Range Day Happiness

Went to the range today to finally, once and for all, get the Aimpoint sighted-in. Set the stands up at the 50-yard line and later plinked at 200 - they kinda have the same zero. Yeh, workin' good. Pics of targets (booooring) tomorrow...
UPDATE: I had finished my build of the Noveske lower, complete with the hideous CA-Legal magazine locking system that requires a tool for removal, and had the Upper mated to the lower for this exercise.


I started by getting the Aimpoint zeroed on the little targets tacked down the left side (see top picture). That took a bunch of clicking on the scope's windage and elevation turrets.

A gripe I have with Aimpoints like this is they don't have "witness marks" that establish the vertical or horizontal plane - so if the scope is rotated or canted in the mounts at all, any bit of Left-windage can also result in some "UP" movement, and while trying to dial the dot DOWN you might also be sending it Right... Arrgh!

Anyhow I finally got some good placement results, and then tried shooting at those tacked vertically on the right.

I loaded the magazine with five rounds and fired five-shot rapids from the bench and was pleased with the results - albeit this is only 50-yards. The Aimpoint 2-MOA dot was just about the size of the black...



Later I switched to larger targets with a bigger "black" and did the same. They have a larger "black" but the same sized scoring rings. Yeehaw! Well, good for me anyhow.



And the bottom one I shot Offhand unsupported - crap! Actually better than I anticipated. Watching the bouncing dot move around as you try to hold steady is really a learning experience.



During the second string of fire I took a 200-yard target down and put it up on the stand at position #12 (the black part is 13-inches across) and found some interesting and satisfying results.

From my distance and with the mirage coming up off the ground, even with my spotting scope I couldn't really tell what was goign on but, every now and again I threw a bullet downrange at it, firing six shots in all (UPDATE: by just holding the dot on the target center).

A bit of vertical stringing obviously.

So OK, I kinda feel I got this dialed-in now.

Expanding the Ammo Ban - what they will try in Your State next

In an effort to destroy Liberty and enslave a large part of the Nation under a banner of communal collectivism, our gang of smug idiots in Sacramento, the Assembly Public Safety Committee, has decided on an illegal and backdoor means to derail the 2nd Amendment by registering ammunition owners. Assembly Bill 2062.

On March 25th a bunch of cretins who can't budget themselves out of a wet paper bag will consider legislation that would require gun owners to submit to a background check, pay a $35 fee, wait as long as 30 days to receive a "permit-to-purchase" before buying handgun ammunition, and impose severe restrictions on the private transfers of handgun ammunition including criminalizing monthly limits and transfers, even between family members - which I'm pretty sure means spouses too.

Under this vastly expanded Reach of Gubbmint Bureaucracy, permit-holder "Vendors" (ammunition owners, really) would be required to contact the purchase-permit database to verify the validity of a permit before completing a sale or transfer. All ammunition sales in the State of California would be subject to a $3 per transaction tax, and mail order ammunition sales would be prohibited. Any violator of AB2062 would be subject to civil fines.

You can thank State Assembly Member Kevin De Leon (D-45) for the crock of rotting, stinking, festering unmitigated gall-brain-bladder that is Assembly Bill 2062, that puts ammunition sales in jeopardy and ownership at Criminal risk.

Feel free to contact these guys to complain:

State Assembly Member Jose Solorio (D-69), Chair
(916) 319-2069
Assemblymember.solorio@assembly.ca.gov

State Assembly Member Greg Aghazarian, (R-26), Vice Chair
(916) 319-2026
Assemblymember.aghazarian@assembly.ca.gov

State Assembly Member Joel Anderson (R-77)
(916) 319-2077
Assemblymember.Anderson@assembly.ca.gov

State Assembly Member Hector De La Torre (D-50)
(916) 319-2050
Assemblymember.DeLaTorre@assembly.ca.gov

State Assembly Member Fiona Ma (D-12)
(916) 319-2012
Assemblymember.Ma@assembly.ca.gov

State Assembly Member Anthony J. Portantino (D-44)
(916) 319-2044
Assemblymember.Portantino@assembly.ca.gov

Crazy Uncle

Some thoughts: Obama's got a problem with Organized Religion, perhaps more than one - wouldn't be the first time a person had their own private wrestling match with Faith. But in this instance he's gone and denounced his spiritual adviser for the Coin of Politics. There's a very judgmental term for that act, but the Media doesn't like Judgments, they're a Narrative Killer.

