4th Annual Memorial Carbine Match

We shot the 4th Annual Mike Campbell Memorial Carbine Match yesterday (Sunday). It was bright and sunny but the temperatures only hovered in the low 80's, instead of the blistering 100+'s like Friday and Saturday. Weirds Weather - this (Monday) morning was foggy until 10:00AM, and it's even cooler.
When I drove up the big, heavy blue awnings were coming out of the shed, so we loaded them straight into the back of my truck along with some pieces of rug for mats, and I drove out to the gravel up at the 100-yard line.
At mid-range the line is not flat or regular but pitched upwards to the target-zone, and pitched deeper in the center than at the edges, so laying prone is awkward and the other positions are not much better.
I was at #4 and it looks farther than it is because of the wide-angle lens. I should have worn my computer glasses because the front post was in my no-focus zone, but I can't keep complaining about my glasses without doing something.

I came in somewhere around 6th out of 13 shooters, with a 443 out of 500 - my offhand sucked but I collected five X's. Afterward we had a bar-b-cue with hotdogs and beans and potato salad and stuff, and Mike's wife joined us and thanked us for keeping up the tradition and his memory alive. She still misses him so much, he was a real good guy and co-founder of the club.
She also needs to get a freaking giant gun-safe moved out of her garage, and had a list of nice stuff that was going to get appraised for sale - with first dibs to us guys. The 95% 1909 Argie Mauser struck my eye, a beautiful classic to compliment my Krag, but I have no funds for old guns. See ya next year!

The Turgid Essence of Alinsky

Babalu alerted me to a 1972 Interview with Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama's ideological Eratosthenes (with similar public penchants) in, of all the things that just screams 1972, Playboy Magazine.

Alinsky laid it all out. He shares his dark, bleak view of middle class life and talks about targeting them for radical change, in the fight for, as he puts it, to bring "progress to minorities." He doesn't imagine empowering the poor though education, hard work and personal responsibility, the traditional route to success in America; the only solution that he see is to bring the middle class "onboard" the progressive agenda, because, "this is where the real power lies."

And what do we get for that brilliance? From those awful Late-60's years of "work" with poverty-stricken black and white slum dwellers?

...people are people whether they’re living in ghettos, reservations or barrios, and the suburbs are just another kind of reservation — a gilded ghetto.

O. M. G. The Suburbs!! Nooo!!! So for-sure we totally get that,... positive action for radical social change will have to be focused on the white middle class, Man! And that ...three fourths of our population is middle class, Man! That and even MORE penetratingly incisive and deeply thrusting public commentary courtesy of Playboy,

....the lower-lower middle class, the blue-collar or hard-hat group; there you’ve got over 70,000,000 people earning between $5000 and $10,000 a year, people who don’t consider themselves poor or lower class at all and who espouse the dominant middle class ethos even more fiercely than the rich do...

Oh GOD!! So it's so like, totally, my SOCIOLOGY Professor (the one who chased Freshman girls), flattering them with confounding sounding phrases, and then pounding home his glorious tumescent thesis-antithesis,

...if we could manage to organize all the exploited low-income groups — all the blacks, chicanos, Puerto Ricans, poor whites — and then, through some kind of organizational miracle, weld them all together into a viable coalition, what would you have?

