Iseman and McCain than a way for the NYT to dredge up old accusations of influence peddling against the Senator.
Well, we've certainly been THERE before, haven't we (Keating 5)?
This is going down to sleaze, sleaze, who's got the sleaze? My money is on the NYT as the sleaziest here, but then, I have a tip-sheet. It's called the New York Slimes Times.
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UPDATE: 022108 1321 PST: Some revelations are coming to light, and this may just be an internal struggle within the NY Slimes. Fox News reported a few hours ago that the New Republic Magazine is about to go to press with an article listing in great detail just how corrupt the NYT has become, and just how for-sale their editorial board is. When that gets out, the current editorial board will probably be fired or forced to resign. This slimy-story HAD to be in process (or even done and just waiting for publication) all the while the other half of the Editorial Board was writing up the praises of McCain, who they endorsed for GOP nominee for POTUS. Stay tuned. The Grey Lady may be going down (and not on another Socialist pol, either).
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Great video! I think this isn't in Iraq or Afghanistan though, probably during the war with Serbia 14 years ago (Clinton's war!).
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UPDATE: 022008 1341 PST: An alert reader emailed me that this video clip is from a VIDEO GAME! "Call of Duty 4". I should have paid more attention to the little inconsistencies...but I didn't, so I got sucked in. I'll leave this up as a lesson in how even someone who knows something about the subject can be taken in. Let's make a game of it. I now have 4 areas of inconsistency with what I actually know about AC-130 tactics (which facts I suppressed in my mind when I was writing this post). Let's see how many you can guess. I'll do another update in a few days with the results. Actual AC-130 crew not permitted to play.
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In this ten-minute video, the gunship probably accounted for 60-80 enemy KIA and numerous vehicles destroyed, mostly killed one at a time using a 25mm Gatling gun as a sniper weapon! The enemy was putting on what appeared to be a company-sized push to over-run an LZ and take out the Brits who were hunkered down there waiting for helo airlift. The enemy had Soviet BTRs, a lighter version of the Bradley, and they did a coordinated envelopment in the hostile village. All the while, there were friendly ground troops in the area, marked only by some sort of personal strobes, and having strobes on their unarmored vehicles. The enemy used quite a few RPGs, including, it seemed, a few fired at the AC-130.
The deployment of an AC-130 at this low altitude (probably around 1,500-2,500 above ground level) was unheard of in 'Nam (the AC-47s DID fly that low).
The TACCO (Tactical Commander) was amazing, staying on top of individual targets in the confusing battle. It is obvious, the AC-130 saved the day, AND enabled the friendly forces to stay in contact long after the superior numbers and organization of the Serbians would have thrown them off the battlefield and mopped up the LZ, and maybe bagged the two CH-47 helos when they came in.
SERIOUS COMBAT. Tip of the shitpot to the EllTee for this one.
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UPDATE: 022208 1216 PST: OK, here are the inconsistencies as I know them:
If you think "single-payer" health care insurance is the answer for the US, consider this case from Canada.
If you want HillaryCare or Obama Quack-a-rama, you will see loved ones die because of it.
Guaranteed.
Not only can I DENY "global warming" hysteria, not only can I DEBUNK "global warming" hysteria, I can now DESTROY "global warming" hysteria.
Read this. It gets technical, but the author keeps coming back to the salient points of the data Messrs. Hansen and Schneider (no relation) left out of their "science".
In the end, the author accuses them all of fraud, for the evidence of global cooling has been accumulating since 2000, and the trend is firmly established now. Oh, yes, the long, cold Winter. Get used to them.
That picture of the Solar Disk totally fascinated me, because I was in an Astronomy Club in high school, and we had built a solar observatory and could safely monitor the surface of the sun for sunspots. We NEVER saw it without a single sunspot. That picture counters 10,000 words of pseudo-science. That solar condition can ONLY happen during periods of EXTREME solar quiescence. BTW, in case you didn't study this stuff, solar quiescence RESULTS in planetary cooling.
The sad thing is that Al Gore is still coasting along on the coat-tails of the phony warming science, trying to scam us into more carbon-credit schemes, and now, maybe, just maybe, positioning himself to be offered up as a "compromise" candidate to the (D)emocratic Party if said (D)onks deadlock between HRC and BHO this summer.
President Gore? Well, he COULD be the first President impeached and removed from office and imprisoned for theft on a global scale.
