Live Free or Die

Nothing you watch or read this month will be any better than Bill Whittle's latest offering.
H/T to The Smallest Minority

Comments and My Reply

My last post brought a couple of thoughtful comments that deserve your consideration. I want to thank my readers for taking the time to write them. Government overreaching their authority to gain power is always a problem. I'm just not sure that this particular situation fits the bill.

I still think if you go to Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, join Al-Qaeda, make DVDs and magazines where you publicly advocate the bombing and killing of Americans, you have poked the bear. How was anyone supposed to capture them, extradite them, hold a trial? This is war in the 21st century. Non-nation state players, people with religious allegiance over national patriotism, modern surveillance, and drone weapons.

This does not suggest that I think a U.S. citizen in the United States, suspected of the similar activity, should be killed in a drone attack by the CIA. In that case, he should be arrested and given a trial. In fact, 2 days ago I posted about just such a situation and thought his arrest was the proper outcome. It is even further away from suggesting that a person who supports the rights enumerated in the Constitution and wants the government to stop spending money it doesn't have is a terrorist.

On the primary point of my post, my search for a candidate to vote for next November continues. I want a social libertarian, fiscal conservative, with a strong sense of American exceptionalism and some idea how to deal with the national debt, Islamic extremism, and the ongoing economic depression. If you're that candidate, or you know who that candidate is, leave me a comment. I held my nose and voted for McCain last time, but I will not do that again.

Scratch Ron Paul Off the Candidates List

I'm done with Ron Paul. If you don't recognize that we are at war and we are going to be killing people for being the enemy, you don't need to be trying to run for any elected office. Ron thinks we should be arresting them and putting them on trial. I think we should be finding them and killing them at every opportunity. If that is assassination, I'm in favor of it. They weren't just Muslim terrorists, either. They were traitors. Self described "proud traitors" who had thrown away their citizenship in the United States to go and join al-Qaeda.

John Thomason, The Kipling of The Corps

John Thomason was an artist and writer in the early 20th Century. The Marine Corps was his subject. His knowledge was based on his experiences in WWI and his overseas service in the '20s and '30s. Wiki has a short bio and a list of titles. It misses how popular and widely read his work was.

Back in 1993, American Heritage Magazine had a long biographical article about him. It is now available online. Here's a quote from the end of it.

John W. Thomason was the prototype of a vanished Marine Corps era; the Old Breed survived from the First World War until it was submerged by the hordes of new recruits in the Second. He was a hugely competent writer, if not from the top literary drawer, at the very top of the second. His characters were neither complex nor deep (with the possible exception of Praxiteles Swan), but they were alive, men (and women) of action, with no forced macho overtones, and their dialogue was vivid and rang true; for all his physical problems, Thomason never suffered from a tin ear.

His prose, moreover, is unique; he shares with Rudyard Kipling and H. H. Munro (Saki) the distinction of having stamped his identity on every paragraph. Nothing he wrote could ever be mistaken for anyone else’s work. His writing was lean and muscular (not always a favorite adjective with current critics), but it was also sensitive, and it carried his stories buoyantly, with never a word wasted. His values were clean and clear-cut; those aspiring to acquire the elements of literary style can do far worse than turning to his pages. His illustrations were equally unique; his simplest sketch can’t be confused with that of any other artist.

Few remember him now (there are, astonishingly, even Marines who can’t identify him), but for decades he stood for the Marine Corps, for the Old Corps and its old values, and for high adventure in distant and exotic climes.

And here's an example of his sketches.


If you want to read something that captures what it was to be a Marine in the decades before WWII, rummage around some used book stores and pick up some of John Thomason's work.

Massachusetts Man Islamist Arrested in Terror Plot

Making explosive detonators from cell phones. Planning to attack the Pentagon with a drone aircraft and explosives.

Is he a Tea Party nutjob? Perhaps a Christian fundamentalist angered by the end of DADT? No, it's just what you expected. Rezwan Ferdaus missed the whole religion of peace memo and decided that some violent jihad would please his god.

Here the quote of the article for me:

Asked at one point about possibly killing women and children, Ferdaus allegedly said all unbelievers of Islam were his enemies.

Good job to the law enforcement involved in this one. And a note to the MSM, calling him a man from Massachusetts and a homegrown extremist, a U.S. citizen and Northwestern University graduate doesn't change the source of his motivations. All those things are true, I'm sure, but they make his crime worse. He took an oath of citizenship but he is not one of us, he lied under oath, believing that to be acceptable, because he was only lying to infidels.