Yeh? What, man!? WHAT??!! Oh no, wait, the momentum of his delivery just got swallowed by the statistical evidence of his inability to breathlessly STFU - shut-up, man! ...the most optimistic estimate, 55,000,000 people by the end of this decade — but by then the total population will be over 225,000,000, of whom ... Arrgh! And the candle fizzles in the wavering light ...it’s here that the die will be cast... As he attempts to come to some climaxing conclusion, with a prematurely shuddering gasp, ...Pragmatically, the only hope for genuine minority progress is to seek out allies within the majority and to organize that majority itself as part of a national movement for change... Gaahhh!!!
...three fourths of our population is middle class, either through actual earning power or through value identification... Statistics. State-istics.
Nothing.
There's nothing there but enough air and self-satisfaction to heat a small balloon that folds into a square...
Hipster Socialists blathered incessantly in the late 60's - and well on through the polyester-shirt 70's and into the acid-washed denim 80's trying to get laid. You've heard it before.
"Suburbs are like a Reservation, MAN!" And Third-Period Homeroom is TOTALLY like a Nazi Gulag!
That's the same snotty pseudo intellectual crap-talk I heard when I was growing-up, from the mouths of affluent High School kids in Palo Alto when they were in a big pout over privileges. Usually it comes out of their mouth dripping with irony also.
Hell something similar probably came out of my mouth at some point during puberty - that moment when I felt the most pure, deep, frightening angst of a teenage boy - that I might die before I got laid. But at least I had Playboy, man. Roadmap to Divisiveness? Rules for Radicals, (MAN!) - It all HAS to emerge from the very earnest efforts of a burgeoning adolescent. Who else knows so well how to divide Dad and Mom and GET THE CAR KEYS! And you know totally, they really want to RULE and to DRIVE, MAN!
Barack Obama is essential to this little drama because he's Barack the King, he's the dude who was cool as ice and the first to yell Shotgun! on the Bitchin' Alinsky Roadtrip. Just ask Ayers, when he's ten-feet tall.

None from me: Not Ken Needy

I am learning about the cultural anthropology of the Massachusettsean East Coastal Hominid, the desendants and inheritors of the "ordered liberty" concept that focused on the "freedom" to conform to the policies of the Puritan Church and local government. A certain cognitive dissonance exists in the simultaneous conjunction of those two concepts... Hmmm.
But let us give glad tidings to humor and mirth, one of the funner Shakespearean things I learned was from Borepatch linking to a blog-thing called Kissing Suzy Kolber, which seriously wins the "Describes Massachusetts Perfectly" award. Perfectly described, but impossible to excerpt. Go read - you'll be glad you did. Not having had much physical exposure to the Bay State I found it to be quite revealing and interesting.

Support Soldiers Angels

Why the Gun Blogger Rendezvous supports Soldiers' Angels and Project Valour IT, Americans care about British soldiers too.

From Michael Yon in Afghanistan

Making matters worse, the British medical system back in the United Kingdom did not possess the specialized gear needed to save his life. Americans had the right gear in Germany, and so the British soldier was put into the American system.

British officers in his unit, 2 Rifles, wanted to track their man every step of the way, and to ensure that his family was informed and supported in this time of high stress. Yet having their soldier suddenly in the American system caused a temporary glitch in communications with folks in Germany. The British leadership in Sangin could have worked through the glitch within some hours, but that would have been hours wasted, and they wanted to know the status of their soldier now. So a British officer in Sangin – thinking creatively –asked if I knew any shortcuts to open communications. The right people were only an email away: Soldiers Angels. And so within about two minutes, these fingers typed an email with this subject heading: CALLING ALL ANGELS.

Via Kevin, As Grumpy Student observes, Making mattters worse? What?

Bu... bu... but I thought the NHS was the best healthcare system in the world? All the British MPs are parroting it from the rooftops, appalled that anyone in the US might find fault with the perfect healthcare system.

Not entirely unrelated, there's a pretty big scandal going on in the UK about military procurement. Lots of people are asking the Labour government difficult questions about why Britain has such a low ratio of helicopters to personnel (particularly in comparison to American forces) necessitating that British soldiers travel by IED infested roads in poorly armoured vehicles contributing considerably to the number of British soldiers killed or wounded.

Over the last twelve years, the UK government has squeezed funding for the military while at the same time committing them to ever more perilous missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whatever anyone thinks of either of those two wars (and I personally support them both), to send soldiers overseas whilst failing to equip them properly is a completely reprehensible way to behave.

