An evening with my son

He had a pass for the weekend, and we had dinner with friends of mine; the husband has known him pretty much his whole life, the wife had never met him. Between assisting in garage cleaning, playing with their dogs and dinner it was a nice evening.

Not much longer before he finishes AIT. He'll have some leave before he heads off to his first duty station, which will be God knows where at this point: could be somewhere in the US or Korea or Japan or Europe or the sandbox.

Time does go by. Sometimes it seems a short time ago, sometimes forever that I was holding this wrinkled, squalling baby that had just drawn his first breaths. His sister and he were both premature, and it was touch-and-go for both getting as far along as they did before entering the world. Now my daughter works in a nearby area, but between jobs and her actually having a life I don't get to see her much; son has signed on for a soldier with all that entails. Which means I don't see him very often either.

You fear as they grow that you're falling down on the job and not teaching them the things to do and things not to do as you should and hoping they get the message. And now you find out that, whether you did it right or not, overall they did get the points. So one's still nearby and the other will be going somewhere. 'Somewhere' quite possibly including unfriendly people who will try to kill him. Which makes me wish we'd had more time at the range. Yeah, the Army teaches them, but there are some bits & pieces that may not be in the standard Basic Rifle Marksmanship book.

In their different ways they're both carrying that training, daughter for self-defense in the civilian world and son in the military. Odd thing is, depending in where & when he could be at less risk than her in some neighborhoods, or things could go completely to hell when he sets foot on the ground. His MOS is one that would usually put him somewhere behind friendly lines, but I stressed to him when discussing the infantry work that he'd better get damn good at it: the bad guys can pop up from damn near anywhere.

Which holds true for daughter, too. What a lot of people don't recognize- or don't want to recognize- is that the enemy would just love to pop up in a store, a restaurant, an office building, and kill everybody there.

In the Posleen Invasion series John Ringo wrote that he feared the result of our having lived in something of a Golden Age. The people who fought WWII had been through the Depression, many had come from farms and ranches where living was hard at best, factories where crippling injury was always lurking, and the peace and security and ease of many things that we take for granted, didn't exist. We had quite a while before 9/11 with relative ease: nobody went without an education unless they didn't bother to learn, nobody who was willing to work needed to go hungry, medical care of quality unbelievable to our ancestors available. Yeah, definate problems in all areas, but many of the biggest problems were our own doing, not because the opportunity wasn't there. And because of the security and ease we got soft. Not everybody, but enough- especially among those with money and/or influence- to really screw some things up. So we have people who think a murderer or rapist deserves more sympathy than the victim, and that this country is almost always at fault when something doesn't work, and that you can't blame someone for not helping himself because the Government should have taken care of him.

I can't remember where I first heard the phrase "honor the threat". What I think is happening is that a lot of people cannot or will not honor the threat: they cannot- or will not- let themselves believe that someone means what they say when what they say is "You will convert to our way or we will kill you". They obviously don't really mean that, of course. They only want to discuss things and compromise, and if we just give a little and talk enough it'll all be ok.

So we wind up with a Speaker of the House telling us that the situation in Iraq is 'not a war to be won, but a problem to be solved', and people thinking that if you disarm the honest the dishonest will honor that and stop being violent and nasty. Freakin' insane, but these people actually believe it. They BELIEVE it, with more fervor than they put into any religeon they claim.

I don't claim to be all-knowing, or all that damn smart outside certain areas. I do know that the islamists mean every damn word: people who cut a screaming victims head off on tape do NOT do it because they just want to negotiate. So one of the things I taught my kids is that when someone threatens you, you believe they mean it and act accordingly, which can range from telling them to piss off to telling them that if they try it they'll die. I really fear for this entire nation if we don't overall wake up to the threat coming at us and honor the threat.

And for now, I spend time with the kids when I can, enjoy it, and hope they're indeed smart enough and tough enough to do what needs be done when the time comes.