Here's Governor Puddin' in Her Own Words

No joke.

For MArooned, Some North Carolina News

Since Jay makes such an effort to point out the goings on in Massachusetts, I feel I should take the time to point out the comments made recently by the Governor of North Carolina.

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.
--Gov. Perdue

Now the corrected version is that she was joking, but she was not. She thinks all this pesky democracy is getting in the way of the work of governing. She is probably also aware that the outcome of the next round of elections won't be what she thinks is best.

I'd say more about it, but the American Thinker says it better.

Be Prepared

Because you just don't know if today is the day.

A Ltttle Firearms History

MArooned has a Jeep commercial posted, venting on the use of fine old music to sell products. This is an evil that is not limited to commercials for Jeeps, Chevrolet and Michelob have ruined other great songs with the same technique. I agree with him that this trend needs to be condemned. Anyway, I watched the commercial, and was surprised when the voice over says, starting at 17 seconds, "Colt revolvers, Jeep 4x4s, these things make us who we are..."



A positive reference to firearms in a mainstream commercial! But what exactly are they referencing? Colt made his first revolver in the 1830s. Known as the Colt Paterson because the factory was in Paterson, New Jersey. They were finicky, difficult to reload, and underpowered. He went bankrupt and lost everything.

A couple of hundred of the Paterson pistols made it to Texas where a Captain Walker of the early Texas Rangers used them with great effect against the finest mounted riders on the continent, the Commanches. Captain Walker had some ideas to improve the design, not the least of which was to make it more powerful. He contacted Sam Colt.

In the end, Capt. Walker and Sam Colt collaborated on a design. Colt had to get someone to built the guns because he had no factory. He let a contract to Eli Whitney to do the machine work. It saved Sam Colt from obscurity and gave him the capital to build a new factory and begin design development and improvements on firearms.



With a loading lever, chambered in .44 caliber and weighing four and a half pounds, it was the most powerful production handgun until the introduction of the .357 Magnum in the 1930s. It could used effectively up to 100 yards. Texas ordered a thousand of them. It was the beginning. A subsequent gun based on the same design was issued to U.S. troops in the 1850s. A direct line can be drawn from those Walker Colts to modern revolvers.

Two years' experience in Mexico enables me to speak with confidence of the value of Colt's revolvers. Those who had them there could not be induced to part with them at any price.
--Lt. Col. George A. Caldwell

It Was Never on TV

But it was on the satellite feeds that day. Now someone has posted it. Every time you heard a crash, it was another victim of radical Islam making the only choice they had left.

Jump or burn.

Overdone

Back in December of '09 I congratulated the President on successfully nailing his Mussolini imitation. Unfortunately he has gone beyond faithfully imitating Il Duce and wandered out into the land of caricature.

Don't you have anyone advising you? Someone who could tell you to pull your chin back down and stop looking like a 1930's Italian Fascist? Because this photo was published alongside an article about a bridge you spoke at and it's just embarrassing. Too bad the whole bridge thing didn't work out. Advisers might help there, too.


Really, stop. And the nimbus? That's even worse.

At What Point Are You Being Paranoid?

If you have a late model GM vehicle with OnStar, they are capable of tracking you, and have modified the contract terms to allow them to sell the information they collect at will. Speed, location, seat belt latch, and so on.

I would not own a GM vehicle under any circumstances. If you gave me one I would sell it. But even so, if there are good reasons that you have for driving one, you should Google up how to completely disable OnStar on your vehicle unless you trust GM and the government to always do what's best for you.

You Just Couldn't Make It Up

The former president of Afghanistan - a major figure who was leading peace talks aimed at ending the war - was killed in his home Tuesday by a suicide attacker wearing an exploding turban.

I know what you're thinking, and it's wrong. Wrong, I tell you.

Cratering

Pr. Obama proposes to fix the economy by taxation.

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
--Winston Churchill

What Does It Have in It's Pocketsess?

From the Neanderpundit comes this meme: Take the knife out of your pocket and take a picture of it, and post it. Or post a picture of the same knife from a brochure or whatever.

So don't go get a Randall out of the safe, he's looking for your daily carry. Here's mine (well, here's a picture of one just like mine). Kershaw 1830.



Nothing fancy or expensive, but it's what was in my pocket. I had it on that camp out last week and I used it for everything from cutting rope to spreading peanut butter.

Mr. Completely's E-Postal Match

There's an e-postal match up over at True Blue Sam's. It's a different target than I've ever shot at, but it was a fun challenge.