As much as I vehemently disagree with Wright I recognize that he's just a mouthpiece for a set of typical and well cultivated sentiments of Liberalism: Teh Victimhoodz. Cutting Wright off at the knees with his "Old Uncle" slapdown is a cheap-shtick and Obama does the rest of us no service. He especially does no service to the many who have bought-into and ingrained Teh Core-Victim Path. Will he ride off that way or go to The Bridge To Change? Getting them victims up and throwing off those crutches, tearing away the bandages from their eyes -- that would be Real Change, the "Change" he says WE are, and that Obama declares he seeks -- yet he does not seem to know it.

The Rev. Wright's rhetoric is hateful and venomous, but it's just the standard "Me!" platform of Identity Politics, and if you listen much you can hear it anywhere in my neighborhood, in the most Progressively Leftist Churches, on many bumper-stickers, and chanted at rallies.

It's a mistake to think that Christianity is simply A Thing of the Right, unless you're a confirmed atheist, or agnostic, and totally oblivious and unaware of the Activist Christian Left and Liberation Theology. (Thanks, Harvey Cox!) The Media make very little mention of the Lefts' Christian Soldiers (Cadre more like) because they are an In-The-Pocket assumption, and what little Religious Narrative trickles through is fairly dismissed. When Bill Clinton attends Church it's glossed over as a trifle, it's no different to The Narrative than, "Bill Clinton goes shopping and eats a Big Mac." When "during prayers" a "Cleric" of some kind goes off on an "Evil Administration, American Hating Screed" (with which they fundamentally, in Narrative agree) it's mostly contained. glossed-over, or ignored.
Whereas the Narrative, "Republicans Court Evangelicals" is a dark (and exciting) story of misogyny and sex and exploitation, of secret societies and the racist roots of the Christian Right -- mainly because they cannot find a counterpart on the left quite as juicy, or as pre-fabricated -- and what they do find they simply won't discuss. Equivalency is a One-Way street.
"Evangelicalism" is a bright and burning, straw boogy-man, simply because for Republicans the Evangelical Vote is a group that matters in quantity and substance. A similar group on The Left, the Left-Liberal Christian Pro-Choice Gay-Marriage Vote matters just as much and is equally as much presumed as is the Black Vote. But it's Religious and they try to avoid that Narrative unless they can distance themselves, or unless the Religious do it for them with a convenient, congregational, anti-Americanism. Now they kinda have-to acknowledge the embarrassing "Revrend Wright Stuff," since the window was opened-up and they got caught peeking-in.

The a-Thiest Equivocating Media is/are so obviously uncomfortable, un-schooled, and unfamiliar with Religion beyond a really superficial caricature: Invisible Friend In The Sky Narrative - they even deny their own deeply fundamental worship of Socialism-The-Answer-to-Religion: Invisible Che in the Future Sky. So they fumble the ball terribly. But don't talk about it or bring it up because they are uncomfortable with Religion and it's not fair -- unless they are busy making YOU uncomfortable about religion, which is fair game and all just grist for the mill...

Heller in DC

Oral arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller before the Supreme Court of the United States have begun this morning. Say Uncle has a roundup. I'm not actively onto it because I don't play a Lawyer on the Internet, I play a Cultural Anthropologist - which is not nearly as exciting or lucrative.