The folks we had dinner with have a baby, born oddly enough on my birthday. She's almost nine months old now, and she reminds me of the thing I thought when mine were small: "If somebody tries to hurt them, the bastard's dead". I may be a relic, but I feel the same about my country, in a not quite so personal way. It's worth defending, too.

Gun show report

There's a small show on at the fairgrounds this weekend. I went, mainly looking for a couple of ammo boxes and to see if any targets of opportunity. Observations:

LOTS of people buying; I think I saw more people filling out paperwork and handing over money than in a similar time at much bigger shows.
LOTS of ammo being sold, in just about any cartridge available.
Lots of ammo boxes- steel ones- seemed to be moving.

It's enough to make you think people don't trust the new majority in DC, isn't it?

Oh God, the rot has set in

There's a elementary school down the road from my place. On their billboard out front is this:

"A good heart is worth all the heads in the world"

We may be doomed

National Ammo Week officially begins

today. At least 100 rounds of whatever ammo, or mix it up with a little of everything.

The origins here at Kim's place.

There's a gun show this weekend I'm going to try to hit, and there's a local shop that carries the Federal .22's I like(and another brick is always useful). So excuse me, shopping to do.

Remember KFC rolling over to the health nazis?

I wrote to them about it because
My daughter loves(d) KFC chicken, and
My daughter is allergic to soy.
Not tongue-swells-up-and-you-choke level, but the effects on her are not good. So I wrote to them and informed them that rolling over on this lost her as a customer-probably a lot of other people for the same reason, too- , and I wasn't coming back because I'm pissed at them for rolling over. Put more diplomatically, of course.

Today I got a letter from them:

Dear " ":
Thank you for expressing your point of view on trans fat and hydrogenated oils.

Colonel Sanders created KFC's Original Recipe checken over 50 years ago, and we've been cooking it the Colonel's way ever since so that it's finger lickin' good. We've tested oils that are trans-fat free, but we haven't found a recipe yet that's as delicious as our world-famous Original Recipe.

We are extremely careful about tampering with the taste of America's favorite fried chicken, and we will continue to take that very seriously as we explore oil alternatives and supply availability.

In the meantime, we provide complete nutrition information for all our products on kfc.com and in our restaurant brochures, including how all food can be part of a healthy diet.

Thank you again for taking the time to share you perspective.

Sincerely,

KFC Consumer Affairs


So:
Ignored the point about a lot of people being sensitive to soy,
State flatly "We've tested oils that are trans-fat free, but we haven't found a recipe yet that's as delicious as our world-famous Original Recipe."
And ignore my gripe about them rolling over to the food nannies.

So they say they're using stuff that will make the food taste not as good but are 'very careful about tampering with the taste'. Jeez, what a load of crap.

About the cat meat imam and Islam

One of the posts I did about this clown had this in the comments:
The funny thing about the complaints that these men got long sentences is that the punishment for rape in Islam is death.

I, as a Muslim think they got what they deserved. IF it is true that non-Muslim rapists get punished with less time in prison, then there needs to be a public outcry at how any rapist is not punished the same length as a Muslim would. It is dangerous to put rapists back on the streets.

I don't know too much about the Australian gang rape case but if its true the rapists claimed the non-Muslim women were less than human because they are not Muslim..then that just makes me sick to my stomach.

The command from Allah is for Muslims to be an example to others and call others to Islam. Not become arrogant and hate all non-Muslims.

too many Muslims are living in a time of ignorance and TOO MANY good muslims are staying silent about this problem!! And this quote is so true:

"all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"

and this is happening right now. Evil people who are calling themselves Muslims are NOT following Islam!! They say they are but in reality they twist the meanings of verses and teach these twisted meanings to other ignorant Muslims and they are using the twisted verses to justify nothing but pure hatred!!

Yes, the media does play a role in vilifying Muslims (it is a FACT) BUT It is absurd for us Muslims to blame EVERYTHING on the media, the West etc... and not look at the faults of those who are calling themselves Muslims!!

Islam is perfect, Muslims are not!!

too many Muslims think they are perfect--and become arrogant!!