Here's my best attempt. The link above has the story behind the target, but the object is to miss the windmill, hitting the open white areas in the center or between the vanes. Misses are worth 20 pts., hits worth 5 pts., so this target scores at 110. There's categories for all sorts of different configurations, including air rifles, so print some targets and get shooting!

Video of the Turtles

I stayed away from VHS video cameras. They were big, they required a lot of toting and setup, and after seeing what people did with them, I didn't have any interest. Really, are those proud parents sitting around tonight saying, "Wow, let's break out that old VCR and watch Susie's third grade piano solo from 1989!"

Technology marches on, though, and there is a fairly high quality video mode in the Canon SX130 I used to take all the pictures I imposed on you the last few days. I don't usually think of using it, and probably should have done more with it than I did, but it occurred to me to try it on one of the little turtles as it entered the surf.

So here's a minute and half of turtle determination, taken last Tuesday, September 13th, 2011, in Huntington Beach State Park. Watching those turtles make their way to the ocean is one of the coolest nature events I've ever personally witnessed.

Ruger SP101 in .22LR

Really? You bastards. I get myself under control. Tell myself the guns I have are enough, no need to buy anything, plenty of options for any kind of shooting. I go away for a few days and you come out with this? A Ruger SP101 in .22 LR, with an 8 shot cylinder and a 4" barrel?

Sure, come into the rehab center with heroin samples, why not?

Want!

Home Again

We went down to the beach after we packed the trailer. No sunrise pictures. It was in the 50s, windy, and the sky looked like this. A good day to be driving home.

In the Evening

We were on the beach all afternoon, went back to the campsite to eat, and went back out after sunset to watch the moonrise. I don't have the camera gear to capture a moonrise picture, but I took some shots in the dark. It's windy, going to rain tomorrow, and the ocean is picking up a bit. Vacation draws to a close, regular blogging to resume. Have about 300 pictures to pick through, edit and perhaps post a few later.

Paddling

Off a public boat landing, with a vague idea of where we wanted to paddle, we went out for a few hours.


Came back as the sun set. By the time we had the canoe loaded on the truck it was fully dark.


Afterward we cleaned up and went out to eat at a seafood restaurant that had a sign saying it had been in operation since 1948 by the same family. She picked it. It was a great choice.

Birds. They're Everywhere!

Some closer than others.

Atalaya

An artist's rendering of a Spanish castle, built on the beach in the 1930s. It's all brick, designed for open airy access to sea breezes, fireplaces in every room. Tours are a dollar a person. This picture is one of dozens I took as we walked around. Here's the Wiki article about the site.

Wildlife

Lagoon swimming for old ASM has been cancelled.



We also saw, in no particular order, deer, rabbits, racoons, ospreys, a dozen kinds of egrets, wood storks, and lots of what I tend to call "little brown birds" or "LBBs. The LBBs apparently all have names and different songs, and she knows them all.

Loggerheads at Sunrise

Up at six, we went for a bike ride as the sky brightened. Around sunrise we went out on the beach to watch.



There was something moving on the beach. After I saw the first one, there were lots of somethings moving. A loggerhead nest was open and all the turtles were moving to the water. I recorded one, and when I have a better connection I'll upload the video. For now, here's a picture.



And then the moment was over, the last turtles made the surf, the sun was up, and it was time to go make breakfast.

Birds

To The Beach

Blogging may be light.

I Picked One.

We lost so many, and we have lost so many more since then in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the totality of it becomes overwhelming, I make a special effort to remember just one person. Christine Lee Hanson. She was traveling with her parents to visit Disneyland in California on United Flight 175. She was three. She should be thirteen.



Look through the stories of the murdered. Pick one and learn about them, their life, and what their loss means to those left behind.

What Do You Believe?

I ran into the whole "9/11 was a right wing plot" while trying to put together tomorrow's post. I wrote this a couple of years ago, here it is again, because I can do no better.

-------------------------------

Here's my answer to the Truthers that think that George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricated the 9/11 attacks, used missiles and professionally placed explosives to blow up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and did who knows what with 4 airplanes full of people.

The truth is 19 men, armed with a belief system based in Islam, and trained by Islamic radicals, took four aircraft and used them as weapons. Those planes are large, the energy in the fuel is enormous, and the kinetic energy at speed is great enough to essentially reduce the entire plane to fragments, transferring that energy into whatever it impacts. A aircraft traveling 600 miles an hour is going 800 feet per second, about the same velocity as a bullet out of a .45 caliber handgun. The bullet weighs 0.033 lb and has 327 ft/lbs of energy. A loaded 747 weighs about 850,000 lbs and has about 8454000000 ft/lbs of energy.