This message is for the world: How are those of you north of 40 degrees north latitude going to feed yourselves? Better start working on that, people, because if the Russians, who mirror this cooling report, are correct, that will be a MAJOR problem in the lifetime of the O-BOMB-AH generation.
Personally, I think the socialists will transition smoothly from global warming hysteria to "global cooling must be met with good socialist collective action", and it will happen fast, and when the educational establishments wake up and see the Socialists have this new set of Eskimo clothing on, they will try to slew around 180 degrees themselves and start screaming as to how evil Capitalism and it's twin Nationalism will let the rest of the world freeze and starve while the fat cats hog all the fur coats.
I guess we will never beat Socialism, but in the next few years, we will make them look foolish.
There are now NINE states with legislation in the hopper to end the Second Amendment by requiring that only micro-serial numbered ammo may be used, then tightly controlling that supply. That nine includes several who have signed onto the idea that guns may be fitted with firing pins which stamp such numbers on primers.
Random Nuclear Strikes is keeping up with this, but the Boss Hogg of this subject is Cogito Ergo Geek. This blog will mirror both of their efforts.
Folks, I hope I haven't "cried wolf" too many times about threats to the Second Amendment, because this is the real deal. If you can imagine yourself being restricted to buying just a few rounds of ammo at a time, say less than 20, and paying a large tax on EACH ROUND, then having to sign for EACH ROUND'S SERIAL NUMBER, then having to REPORT EXPENDING EACH OF THOSE ROUNDS, you get the idea.
Aside from the safety aspects, owning a firearm now is not a big deal, never has been (in states that don't try to end your Second Amendment rights before you even get there). With this legislation, it will become a HUGE HASSLE to own a firearm, and you won't be able to own them ANONYMOUSLY any more. The Government will have a record of all ammo you own, and will be able to guess what sort of weapons you have to put that ammo in, thereby having a de-facto registration scheme (which could ONLY be defeated if we convinced everyone to buy the expensive ammo even if they don't have guns, but that's unlikely to happen) . Large-caliber pistol ammo, in personal defense loadings, is already at $1.50/round and climbing, and good hunting ammo in the usual deer and elk calibers is up to $2.00/round. You can't load it yourself for much less than 40 cents per round, because of the huge jump in the prices of metals lately (lead went from 22 cents per pound 3 years ago to $1.50/# today), and the fact that the war is using up so much of the production capability, that there is a shortage of supply.
As I've said before, the anti-gun Socialists have already figured that they will lose the Heller case now bfore the SCOTUS, and the Second Amendment WILL be declared a personal, individual civil right. When that happens, cities like New York, Chicago and DeeCee won't be able to just ban weapons any more.
Micro-serialization is their new form of ban!
We MUST get ahead of the gun-banners this time, and NOT have to fight a rear-guard action as we've had to do with Heller.
I was sadly disappointed to go over to the very popular (among gunnies, anyway) Random Nuclear Strikes and note that there was only ONE comment on his last post about micro-serialization, and that comment was mine.
Over at Cogito Ergo Geek, the most recent micro-serialization post hasn't been commented on yet.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE! LET'S AT LEAST TALK ABOUT THIS THREAT!
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How fast we are heading for a severe breakdown in civil order in this nation is debatable. The fact that we ARE headed in that direction is NOT debatable.
The Founders were smart enough to figure out that such a breakdown was possible, and they examined all the angles it might come from, and they created the Second Amendment as a civil right so that citizens of their new Nation might be better prepared to handle the troubles ahead.
The Founders looked at three threats. They were, in ascending order of importance, civil riot, Indian fighting (on the frontiers) and a Federal Government gone awry.
The Founders' solution to all three was Militia. The CURRENT solution to the two remaining threats (Indians fighting is a thing of the past, even if some like Russell Means want to keep it alive) is Militia.
Let's see how you might prepare yourself for Militia duty. I will probably write several posts on this subject, and they will be cross-linked. They will also be linked to posts which ran from July 7, 2005 to July 22, 2005 which I wrote in my dormant, but still available blog Paratus. To read them, go to the blog, drill down on the right side to "Archives", click on the word "Archives", and then highlight July 2005 and scroll through that month until you get to July 7, then scroll upwards to see the rest of the series.
Some of the following material is already covered over in those Paratus posts, but the only things which have changed in the last three years are ammo and gun prices (both have gone up, but ammo has almost doubled in that time).