We are supposed to be an example to others, not think we are above them!!

Until us Muslims are more visibly protesting against terrorism, and the denial of womens' rights (It is not Islam that oppresses women, it is Muslims who take their culture over Islam) etc... that so many people will have such a negative view of Islam.

And when I say more visibly I am not necessarily talking about the media. Aren't so many Muslims complaining that he media does not give Muslims opportunities to voice their objections?? Well then we need to go out on the streets and get loud!!! Isn't that even better than one or two Muslims on a news program discussing these issues? The media wouldn't be able to ignore it either.

--rant from an ANGRY Muslimah

The comment was from TJ. Two things to say about this. The first is that I have a problem with the Yes, the media does play a role in vilifying Muslims: most of the major media has basically bent over backwards to avoid anything that would 'vilify' islam; hell, they practically wet their pants at the idea of criticizing Islam. If he's referring to press reports about people like Cat Meat, that's tough; reporting what somebody said is not 'vilification'.

Second, he's exactly right in And when I say more visibly I am not necessarily talking about the media. Aren't so many Muslims complaining that he media does not give Muslims opportunities to voice their objections?? Well then we need to go out on the streets and get loud!!! Isn't that even better than one or two Muslims on a news program discussing these issues? The media wouldn't be able to ignore it either. You start seeing large demonstration of muslims telling the islamists to go to hell, and applauding the freedoms here- including the freedom to criticize religeon- it'll make serious impression on a lot of people.

It would be a help.

If you had any doubt about the Democrat agenda,

check this out:
To that end, he sketched out an expansive federal agenda: Teaming up with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on gun control, passing new tax incentives for urban job programs, and redirecting federal money to New York in return for the outsize tax collections that the federal government makes here.

Let's see, screw gun owners, and grab every penny for New York(also known as 'screw everybody else).

Like I said, at the least call and/or write your Congresscritter and tell them you expect them to stand against this crap.

Any questions?

Yes, I have something to say about the election

To the Stupid Party: Just what did you expect, dumbass? Too many of you ignored the people back home when they told you what they were concerned about; too many of you did things just to 'get along' with the Evil Party; you didn't clean out the crooks the way you should have; and as a consequence you got your ass kicked. Learn from it.

To the Evil Party: You now have control of the House, and Screamin' Howard is calling for an end to 'divisiveness' in the House: we know that that translates to "Do what we want or we'll be mean to you". Short response: Fat Effin' Chance. I think that any Stupid Party member who plays that game is going to get kicked, hard, and rightly so. I also think that unless the Evil Party does something about people like Rangell & Co.("We're in a war I don't like, so I'm going to cut funding for the military") they're going to pay the price in two years.

If you're not already a member, join one of the Second Amendment groups. And write/call your Congresscritter and let him know what you think, Loudly, the first time the Evil Party takes a swipe at the Second.

And buy some ammo now; I'm betting the price will go up some more because of this.

Been reading a book, and personal disarmament shows up

Islamic Imperialism, by Efraim Karsh. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to finish it before I have to take it back to the library; there's a list of people waiting for it so I can't recheck it. Interesting book on a number of points of the history of Islam. Personal disarmament shows up in the recounting of the Armenian Genocide.

Short version, the Ottoman Empire decided they wanted to get rid of the Armenians and proceeded to do so. From the accounts I've read before they may not have been quite as efficient about it as the Nazis going after Jews, but close. And one of the first things the Ottomans did(had read a bit on this before at JPFO) was disarm the Armenians:

First the Armenians had to be rendered defenseless; then they were to be uprooted from their homes and relocated to concentration camps in the most inhospitable corners of Ottoman Asia.
...
At the same time, the authorities initiated a ruthless campaign to disarm the entire Armenian population of all personal weapons. This sent a tremor throughout Armenia: the 1895-96 massacres had been preceded by similar measures, and most Armenians had no illusions regarding the consequences of surrendering their arms while their Muslim neighbors were permitted to retain theirs. Nevertheless, the community's religious and political leaders persuaded their reluctant flock to do precisely that in order to avoid harsh retaliation by the government. But even this was not a simple task. The Ottoman authorities demanded that the Armenians produce a certain number of weapons, regardless of the actual number of arms-bearers, thus putting man Armenians in an impossible position: those who could not produce arms were brutally tortured; those who produced them for surrender, by purchase from their Muslim neighbors or by other means, were imprisoned for treachery and similarly tortured; those found to have hidden their arms were given even harsher treatment.