Better still Sebastian has a quote from one Professor Randy Barnett:

To shrink from enforcing a clear mandate of the Constitution — as, sadly, the Supreme Court has often done in the past — would create a new precedent that would be far more dangerous to liberty than any weapon in the hands of a citizen.

"This case is about a lot more than guns. If the federal courts are unwilling to give an honest reading of a very clear portion of the Bill of Rights that the majority of Americans and their elected representatives say means exactly what it says, then they can no longer be depended up for ensuring the United States remains a Constitutional Republic. The meaning of the document will have been reduced to a fad, and we’ll all be the losers."

I really wish there were more people active on the 1st Amendment side who could see this, but they seem thoroughly blinded by their own self-importance and attachment to the primacy of the 1st Amendment.

Walking 60's Zombie Peacenick

Flopping Aces asks, "Why has the 'Peace Movement' failed?" My response:
Because it's not even about what it claims to be about, and it's boring.

Like a Zombie rising from the grave to take another toke off the bong, the Peace Movement attempts to make a statement about an "it" that never really was.
Forgive me Older Hipsters and those who say I lack the requisite qualifications as a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Movementeer, since I was only in Grade School, Junior High, and High School during "The Peace Movement" as though I had not lived through it -- but I remember a helluva lot of it -- from the Marches and Hippies on TV, to the not-so-subtle indoctrination by the film "Hearts and Minds" in Jr. High, through to my Lefty U.S. History Teacher who taught us Marxism and Socialism and the Fall of Western Civilization for Sophomore year. None of which eventually happened like he thought or taught.
What I remember is that it was really primarily a *movement* about being COOL and Getting Stoned and Getting Laid -- none of which Code Pink is gonna accomplish, and frankly in this day and age of potentially lethal STDs it's not such a particular draw to kids today. It was a much stronger appeal to those sex-denied adolescents who were running away from the straight-laced 50's and the "abusive" (boring mostly) parents. You know how kids can spin a tale.
Also, having been so thoroughly over-documented by 60's Summer-of-Love Children, there's nothing new or novel about Acid or Pot, and Groovy New Age Religion fundamentally isn't much more than a bunch of Acid-Baptists in Tie-Dye -- so the novelty (and sexual attraction) of that has also worn thin. At least Ravers are so much more straightforward about Ecstasy and trance-dance.

Youth Movements, as most semi-adolescent narcissistic sociological urges go, tend to be about Youth Itself, and the Yout's typically have a pretty good spiel and patter developed to deal with and deflect Real Adults (Parents) from the Truth of their actions. It's mostly a whitewash for behavior and things that would otherwise get them Grounded or in Serious-Trouble (Juvie), but since they use the same old lines over and over to get off the hook or displace responsibility onto somebody or something else, probably some have come to believe the lies they told themselves.
In a somewhat similar vein the older Yout's had an issue with "Government=Parents" that they played-out over and over in their manifestly adolescent rebellion, repeated ad-nauseum as a child does, and with increasing shrillness if their attention is not being met. Angry at being denied a voice to their tantrum some acted explosively, then ran away and hid. Fortunately some of them later got caught and that provided a humorous ending for those of us who are so tired of repeated attempts by PBS to sell the grainy and shaky footage of "Dylan at Newport" as a miracle-scene from Lourdes or Guadeloupe itself.
The whole stinking, Zombie-Movement is not something that resurrects well - it is a corpse that is obviously ripe with age. The blind obliviousness to the state of their creaky "Movement" and tattered tie-dyed corpse that the current participants evince is a certain sign that they have unresolved issues, including a bad memory - or as they are so prone to say (over and over), "If you remember it, you weren't there." Well, I remember quite well how actively "Not-There" both my older Brother and Sister were, and the complete disasters that they made for themselves, excuses of "Enlightenment" notwithstanding, it really wasn't that great and you can't make it so on hype alone.

The Joys of Property Taxes

I got a Subway sandwich and drove out past the Amphitheater and the golf-course to the little lake. I felt guilty not taking one of the small sailboats out in the spring breeze, but I figure I end up in the water as often as not, and I didn't bring my gear or a towel.