You see, people don't want to believe that our society is so vulnerable, so easy to attack that a couple of dozen men willing to spend their lives could kill so many people and cause so much damage. Add that to the fact that they had been trained like Pavlov's dogs to hate George Bush and the Republicans and you have a situation where it's easy to create an entire conspiracy theory by asking what about this, what about that, how can you explain this?

I'm not linking to it, Google it if you must. I'm not even going to refute it point by point, although it can be. I'm going straight into the rancid center of it and pull it out here for you to consider. Remember that the narrative has been that Bush was a moron, Bush was a monkey, Cheney had to tell him to tie his shoes, etc, etc,...

But at the same time, to be a Truther, you have to believe that George Bush is an evil genius. Capable of masterminding a plot of gigantic proportions. And still I have not reached the center. Because even if George Bush was that evil, you have to believe something else.

You have to believe that thousands of people knew and actively participated in the plot. People setting charges in the World Trade Centers. Military officers firing missiles at the Pentagon. The people that called from the planes, and the people they talked to, all part of the plot. All done for what purpose? To start a war we haven't really fought? And you have to believe that no one talked, that all the investigators that found the truth all went along.

I served in the U.S. military. I have friends and relatives in law enforcement. I have known some hard guys, people that can and have used violence under orders. You could not get them to go along with a plot like this. Everything they believe about themselves would not let them kill American women and children. They would not do it. They wouldn't lie about it after the fact and they wouldn't participate in covering it up. Anyone who thinks this is remotely possible has no contact with, or understanding of, the ethics and honor of professional military and law enforcement.

But if this was true, if this was what happened on 9/11/2001, then the entire core of America is utterly and irrecoverably evil. The President, the Congress, the military, national law enforcement, and thousands of government workers, all participated in an atrocity. It would mean that the only course of action anyone could take would be to fight against it. It wouldn't mean putting up some website or talking earnestly between bong hits to your friends about the Truth of Nine Eleven. It would mean that the United States was as evil and corrupt as Nazi Germany and that you would have to make a stand, to spend your life trying to overthrow this evil.

All the evil the Truthers want to assign to George Bush and the United States? It's real. It needs to be fought. It needs to be defeated. We need to take a stand. But it's not George Bush and it's not the United States. I believe The fact is that the driving force behind 9/11 was Islamic fundamentalism and a hate of non-muslims, and that those people have shown by their actions to be evil, holders of a corrupt belief system, willing to kill women and children in terror attacks, not just on 9/11, but in Madrid, London, Belsen, and over and over in Israel. Attacks that will continue until the people behind them are defeated.

September 10th, 2001

September 10th, 2001 was a Monday. I had scheduled a day off a couple of weeks in advance, and we had made plans to go canoeing. The perfection of the day was breathtaking. A Carolina blue sky, a light breeze, afternoon temperature in the low 80s. We put in at the landing in the primitive camping area in Goose Creek State Park. The marsh grass and trees were showing some signs of fall. The creek runs up through the park becoming narrower as it goes. We slowly picked our way along, stopping to look at birds and wildflowers. When we got to a point where all we could do was turn around, we paddled back out.

Going past the landing, we paddled out into the Pamlico Sound. The breeze was in our faces, so it was slow going, but the water was calm enough for the canoe. We paddled almost all the way across, enjoying the exertion. When we turned around it was a fast run back to the creek, 20 minutes to cover what had taken a couple of hours going out.

We sat in the sun on the landing and ate and talked. After we loaded the canoe on the truck and started home, she fell asleep. I remember it so clearly because it was the last day of the old world. A carefree, gentle day on the water, shared with a fine woman. There will never be another day like it in my lifetime.

I always liked this song, and the lyrics capture how I feel about the day.



Reprinted from Sept. 10, 2009

The Way It Was

Before.

How I Feel Now, Part 5

On NPR this morning there was a teaser for an upcoming 9/11 show. In it, a woman's voice said(as best as I can remember), "Never Forget is not a good slogan, because if we don't forget, how do we heal and move on?" I may not have that word for word, but I have the idea pretty clearly and honestly. It tells what the tone of that show is going to be. Then again, they probably didn't want to interview me, either.

I haven't healed. I haven't moved on. Moreover, I don't want or intend to heal and move on. I intend to carry the wound to my death. If and when the rest of America recognizes the threat we are faced with, I'll be here waiting.

Semper Memoria.

In case it's faded for you, here's some recently released audio from Flight 11.