I'm going to discuss weapons first, because they are the most likely thing to be embargoed by a government gone bad (there are constant attempts to do that, if you just landed from the off-Earth and have tapped into our rudimentary communications network, the Internet). Weapons are also the most expensive of the Militia equipment to acquire and train in the use of, and the most time-consuming. They are 80% of the total concept of citizen responsibility for preservation of the Nation and it's Constitution.
To look at weapons, we have to look at how they are used, so as to get an idea of what weapons a Militia needs.
Weapons are used according to their capabilities to effectively bridge the distance between the shooter and the target. Note the emphasis on the word "effectively". It's there for a reason, because firearms for individual use come in three effectiveness levels: handguns, carbines and battle rifles. Shotguns fits somewhere in between handguns and carbines, as to range.
Those three ranges are: handguns, 0-5 yards/meters; carbines, 0-100 yards/meters; battle rifles, 0-700 yards/meters. A militia fire team should have all three levels of firearms available, in military calibers, in some combination. A fire team of, say, five members might have 3 with handguns (most useful in house searches/clearings and roadblock work), 3 carbines or shotguns and 2 battle rifles. In the field, the militia member must carry one battle-day's supply of ammunition. for the pistol, that is assumed to be about 30 rounds, for the carbine, 100-120 and for the battle rifle, 100-120. Practically, more can be carried, but since the handguns is only going to be used as a desperation weapon in brief encounters at close range, 3 magazines full of ammo is all that's practical for one day. The carbine might be used for suppressive/harassing firing, so a minimum of 100 rounds is required, and ditto the battle rifle.
The shotgun has very heavy ammo, and 100 rounds is a heavy load, and it is used in desperation, close-quarter fighting, so that 50 rounds is probably OK.
The carbines and battle rifles may be semi-automatic or they may be manual loading. It doesn't matter, for when the leader calls for harassing fire, the objective is to get a lot of rounds on the target quickly. If a manual loading rifle is carried, the rifle operator must be able to load and fire quickly.
Pistol-caliber carbines. I have several combinations of pistols, and the same caliber of carbine. This allows the militia member to carry only one caliber of ammunition while being armed with weapons suitable for close-in work and for medium-distance work, and in a pinch, the member may arm an unarmed person who comes into the fight on the militia's side.
An excellent combination would be a .357 Magnum caliber revolver with a 4 or 6 inch barrel and a Marlin Model 1894 carbine of the same caliber. A bit beefier would be a .44 Magnum revolver and a Marlin carbine of the same caliber. This caliber in a carbine is lethal out to 500 yards/meters, but the bullet drop is such that nothing much past 300 yards/meters is effective. You might hit something holding over 5 feet (300 yard bullet drop), but your sights aren't made for holding over 18 feet (500 yard bullet drop).
There are semi-automatic pistols which have companion carbines also. You can pair Glock, Smith and Wesson, 1911A1 and some others with various carbines. The Kel-Tec Sub-Rifle 2000 is a carbine that takes the pistol's magazines. The most effective caliber is .40 S&W, but this carbine ranges only to 100 yards/meters, and anything over that will require excessive hold-over. The upside of these weapons is their weight, only 4#. That means you can carry much more ammo.
The battle-rifle is not meant to be light weight, most weighing 9# and up. They are generally some caliber of 7.62mm, such as 7.62 NATO (highly recommended, since it is the NATO heavy-rifle caliber), or 7.62X54 Russian (the WW2 Soviet blot-action rifles or the more modern RPK semi-auto), and the .303 British (the variants of the Enfield WW1 and WW2 rifles). The 8X57 is the old Nazi caliber, and there are plenty of those old Mausers around, and for the time being, plenty of the ammo, as the former East Bloc nations dump their supplies on the market (and while the Federal Government still allows imports of it).
The semi-auto battle rifles are the best. In 7.62 NATO, the CETME (Spanish) Model B (as imported and modified by Century Arms) is plentiful and reliable, and the H&K 91 and clones (PTR-91) are similar in function and better-built (but twice as expensive). The King of these pre-Stoner 7.62 autoloaders is the M14 and clones (Springfield M1A, Taiwan Type 57). There is an AR-type which shoots the 7.62 NATO, the AR-180, and it is a fine rifle, but well over $1,000. Finally, there is the FN-FAL, still in service in many armies. Having one of the above battle rifles means that you are the fire team's long-range member, and you need to be in shape to haul your 13-15# rifle (yes, it will weigh that much with bipod and scope), and 20-25# of ammo in 20-round magazines.