Plumbing the Depthadelphia

We find ourselves observers in an interesting Race-to-the-Bottom between two candidates of Another Party, from which we not too long ago distanced ourselves.

In a seeming effort to out-play, out-wit, and out-last the other in a zesty game of Candidates' Survival - The Political Jungle, each of the remaining two persons running - of different genders and ethnicities - are both very exercised, playing a slamming hand of Identity Cards. Color! Sex! It's all there, like Black and Red on the Roulette Wheel. Place your bets folks - today's Vegas 11:00a EDT Odds On: Who will be named as the Democratic candidate for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election?
   Hillary Clinton    11/4

   Barack Obama    2/7

(Not having any familiarity with gambling, I actually do not know what those numbers mean, but at one site the wagers cost $50 each so there's some kind of investment going on behind the scenes.)

The pandering delivery of each accusatory announcement from their proxies is awaited with baited Media-breath by the Mainstream Newsmongers, who quickly gather and twist the implications and shape it to the Crunchy Cereal Narrative they know best, and feed it feed to a Public as eager for this tasty Media-Morsel as it is for Infotainment-news from the stage of American Idol.

I believe that Idol in fact could field candidates just as worthy and probably more talented, and likely better vetted through The Entertainment Machine - which has more experience dealing with Scandal and Treason, and has minders and Spin-Artists even more adept and polished than the Political Machine which spit these two forth - and certainly the Media-Minders would be better invested in the outcome.

Having said that, there are always the Chattering Minor Media Celebrities and Former Stars from Tinselgrad who display a profound and deeply penetrating ignorance of History (and even of themselves as objects in a Universe). They have a value, as Stalin might put it, as Cadre-Comrades of Utility those who are a useful and distracting foil to the realities of The Leftwing Circus which they inhabit.

However, using one of them as any sort of Astute Political Benchmark is a dangerous display of a kind of supra-general naivety that registers first mainly in the hinter-brain before it's actual location is felt in a verbal pronouncement or conscious thought. Which is really a long way of saying, I'm shocked at the things that some people will admit-to...

Oh Elliott, Ohhhh!!

I think it's a good thing to enjoy a bit of Spitzernfreude at the circumstances surrounding the downfall of an egotistical bully and a creep.
The modern idiom of "Hypocrite" is so rent by overuse that it falls into the Sophomoric tidepool of the so Ironic as a latent stage in adolescent development -- yet some people are stuck-on-stupid in their fascinated obsession with both, when it's really the whole encompassing mis-en-scene that sets the stage for the grand display of an Opera of Folly, acted out by defenders who chew-up all the scenery.

There are always those in the Social-Scene who will stand by him just as there are those who stood-by (and paid) Judas in the name of Mercantilism. As one wag pointed out, "In the Socialist Paradise such services are provided free of charge to party aparatchniks. (And let me tell you it is better than the free healthcare.)"

I'll simply enjoy watching from the wings since I don't have a measley $5000 to betray and encheapen my loved ones. Putz.

Gun Free Zone!

Rob Allen's sign for a Gun Free Zone is the schnizz, or something.

UPDATE: edited for readability. ;-)

Machine Politics - The Rise of the Machines; Part 1. Toolmaking

Every machinist I know considers themselves something of an artist albeit in a practical sense - they create the machinery and cutting-tools that build the world around us out of hard parts and steel. The same is true in Machine Politics, with one of the most famous and notorious being such as is preformed by the busy political laborers of Chicago - and everybody knows which Party controls that city, and has since Prohibition or time immemorial.
In order to make a tool you need a piece of malleable raw metal, one that can be hardened and sharpened and fashioned into the desired end-product - there are many steps along the way, and each needs to be controlled precisely in order to reach the desired outcome. In actual tool-and-die making this is a fairly straightforward and mechanical process, in Politics with its human subject-engineering the process is quite a bit more random, elliptical, and somewhat unstable - which is why extreme pressure is often brought to bear in the toolmaking and on the tools themselves, with a high risk/reward quotient usually redeemable in currency.
HatTip to Cryptic Subterranean Jay Mac for his post, The History of Obama. He links to an important piece of journalism written by Todd Spivak of the Houston Press that relates his experiences covering Obama in Illinoisland, Barak Obama and Me. What's central to the theme of this post is a simple observation (and one that reflects the operational structure of Machine Politics of California as well):