And Maj. Chuck at From My Position, On the way! points out, "He has no personal effects. The only things that came with him from downrange[to Germany] were an envelope with a couple of [military challenge] coins and his Soldiers' Angels backpack."

As a leader, one of the scariest places to be is when you don't know what it is that you don't know. You can't be sure if you've planned for the most likely possibilities if the battlefield is too uncertain, or if you are entering an area that you never dreamed you'd be entering. You are planning in a vacuum of information, on unfamiliar terrain, and have no idea what you need to do to make progress. Soldiers Anglels tries to fill that information void--to help those spouses figure out what they need to do, to prioritize what needs to be done, to provide that much-needed information and prioritization to a spouse who is on an emotional precipice. Moreover, they make sure that no soldier goes unloved--whether it's holding hands in the ICU in Germany, or in Walter Reed, or Brooke Amy Medical Center, or Bethesda, or Balboa, or anywhere a wounded soldier finds himself.

* Donate a backpack
* Donate items for a backpack
* Make a Blanket of Hope

Or even better yet, join us at the Gunbloggers Rendezvous and make your donations directly! And make a donation to Michael Yon if you can.

Tea-Baggers Anyone?

From the appropriately named German firm Donkey Products comes Democratea, HT Tim at An Englishman's Castle.

Sarah Palin Was Right - The VA Death Panels

From comments:

How does a unionized Veteran's Administration nurse differ from a bullet?

1. A bullet can draw blood.
2. A bullet only kills one time
3. You can fire a bullet

H/T Conservative Scalawag, and again our friend 'Splodey Tank Commander Chuck. (I think I can say that since he told me about it.)

And see here as Chuck says, "Note also that many of these conditions that invite our veterans to declare their lives "not worthy of living" (Lebensunwerte Leben) are not even terminal illnesses to which a living will would apply!"

To be sure, there's no death panel. If we gave a document like this to someone immediately after serious injury, they'd volunteer to die.

After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

All About Trust

From GBR-IV main-man Chuck Ziegenfuss
comes a 'toon with a twist.
Ask these guys about healthcare...

Local Media Blackout

Despite being some forty-five miles distant I don't recall seeing any local Television Media coverage of this.
It actually happened last Saturday, but I had to find out today, from a blogger in Puget Sound!


Thanks Cluemeter!

Two other reports:
Gay Patriot.
and
The City Square.

Guadalcanal Diary - Tuesday August 19, 1942

   ...Lieut. McIlhenny gave the order to move forward, and we passed the little clearing with the white trees, crossed the little bamboo bridge over the little creek at the edge of the clearing, and moved on down the wide path into the jungle beyond. We took cover carefully along the sides of the trail as we moved up. We were getting into enemy territory.
    It was 8:19 when a marine came from our right flank (which lay near the bneach) to report, "I can see a ship."
    Just then the guns began booming again. I moved over to the shore and swept the horizon with my glasses, but could see no ship. I went back to the column.
    At 8:30 a marine came back in from the beach and said, There's a Japanese destroyer out there."...

H/T Xavier's - Spielberg and Hanks are making a Band-of-Brother style series.
There's some interesting stuff out there on YouTube about the battle.

Gun Blogger Rendezvous, September 10-13th

Mr. Completely informs us that a new sponsor has been added to GBRIV!

While I was down in California for the Steel Challenge World championships, I got a chance to talk a bit with Dave Thomas, the head of USPSA and Steel Challenge Shooting Association. Dave decided that since the Gun Blogger Rendezvous raises money for Project Valour-IT, a very worthy charity helping our injured Vets, and since we were going to be featuring Steel Challenge shooting at the Rendezvous, that the Steel Challenge Shooting Association would like to help out a bit by donating some door prize and/or raffle items to the Rendezvous.

Besides having the USPSA along, there's also the necessary supplies available with Lucky Gunner Ammo along for support! So there's no reason not to buy a raffle ticket and support Soldier's Angels.