The militia member might show up for muster with a hunting rifle. Those who do will probably be relegated to duty not likely to involve volume-firing, because they probably won't have much ammo (most hunters don't have more than 40 to 60 rounds of ammo for their rifles), and by law, the weapons can't hold more than 5 rounds, and can't be loaded with stripper-clips, meaning reloading another 5 rounds takes a half-minute as opposed to 2-3 seconds for a magazine change. As a militia member, if you don't have a military weapon to muster with, bring a repeating shotgun, which will be more useful anyway than a scoped bolt-action rifle meant to kill elk at long range. If you are really proficient with such a hunting rifle, you might be pressed into sniper duty, but you'd better know military sniping doctrine, and most hunters don't. If you only have one long gun, bring it (except no .22 rimfire rifles).
In following posts, we will look at how the Militia will fight, what types of missions it will have, and what might become of it politically.
Stay tuned!
Yes, that network functions. Recently, the Chief RSO in my gun club died after a long battle with cancer. He was a USMC veteran, a no-nonsense kind of guy.
This past week, the word got out that in transitioning to a life without her husband, his widow had run into some financial difficulties.
The new Chief RSO then put out a call for the club to buy all the guns belonging to the late CRSO. They are mostly gone now, and the widow is well again. These guns were NOT given away, but a worthy cause is just that, and must be supported. My wife understood that, and my project THIS WEEK is to write her a list of everything in my safe and what she should sell it for.
My contribution to this was to purchase a LARGE CALIBER revolver. It is such a monster, I am still trying to get my mind around shooting it with full-house ammo, because it is a "guide" model with a short 4" barrel, and I expect it will BARK as well as BITE. I think I will start with .44 Specials (thx for the clue, EllTee).
Of course, in my world, weapons exist for battle, and handguns are NOT proper battle weapons, no matter the caliber. "A handgun is carried so you can shoot your way to your LONG gun and finish the gunfight on YOUR terms." One forgets THAT little ditty at one's peril.
Long-time readers will know that I like to pair a handgun and a carbine of the same caliber. I have 4 such pairings (.357, 9mm, .40S&W and .45ACP) and this will be the fifth in my collection.
How about a little help here, readers? If you had this short-nose hogleg, what carbine would YOU pair it with?
I guess I should have a category on this blog called, simply, "Honor".
If I did, this post might very well be the only entry.
Actually is is about dishonor, not honor.
A grave dishonor has been done to thousands of veterans across the country because of bureaucratic failure.
Get some tissues, and watch this video from a TV station in Missouri, although it's mostly about Oregon.
I am ashamed of my State, and in two days, will call my State Senator and request an appointment to discuss this dishonor face-to-face. I'll put on a pressed business suit and shiny black shoes and go to Salem for the meeting.
I will add my voice to the voices of the American Legion and Patriot Guard. I will use every persuasive speech gambit I've ever learned.
I will simply say, we've failed them. In their final hour, we've failed them.
I failed them too. I read this story weeks ago, but somehow I missed the point that most of the rusty cans of ashes in the basement of the Victorian buildings at the State Hospital down in Salem were Veterans.
I apologize to them, and their families, and their Nation, because this occurred on my watch. I have a duty, you see, as we all do, to see that a Veteran takes the final trip from where he or she drew their last breath to a proper grave, in a proper military cemetery, with all the display of military courtesy and honor that is due (and there are military manuals that explain all the details).
We are late, but not too late. Proper burial MUST be arranged, and it must be arranged NOW. I do not care what State processes must stop while the complex notifications are researched and made, and permissions given, but those details have now risen to the top of our agenda, if we have any soul left, that is.
For my readers, I ask you to get involved on this one. If you are Oregon readers, you know what to do, but there are similar veteran's ashes remaining unburied elsewhere. We must not rest until ALL of these veterans are given proper military burial.
Every last one of them.
When "Taps" and "Amazing Grace" has played for the last one, then it might be time to properly ask those responsible for explanations, but that time is not now. The time now is for us to put on our best clothes, and bury ALL of these Veterans.
H/T of the Parade Cap, with Hand Salute, to Maj. S. for bringing this to my attention. You, Sir, are a Patriot.