When asked about his legislative record, Obama rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker...It's a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

As Jay Mac observes, Seven years in office and he did all his work in one, mainly due to the fact that Republicans shut down anything he proposed before that- so much for him being able to "work across the aisle". When the Republicans were ousted the new Senate Leader, Emil Jones, essentially "created" Obama according to this report.

During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

Bills that, in some cases, had been crafted by other representatives and which Jones made sure were passed to Obama to improve his reputation.

It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn't have done it without Jones. Before Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even in his own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters had ever heard of Barack Obama.

Jones further helped raise Obama's profile by having him craft legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local news ­headlines.

And what was the result of this you might wonder?

Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones' Senate district.

Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending.

I'll never forget what he said:
"Some call it pork; I call it steak."

Machine Politics is the art of crafting a political tool to do the bidding of the Party in question, a Party with an agenda and a to-do list that it assigns to each member. The membership owns only the District in which they run, not the To-Do List - and actually here it's owned by the Party who selects the run-ees, since it seized ownership of the Districts through Gerrymandering and not even the Gubbinator can change that now.

This is also why here in California, over and over again, one Politburo member after another brings forward completely nonsensical and hysterical anti-gun legislation that gets shot-down - until one day the shooters miss and it passes, until one day the Gubbinator in a fit of pique signs-off on something ridiculous thrown across his desk in order to have his revenge on a minor functionary or as a favor to another.

In the end I'm reasonably confident that advocates of the Party in question will respond with their characteristic equivalency, that "each Party does it the same way" - which when one looks at the nature of "Super Delegates" is clearly not the case.
It also explains why members of one party clearly prefer the Designated Hitter Rule - because it's an efficient means to deliver the items on their To-Do list.

Prohibitions

Hat-tip to Tim of An Englishman's Castle and his wonderfully titled post Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.

"Prohibitions" - There is much to recommend a scientific research publication that covers topics from drug-use to boxing, from firearms to the nexus of alcohol-prostitution-and-pornography, and even includes Advertising along with the subject of human body-parts for transplantation.

iea ::: Prohibitions
John Meadowcroft et al.

The ‘nanny state’ has expanded in recent years. Politicians and bureaucrats have increasingly sought to restrict what individuals are permitted to do with their own bodies on their own property. Prohibitions is a corrective to the prevailing support for such authoritarianism.

This collection examines the outlawing of the manufacture, distribution, sale or provision of particular goods and services by consenting adults. It begins with an overview of the economics of prohibition and subsequently analyses particular prohibition issues including gambling, prostitution, recreational drugs and trade in body parts.

The authors find that in most cases prohibition imposes significant costs on individuals and society as a whole and produces few benefits in return. Prohibition places markets into the hands of criminal enterprises and criminalises people who would not otherwise come into conflict with the law. It makes risky behaviour even more risky, increases public ignorance and often encourages the behaviour it seeks to prevent. Given the substantial costs and minimal benefits, it is clear that prohibition is bad public policy.