With the Armenian nation rendered defenseless, the genocidal spree entered its main stage: mass deportations and massacres.

Same kind of program the Nazis used later: Jews banned from ownership of arms, and the serious attacks came after.

And it had happened before. Please note this part again:the 1895-96 massacres had been preceded by similar measures, and most Armenians had no illusions regarding the consequences of surrendering their arms while their Muslim neighbors were permitted to retain theirs. Nevertheless, the community's religious and political leaders persuaded their reluctant flock to do precisely that in order to avoid harsh retaliation by the government. It had been done to them before, but their leaders, hoping to 'avoid harsh retaliation', told them to go along with it.

I can understand the attitude that caused them to do so; "We're outnumbered, and maybe this time they won't do it to us if we don't make a fuss". I also know that down in their bones they knew better. The question then becomes, why not band together and head for the border, armed with everything you can lay hands on? If they've already massacred you, and you know they're going to do it again, why go along with it? Same question that could be asked of Jews at some points prior to WWII.

To me, it also points out something a lot of people have pointed out before: the only reason for a government to disarm citazens(or 'subjects of the Crown' in Britain) is because they A: don't trust the peasants and B: people in government are planning to do things the people won't like and don't want the people able to resist at the last-ditch level.

I wonder how much our news will talk about this?

A British Muslim plotted to cause "massive explosions" in Britain and the United States designed to kill thousands of people, a court heard today.

Dhiren Barot, a 34-year-old convert from north London, led a conspiracy to commit mass murder and was intent on causing, in his own words, "another black day for the enemies of Islam".

His plots included using radioactive dirty bombs, a petrol tanker, and a co-ordinated bomb attack using limosines packed with gas cylinders.

And the subways? He also planned to flood London's Underground network by blowing up a Tube train under the Thames, predicting that if he could "rupture the river itself", this "would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would occur".

Isn't this just a wonderful project from a devoted member of the ROP?

Two other things picked up from the son this weekend

I asked him if he'd heard about John Effin' Kerry's comments: "Oh yeah, Sgt. - was really pissed about that!" and went on to list some of the sergeants comments.

Second, he'd mentioned this before but this brought it back to mind: I think every DI in both batteries he's been in so far have been in Iraq or Afghanistan or both and came back to the States in the last few months. Lessons have included lots of personal notes about what they've seen/done and pointers coming therefrom. I'd heard the Army was working to get the lessons from the lines back to the training people, and it appears they're really doing it.

'Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change' BS

Dammit, Kim beat me to it. I saw this article the other day but didn't bother to read it at the time. Short version, Mr. Monckton notes exactly how the UN(got to increase our power over the world) and 'scientists' more concerned with pushing a political agenda than facts screwed the data and findings to show what they want you to see, not what the data actually is. Just to whet your appetite:
Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "

So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years. The graph looked like an ice hockey-stick. The wrongly flat AD1000-AD1900 temperature line was the shaft: the uptick from 1900 to 2000 was the blade. Here's how they did it:

And there's more to come:
This week, I'll show how the UN undervalued the sun's effects on historical and contemporary climate, slashed the natural greenhouse effect, overstated the past century's temperature increase, repealed a fundamental law of physics and tripled the man-made greenhouse effect.

Next week, I'll demonstrate the atrocious economic, political and environmental cost of the high-tax, zero-freedom, bureaucratic centralism implicit in Stern's report; I'll compare the global-warming scare with previous sci-fi alarums; and I'll show how the environmentalists' "precautionary principle" (get the state to interfere now, just in case) is killing people.