Guadalcanal Diary - Tuesday August 18, 1942

I return to the story of Guadalcanal simply because it was where the fathers of some of my old friends from rec.motorcycles.dirt had spent their time - their last time. Some fathers never came home from Guadalcanal. And some of their kids returned to visited that place:

Tassaforonga and Mantanikau, Red Beach, Iron Bottom Sound, I got some of the stories, wished I could have gotten more. I didn't make it to the Gifu, but we did travel up the coast where the last of the Japanese left....

None of the above tries to quantify the suffering from lack of food. Recall the Navy sailed off without unloading most of the Marines' food. The Marines survived on captured Japanese rations. Ortega's words give us a glimpse of what the survivors were like when they left Guadalcanal:

...we were sent to the beach by Lunga Point and were there 7 days when we got the word that the Army was coming in and we were to be relieved. We were all exhausted. We had no clothes. All I had was my shoes, no socks, no underclothes. All I had was a pair of torn dungarees and a khaki shirt.

Meanwhile back to Tuesday August 18, 1942...

The time was about 12:45 this afternoon, and I was preparing to go to Kukum to join Capt. Hawkins' troops for the excursion to Matanikau, when the air-raid alarm sounded. We took cover, and at about one o'clock the anti-aircraft guns on the field began firing.
It was the first time that I had seen all the enemy airplanes clearly; they came in two shallow V's of four each, forming two silvery white lines against the cloudless sky, and it was a sort of shock to see them coming so deliberately and steadily in the open.
But our anti-aircraft fire was coming close. Then puffs of ack-ack blotted the sky almost directly in front of the leading wave. And suddenly a spurt of smoke came from one motor of the plane on the left flank. Then the spurt became a slender white plume trailing out behind. But the did not drop out of its place and the formation droned steadily on its course. It had not been hit badly.
Then we heard the first guttural whisper of the sticks of bombs coming, and all of us who had been watching hit the ground and rested the brows of our helmets against the earth. That was as close to digging in as we could come at a second's notice.

From, TIME OF THE ACES: Marine Pilots in the Solomons

On 20 August, 19 planes of VMF-223 and 12 dive bombers of VMSB-232 were launched from the escort carrier Long Island and arrived safely at Henderson Field. The Marine pilots were quickly put into action over the skies of Guadalcanal in combat operations against enemy aircraft.

Allied air operations in the Solomons were controlled from the "Pagoda," built by the Japanese and rehabilitated by the men of CUB One. Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 51812

KennedyCare and the Media WaterCarriers

Besides the "end of life panel," the counseling being suggested in Obamacare, perhaps Senator Kennedy will be able to slip-in some language for an "end of coherence and intelligence" panel, something to treat overly willful adult children - like Rosemary Kennedy. She wasn't retarded until they made her that way, and they cut deeper than any "Special Olympian" could possibly be. She would never participate in life again even at that level because of a forced lobotomy conducted upon her at age 24, at the orders of her father Joe Kennedy. (She's the pretty one on the right)

Troubled by the inability of the family to cope with Rosemary's aggressive behavior, the Kennedy elder, without consulting anyone else in the family, contacted a neurosurgeon and ordered that a pre-frontal lobotomy be performed on Rose, in 1941. (my emphasis added)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy

Rosemary has been described as being a shy child whose I.Q. tests reportedly indicated a moderate mental retardation, but this is a question of some controversy… Diaries written by Rosemary in the late 1930s, and published in the 1980s, reveal a young woman whose life was filled with outings to the opera, tea dances, dress fittings, and other social interests:

* Went to luncheon in the ballroom in the White House. James Roosevelt took us in to see his father, President Roosevelt. He said, ‘It’s about time you came. How can I put my arm around all of you? Which is the oldest? You are all so big.

* Have a fitting at 10:15 Elizabeth Arden. Appointment dress fitting again. Home for lunch. Royal tournament in the afternoon.