Download full publication

Students of firearm legislation maybe particularly interested in the chapter on firearms which states (p. 110):
Conclusion
This review of violent crime trends in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada found that in the years following the introduction of British-style gun laws, despite massive increases in governmental bureaucracy, total homicide rates either increased or remained stable. Similar trends were observed in total violent crime. Importantly, in not one of these countries did the new gun laws appear to result in a decrease in total homicide rates despite the enormous costs to taxpayers. The situation is even clearer in the Republic of Ireland and Jamaica, where violent crime, particularly murder, became much worse after the bans in both countries. Clearly, the factors driving the increasing rates of violent crime, for example organised crime or terrorism, were not curtailed by British-style gun laws.
The failure of British-style firearm laws to influence the total homicide rate in any of the jurisdictions examined here is suggestive but not conclusive. The causal link remains unproven. The British Home Office argues that crime would have increased even more rapidly had the gun laws not been imposed. That explanation is problematic, given the failure of British-style gun laws in other countries.
These trends contrast with the situation in the United States, where there was an impressive drop in the American homicide and violent crime rates...

Whatever the reason, the upshot is that violent crime in the USA, and homicide in particular, has plummeted over the past fifteen years.27 This chapter merely scratches the surface in attempting to understand the link between firearm laws and crime rates. But the study corroborates American research that has been unable to identify any gun law that had reduced violent crime, suicide or gun accidents (Hahn et al., 2003; Wellford et al., 2004).

Activist Bodies in Motion

Why is the Leftosphere so overrepresented by strident, violence-prone, grievance mongers? Who are all these writhing, shouting, demanding, inflamed semi-professional (and professional) ac(ne)tivists and where did they come from?? Why does such seething hostility and barely repressed anger burst forth like boils from beneath the pasty roiling skin of the Left?

Google "Activist Groups" and you'll come across an incredible cottage-industry of tax-exempt, agenda-driven ideologues, scaremongers, and busybodies. The list is long and has no counterpart in length or breadth on the right.

Starting with the SDS and the Weathermen - each of which had a violence-based public policy agenda - we continue today with (just a snippet here) Earth First! Code Pink, PETA, ELF, ALF, The Ruckus Society, and a host of others including The Center for Media & Democracy, and even nerdly-names like The Institute for Social Ecology(wtf?)...?

Who are they?

And then there's the fake-o Astroturf crowd like The American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), among other things a front for its Foundation President John E. Rosenthalm, who happens to be the former Chairman of Stop Handgun Violence and a colleague of Handgun Control President Michael Barnes. They have a website hosted by a media-company whose clients include gun-grabbers Pelosi (D-CA), Conyers (D-MI), DeGette (D-CO), Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), and Moran (D-VA).

Why doesn't the Right have a so-well populated list of Tax-exempt groups feeding at the public trough?

Partly it's simply structural - this is how the Left organizes and gets their funding (especially when bank-robbery and narco-trafficking endangers their Leadership as it does in Columbia and elsewhere). And boy do they love to organize, rally, and chant clever slogans - they're practically an one-man band, or they can be. It's all Public Theater and Performance Art to them (paid-for by you!), with every activist a shining Star at Center Stage... In other words it is centrally and very strongly ego-driven, and tied to that feedback Lotus-drink - the nectar of Smug on which they feed (besides your generous donations...er, taxes).

Godspeed Gurung Gurkha VC

(Click to Bigger)
2:37am GMT 04/03/2008 - Havildar Bhanubhakta Gurung, who has died aged 86, was awarded a VC when serving as a rifleman in the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles in Burma on March 5 1945.

"On approaching the objective, one of the sections of the company was forced to the ground by a very heavy light-machine-gun, grenade and mortar fire, and owing to the severity of this fire was unable to move in any direction.

"While thus pinned down, the section also came under accurate fire from a sniper in a tree some 75 yards to the south. As this sniper was inflicting casualties on the section, Rifleman Bhanbhagta Gurung stood up and, while fully exposed to heavy fire, calmly killed the enemy sniper with his rifle, thus saving his section from suffering further casualties."

Bhanubhakta then began to run for the top of the hill, yelling for his comrades to follow him. Though the casualties were heavy, the section ploughed forward until within 20 yards of their objective, when the Gurkhas were again halted by exceptionally heavy fire.