Pretty much the only really nasty disagreements with people I've had over the last while have been over this 'climate change' crap. The people who wrote to disagree with me early in the history of this blog were quite nice about it; they disagreed and argued, they did not insult and threaten. In person? Different matter there, I've been hit with the "You don't read REAL sources" and "All RESPONSIBLE scientists agree" and so forth. So far, I haven't seen any unfiddled data to make me change my mind, and every time I've checked into the "We're all gonna die unless we act NOW!" stuff it's turned out to be anything from 'ignore the inconvenient facts' to flat-out falsified information. Usually from people who are a: truly worried about the world and think they have to do anything necessary(in their minds) to change things to power-hungry bureaucrats who see it as a way to grab more power.

I'll be watching for the next articles.

Facial decoration

Of the natural kind, that is: beards and mustaches. This over at Lawdog made me think of some history.

I had a beard for several years. Partly just because I could, partly because I started growing it in winter(nothing seemed to keep my face from chapping after shaving back then) and partly because once there, I got used to it.

Had it before my first divorce(I still hate using that term), and for a few years after. Bought a little battery-powered trimmer to keep it neat and got along quite well. Couple of things finally made me reevaluate:
As Peter Capstick wrote, my hair was not turning majestically silver at the temples like Stewart Granger: it was just turning grey and falling out. And the beard had more grey than my hair.
My trimmer was about to die.
And I had a girlfriend(who in time became My Second Divorce, and even worse term) who said something about how she'd never seen me without it.

I'd had the plague that was going around that late-winter and hadn't seen her for almost a week. I was starting to feel better and that evening I studied my reflection and decided that since I couldn't even remember what I looked like without it, it would go. At least for now.
So out came the clipper, which promptly died. Not batteries, it went tits up about 1/4 of the way through. So I wound up using three disposable razors- all I had- to take it all off. If you've never done this, believe me, even a short beard will clog those things amazingly well; if I'd known where it was right then I'd have dug out the straight razor and used it.

In any case, I finished and used some hand lotion on my face- no after shave- and decided that while there was indeed a difference, I couldn't really call it an improvement, but it was done.

Next day got various comments at work along the usual line of "You shaved!". Called the girlfriend and asked if she was willing to risk being around me that evening, got a yes, and headed over that evening. Knocked on the door, no answer. Door was unlocked, which she'd do if she was on the phone or busy and expecting me so I walked in. Called her name, no answer, so headed one way down the hall and got halfway down when I heard her behind me, on the phone, so turned around.

She was coming down the hall toward me and stopped dead. "I don't BELIEVE it!" Ever seen a dog cock it's head when you do something? She cocked hers, actually leaned to the left a bit to get a different angle and repeated "I don't BELIEVE it!" Which caused whoever she was talking to to ask what the hell she didn't believe. "It's M, he shaved!"

By this time I was feeling like a curiosity in the store window, but got over that. She then said something I heard a bunch of times over the next couple of months: "You look at least ten years younger". Hadn't noticed that myself, but it turned out a lot of people did.

There was one other upside to getting rid of it: for the next few months, I could run into people I'd known for years at fairs & such and start talking to them, and after a few minutes they'd stop looking at me funny and start and say "Oh, it's YOU!"

I've thought about growing one again, but looking at pictures of myself from that time, decided against it. Besides everything else, the damn beard would probably look like it'd been sprayed white nowadays.

Speaking of survival kits,

urban division, since Baboon Pirates showed one, I thought I'd steal his idea show mine.












Kimber Compact Aluminum with a McCormick 7-round mag inside, a 7-round blue steel spare in belt clip, the Fobus holster I use a lot and a fairly new knife: a CRKT MIL-HRE.

The Kimber has Hogue finger-groove wraparound grips(the Pistolero recommended them, and he was right). I use the blued mag as a spare because the color doesn't show the way stainless does if my jacket blows open on that side.

Carnival of Cordite #79

is up and ready