* Up too late for breakfast. Had it on deck. Played Ping-Pong with Ralph’s sister, also with another man. Had lunch at 1:15. Walked with Peggy. also went to horse races with her, and bet and won a dollar and a half. Went to the English Movie at five. Had dinner at 8:45. Went to the lounge with Miss Cahill and Eunice and retired early.

She also was presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during her father’s service as the American Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Placid and easygoing as a child and teenager, the maturing Rosemary became increasingly assertive in her personality... the family had difficulty dealing with the often-stormy Rosemary, who had begun to sneak out at night from the convent where she was being educated...

Educated?? Wait a minute, this sounds like my own strong-willed sister when we were overseas and shipped off to Missionary boarding school. We ALL tried sneaking-out.

Erica at whiskey in a teacup explains:

I’m annoyed that all the coverage of Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s death mentions how she was inspired to start the Special Olympics by her sister Rosemary’s “intellectual disability”. None of the reports I’ve heard have mentioned that Rosemary’s disability was caused by a forced lobotomy, which destroyed her personality, emotions, independence, and ability to function. Nor do they mention that her family, who certainly had the resources to keep her at home, stuck her in an institution for much of her life. Nor do they mention that due to the effects of the lobotomy she was unable to participate in sporting events and therefore couldn’t even partake in the Special Olympics. To present her as someone who just happened to be born mentally retarded is an unacceptable insult.

Again from Wikipedia: Dr. Watts, who performed the surgery while Dr. Freeman supervised and observed, described the procedure:

We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.

Nice use of The Lord's Prayer - I don't believe a Psalm has ever been quite so defiled and I would expect even atheists to be revolted. I'm speechless and horrified at the Kennedy family. They deserve everything that has happened to them - karma's a bitch.

I believe TJIC may have said it best: I seriously didn’t think it was possible, but my loathing for that disgusting clan of abhorrent power-mad elitist scoundrels has managed to grow a little bit more today.

Guadalcanal Diary - Wednesday August 12, 1942

    Down at the beach early this morning, and, after considerable delay, finally boarded the small fleet of three motorboats which was to take us to Tulagi, Two were of the regulation type of landing boat. The third was a lighter, filled with drums of gasoline. For armament we had .30 caliber guns, on the landing boats, and .50 caliber on the lighter.
    As we set out in the glaring sun, Marine Gunner Banta (Sheffield M. Banta of Staten Island, N.Y.), in charge of our boat, warned our crew to keep an especially sharp lookout for airplanes. Also, he said, for submarines; but I could see that our crewmen spent most of their time anxiously watching the sky, that their principal worry was a strafing attack from the air, which turned out to be a mistake in judgment.
    Three times before we reached the middle of Tulagi Bay, Gunner Banta borrowed my field glasses to investigate an object in the sky. Twice the objects were birds.
...
    Then, suddenly, we could all see the plane. It was coming straight for us. I suppose in that moment we all realized how helpless is a small boat under the attack of a well-armed aircraft. One felt suddenly very much alone, out there in the middle of the bay, with at least ten miles of water on each side.
...

    "I think that may be a submarine, over there," said someone in the boat. And we looked where he pointed, with a great inclination to disbelieve.
  But it was a submarine — a long low black shape, with a rise at the center where the conning tower stood. He was moving away from us. But when we spotted him, he also spotted us; slowly he swung around and headed to cross our bows.

...

The Snitch House Rules

Quentin Tarantino could make a movie. Lots of blood, screaming old people, and the exploding botox-brains of the Congresszombie Queen.

It would sell, you know it would because it's a slasher-flick with the biggest brain-dead entity lumbering around: CongressSnitch and the AdminiSnitch. Guys like Arlen Specter, dead from the neck down talking nonsense words just to hear themnselves, their jaws dangling loose like zombies.