Without waiting for any orders, Bhanubhakta dashed forward alone and attacked the first enemy foxhole. Throwing two grenades, which killed the two occupants of the trench, he immediately rushed on to the next enemy foxhole and killed the two Japanese in it with his bayonet.

All this time he was under continuous light-machine-gun fire from a bunker on the north tip of the objective, and two further fox-holes were still bringing fire to bear upon the section. Bhanubhakta dashed forward and cleared these trenches with bayonet and grenades.

He then turned his attention to the machine-gun bunker, and realising, as the citation put it, that it "would hold up not only his own platoon which was not behind him, but also another platoon which was advancing from the west", he pushed forward a fifth time to knock out the position.

"He ran forward and leapt on to the roof of the bunker from where, his hand grenades being finished, he flung two No 72 smoke grenades into the bunker's slit." Two Japanese rushed out of the bunker, partially blinded by the smoke and with their clothes aflame with phosphorous; Bhanubhakta promptly killed them both with his kukri.

One Japanese soldier remained inside, holding up 4 Platoon's advance with the machine gun. Bhanubhakta crawled in and, prevented by the cramped space from using his bayonet or kukri, beat the gunner's brains out with a rock.

The term "bayonet" repeatedly used in the citation is actually in reference to the Gurkha Kukri - the extremely formidable edged weapon picture above.


UPDATE - The Gurkha Regiments crossed Kukri insignia added.

The Structural Psychopathology of the Left

A few days ago GeekWithA.45 finished reading Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism, and posted some initial musings regarding the Left.

These aren't people who seek evil. They are people who seek Good, albeit through dubious means. They are people who blind themselves to the truth that the power for unlimited good is cannot be distinguished, even in principle, from the power for unlimited evil. As such, they do not understand that we oppose them for their means, not their ends, and many believe that we oppose the Good they seek to bring forth, and cannot understand why anyone (other than a reactionary degenerate seeking to preserve a position of oppression based privilege) would oppose such Goodness.
...
Unfortunately, as much as I'd hope that books such as Mr. Goldberg's might contribute to the Left discovering their history, my experience with the denizens of the Left suggest that too many are too ideologically blinkered, too ignorant of history (especially their own), and too intoxicated with the thought of bringing forth Unlimited Good to be coaxed back to earth.

My experience with them includes a couple additional points that I think help to illuminate how and why they maintain their ideologically blinkered and igonorant position, that is to say, what are the mechanisms that serve to sustain their myopia.
1. There is a feedback loop of Smug Self-Certainty involved. Their overwhelming and motivating impulse to Do-Goodism is both pathological and neurological. A.) Psychologically speaking it is self-projection (on a grand scale) of Seeking-For-Good, which also serves to pat them on the back and that turns into B.) Feelgoodism and self-approval. That's the potent reward in feedback loop of Smug, and Smug is an intellectually insulating barrier.
2.) The automatic response towards anybody/thing that gets in the way, deflects, threatens, or otherwise interferes with that precious-Lotus feedback supply is a lizard-like near instantaneous level of rage, and a switch to Attack-Mode. In that mode an intellectual shutdown occurs not unlike the tunnel-vision effects experienced by people in extreme stress. Spatial and auditory awareness diminishes and they literally can go berserk as they prepare to attack.
3.) The Smug-barrier and the intellectual shutdown prevent further internal analysis as their defense mechanism turns every attention outward - and that's when they hit the Project-button. With all their attention, rage, and hostility turned outward and their internal mechanisms shut-down they are incapable of reflection while their entire modality is engaged in Projection -- which is a precise reflection of their own internal state amplified to meet a perceived threat to the narcotic of their soothing feedback loop.

It's just how the Moonbats flap, they're hardwired for it.

Last Saturday Practice

The weather on the drive was foreboding, and upon arriving at the range I sat in the truck eating my breakfast of a sausage-egg mcMuffin - I need to get some protein down my gullet for this stuff while trying to avoid too much coffee.