Mayor Bloomberg

Here's a fine quote from Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, "We have to not let the terrorists win by intimidation." This in response to report of credible threats of car bombs to celebrate the 9/11 Anniversary.

Mr. Mayor, they are not trying to win by intimidation. They are trying to win by blowing people into bloody chunks.

How I Feel Now, Part 4

Normal is so gone that even the MSM takes the time to mention that a power outage that happened in California today isn't the act of terrorists. They do this regularly, and so quickly that there is no way they could possibly know. If you don't know what caused it, and your transmission lines are cut in two different places, how do you know what it wasn't?

It makes you ask, if it was terrorism, would they tell us?

How I Feel Now, Part 3

I feel just like Bloviating Zepplin does in this post. We can't even make our bridges anymore. Wonder why there are no jobs?

We are in decline. We could still fix it, but we won't.

How many people depend on some form of government support for housing/food/medical care?

How many people know more about the NFL, the NBA, MLB, the players and their stats than they do about the U.S. military deployed overseas?

Bread and circuses.

In less than a century, we have gone from a robust, creative, thriving economy to a declining power borrowing 40% of the money we spend with no hope or plan to pay it back. How long before the Visigoths?

How I Feel Now, Part 2

We said we were in a "global war on terror". Terror is a tactic. You can't declare war on a tactic. It's the same as if FDR had looked at the attack on Pearl Harbor and declared war on aviation.

If we are at war, it's with people that are bonded together by ideas and ideology. Who are they? Who declared war on us? Figure that out, then go destroy their ability to harm us by any means necessary. Quit being nice about it.

I have given up hope that we will do that.

How I Feel Now, Part 1

NPR had an interview this morning, with some sad person remembering children that were on the plane that hit the Pentagon. They talked about it like it was an asteroid or a tornado that killed these people. Just some terrible random event that no one could control.

It was not.

It was an act of war. An attack perpetrated by men who believe that we all deserve to die because we do not believe in their god. Men who are willing to use any means, willing to die in the process, driven by religious fervor, sure of ultimate victory.

Really?

James Hoffa, speaking in Michigan, shortly before Pr. Obama took the stage. Since Mr. Hoffa is the head of the Teamster's Union, and it was a Democratic rally, let's consider what unions and Democratic leadership have done for Detroit.







GM builds trucks and SUVs in Silao, Mexico. Workers make $4.00 an hour, about 1/10 of what a worker made in Detroit. Is there anyone who thinks those jobs are coming back?

Jerry Pournelle

The quote mentioned in my previous post is from an essay by Jerry Pournelle. He's a lot of things, among them a science fiction writer. What he originally wrote as a preface to a novel was reworked into an essay on war, armies, and men. Here's the quote I read that lead me to the Birkenhead Drill.

To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you're all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike, to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King, to be rear guard at Kunu-ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary.

I am going to have to read more of his writing. He wrote the essay I'm quoting in 1983, and these are the closing lines.

In other words, we learn from the latest wars what we might have learned from history. History has never been kind to wealthy republics. We can hope we are an exception.

The Birkenhead Drill

The Arctic Patriot has a quote at the top of his page and it mentions something called the Birkenhead Drill. I had never heard of it, so I went looking. I would hope that I would display a fraction of the discipline and honor of the men of the HM Birkenhead.

Bill Whittle's Truth

If I could reason like this, I could make a living writing. He takes a few minutes to get to it, but the observations he makes about Cuba and East Germany is worth the time.

It Could Happen This Fast

Click the play button. It's both stupid and heartbreaking. In the video they keep calling it an accident. I don't the word means what they think it means. This is a negligent discharge of the worst type. A loaded gun (they are all loaded, always loaded). The muzzle pointed at something he didn't want to destroy. Finger on the trigger and trigger depressed. He broke them all at once and someone else paid for it.

Cub Scouts

Like a moment out of time, I went to a Cub Scout Den meeting to teach bicycle safety. I did talk about riding safely, lights, reflectors, helmets, and the like, but primarily I talked about the mechanical safety of the bike. Are your wheels attached securely? How about the seat and handlebars? Do the brakes work? How do you check these things yourself?

I brought my bike tool kit. It was the subject of a lot of questions, all of which can be distilled down to, "what does that one do?"



We worked on a new bike from the big box store that one of the Den Mothers brought to the meeting. The handlebars and seat were loose and the chain was too tight. If you have a bike, or your children have a bike, here's Troop 194's list of items to consider. If you have a problem you can't solve, take the bike to a bike shop. Finding out you have no brakes or a loose handlebar while riding in traffic is problematic.