Nobody wants to live in Snitchville but the Snitches. So the first thing they do is build a wall to keep people from running away to a nicer place - because Snitchville is always a suck-ass dump. Every time in History. It's happened before. And they cover the top of the wall with barbed wire.

Sure some people live fat, like the oozing larval SnitchBooger up in the sweaty gray tunnel that is fed by the Snitcheon Guard. One among millions ruling over their Snitch Slaves in their Workers Paradise -- yadda-yadda, opium of the idiocracy, flag-waving astroturf and sock-puppets, tax me more. Eat your potato, it's organic. Get on-board with Global Snitching.

It's gonna end badly, it always does, every time it has happened. It's happened beefore. Like hanging upsidown leaking fluids in Rome 1945. In the hell-hot jungles of Bolivia in 1967 for Chesnitch. Or at midnight in a Berlin bunker, thirty feet down. Badly, but worse for the damage they do. They nbever ask,"First, do no harm." They just go ahead, so bloated with hubris it runs in thick sores out their spine.

Because snitches are parasites. It's their distinguishing trait and nothing can hide it. They burrow under the skin and lay eggs that poison their host, making them go mad - it's the only real explanation for the existence of such a large population, an epidemic - of Liberals. That's why they want "healthcare," they think it will fix them and all the things that are wrong with them. But it won't.

It's the Gubb'ment of SnitchCare - and nobody in their right mind wants the Government to "love and care" for them even if the uniforms are sexy - because they are loathsome parasites. Potato bugs. That's sheer madness and a sick perversion. That's like enjoying lines at the DMV lines, filling-out forms in triplicate by hand, and abuse by petty bureaucrats. Disgusting adolescent toilet fetishes.

Go drink a cup of coffee and clear your head. Nobody wants that. Grow up.

Guadalcanal Diary - Saturday August 8, 1942

I just finished reading Guadalcanal Diary last week, coincidentally on the anniversary of the first assault against the Japanes Empire.

Today, sixty-seven years ago, was also Saturday August 8.
"A runner came back from our foremost forward elements this morning to report that the airport, prize of the Guadalcanal invasion, has been reached and that, as yet, no contact has been made of the enemy.
But one of our sentries, who had a post last night art the outskirts of our cocoanut grove, said that, at just about daybreak, a patrol of about 150 Japs passed close by our bivouac and then took off into the bush."

August 8 -- by nightfall the marines had captured only a mile inland by 4 miles long piece of real estate. The weather was damp with lots of mud.


The Japanese had air superiority. They came down the slot daily to bomb the Americans. They came regularly. The main target was the airstrip. Japanese Navy Type 1 ("Betty") land attack planes fly low through anti-aircraft fire during a torpedo attack on U.S. Navy ships maneuvering between Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the morning of 8 August 1942.
Note that these planes are being flown without bomb-bay doors.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.

The catastrophic outcome of the Battle of Savo Island (9 August), with severe losses of American and Australian ships, and the withdrawal of Vice Admiral Fletcher's carriers, forced the big transports and cargo ships to leave on 9 August, with invasion supplies still on board. Supply shortages plagued the invasion for months.

Although many think of Guadalcanal in terms of the land battles, there were more naval battles fought off the island in six months than the British Royal Navy fought in all of World War I.

Oswald von Wolkenstein

A few miles up the road from his old home at the Trostburg, a castle that lies on a hillside across the river from the probable landings of Walther von der Vogelweide, was this premium example of a Wolkenstein - translation: Cloud-Stone.

Like the volcanoes of the Pacific Islands, the stone massif reaches up and draws in clouds and creates weather. There's a reason they call a "sky-scraper" such a thing, vastly older than timber, stone, or steel buildings are the mountains of the world that hold up the sky.

(Click to enlarge)

The Dolomites are just freaking incredible, and this filled my helmet with giddy laughter.

I think I'll go for a bike ride now.

Why So Socialist?

H/T Kalapanapundit, via The People's Cube.


H/T Admiral


He's everywhere...