It was cold with a sharp wind that gusted and blew targets off the frames. We had three new-guys. I shot on the first relay.
While laying prone my spotter-shots did a nice job of making it to the target, but standing up in the wind and cold Offhand the gusts blew me around, I couldn't see crap with the scope waving in the wind and I scored a super-lousy 52 with three misses. Bleh - my day was over right there.
Things got a lot better (and the weather too) as it cleared and brightened up for the Rapid Seated stage and I shot a 91-2X - woot! Air went out of the balloon when I shot an 75 in Rapid Prone that included Sixes and Sevens. I briefly wondered what I would finally salvage, and pushed that thought out of mind.
Slow prone was better with a fairly good 174-3X's for an 87% "completion" rate and the first time I kept everything in the black - but not enough to lift me up over 400 and I finished with a 392-5x. Crap.

Obama - The Light Within

There's a brightness and sense of inevitability about the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama - lets piece together some factors from a few sources and weave a narrative thread together...

Sen. Barack Obama has drawn from his past and his hoped-for future in selecting advisers. He looks to his distant and not-so-distant past for advice. His mother was an 18-year-old student from Kansas, his father a member of Kenya's Luo tribe who returned to his home when Barack was 2.

Senator Obama walked the civil rights' activist and community organizer's walk. He knows the underclass. He tried, in a very real, very committed way, to improve their lot.

Barack was brought up without any religion but invested his passion as an adult street activist for the liberal ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

He believes.

Obama then chose, according to his autobiography, Christianity of the Liberation Theology brand as preached by Chicago's Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a legend in his own time as an Afro-centric preacher and radio ministry seer.

Barack Obama is a man of the left --the hard left ,the uncompromising left. His passion is real, not feigned, and the intensity of his campaign volunteers is to be expected as a result.

Barack Obama has cut himself in the same pattern as the Rev. Wright. The title of Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope" is taken from a Wright sermon, as was his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

Senator Barack is, in short, a rookie. The sort of rookie the fans love, then turn against, realizing he isn't up to the job. The sort of rookie that makes huge mistakes, which while merely disappointing on the football field, are deadly on the field of international conflict.

Obama is surrounded by failed policymakers, including unreformed Students for Democratic Society leader Bill Ayers, now an education professor; Susan Rice, who, while at the State Department alienated the Eritrean Americans so that all 270,000-plus voted in bloc against Al Gore and was so slow that Osama bin Laden escaped the Sudanese police; and Tony Lake, who changed his mind at his nomination hearing as Bill Clinton's CIA director. Lake then knew that there would be detailed questions about his relationships with Joseph Needham, Britain's only member of the Chinese Communist Party and his tutor at Cambridge.

(But) He is far, far from the mainstream of American politics, and as the electorate learns this, I expect they will become exceedingly cautious about handing the country's future to a man only three years into the D.C. swirl --exactly the same time he spent as an "organizer" on the South Side of Chicago. He didn't "know" Chicago after three years, and he doesn't know D.C. --or the world-- now.

Then there are Obama's other advisers, most of them born too late to register the Cold War, faces gleaming without a sign of experience or thought.

Included is the brilliant speech writer Ben Rhodes, whose experiences with the Iraq Study Group, formed by the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, honed him for the Barack campaign.

Then there is Denis McDonough, a former legislative aide to former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-N.D., who is preparing a foreign policy friendly to Syria and Iran.

Senator Obama is Jimmy Carter, without the experience. Carter, without the United States Naval Academy education.

It will be a strange day indeed when America elects its first Socialist President - that was the wish of one of my High School classmates but Barack is much closer to the goal then him, aided by the divisive politics that are promoted by a political Party that in its race to the bottom has promised everything free to everybody.

Hope this helps shed some light on the man behind the curtain. (various emphasis mine)
UPDATE: had to tone-down the Free thing.