#6
The original Mosin Nagants were excellent and extremely accurate.
When the Boleshiks took over they wanted to continue to use the Mosin but wanted to expunge the nasty old Czarist origins but taking them all in, disassembling them and throwing all the parts into a pile and randomly reassembling. Eli Whitney the early Czarist gunsmiths were not and the results were not so good.
But remember, the Reds used the Mosin as a sniper rifle for a bazillion years for its accuracy.
I agree with all of the rest of the article except the Thompson. What you see in the video is a dumbed down version of the Thompson simplified for mass production and use by the Airborne. So much of what the narrator says is true of the WWII version but not the older versions.
I had a Thompson for a brief spell and I like the interchangability of ammo between my beloved Colt and the Thompson. Besides in the fricking jungle you rarely get to shoot at anything that isn't right in your face and the .45 cuts brush much better than the M-16 or the AK (which I think is a piece of crap). Go tell those Cubans in Angola that the Thompson is an over rated weapon...
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/07/2016 17:19 Comments ||
Top||
...All the latent class biases of the Republican gentry are now on the table, and they prove more compatible with Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. Republican nihilism is the result.
Take immigration, a hot-button issue that ignited Trumpism, even when polls suggested voters’ real concerns were the economy and health care. If your experience with illegal immigration is hiring and patronizing with a daily "Buenas tardes" a JosĂŠ Garcia, your skilled, dependable--and rather inexpensive--gardener, or navigating around the political-correctness of an upper-middle-class diversity officer on campus or at work, then you are likely to embrace the Jeb Bush idea that illegal immigration is an "act of love." That is an inexpensive and easily arrived at position--but not so if you are middle class and lack the romance of the poor and the influence and money of the well off.
If you do your own lawn and clean your own home, or you live and school among the lower middle classes, and your job is always in jeopardy, then even Trump’s vulgarity on issues is proof that he "cares" while the calm perspective of Jeb Bush, or an earlier incarnation of Marco Rubio, or the sermons of John Kasich can come across as crass indifference.
...The children of Republican elites do not sit in classes where a quarter of the students do not speak English. When that specter of diversity looms, parents yank their kids and put them in the prep schools of Silicon Valley that are rapidly reaching New England numbers (or maybe better southern academies that followed integration). Their children are not on buses where an altercation between squabbling eight year olds leads to a tattooed parent arriving at your home to challenge you to a fight over "disrespecting" his family name. The establishment Republicans have rarely jogged around their neighborhoods only to be attacked by pit bulls, whose owners have little desire to speak English, much less to cage, vaccinate, or license their dogs. They have never been hit by illegal-alien drivers in Palo Alto. In other words, they do not wish to live anywhere near those who, as a result of an act of love, are desperately poor, here under illegal auspices, and assume California works and should work on the premises of Oaxaca.
...Trump, who has hired illegal alien labor, attacked Mitt Romney as insensitive on immigration and came late to the immigration debate. But even when he demagogues illegal immigration, and slurs and smears, his supporters do not care about the impracticality of his wall or his baiting of Mexico (whose leaders are far more racist than is the American working class). They care only that someone for a moment seems mad like they are, and does not lecture them on their own supposed biases and shortcomings. The way to further empower Trump is certainly to parody and mock his supporters.
...But at least for a while longer, millions of Republicans and lots of Reagan Democrats would gladly prefer to be wrong with Trump than right with anyone else.
#1
Republican nihilism? Well, they have been the gang who couldn't shoot straight and have ended up shooting themselves in the foot a few times out in the past elections. They have also been flaccid, moribund and absent in the game of politics and policy-making despite having control of both houses.
#2
The main problem with this is that the Republican gentry are portrayed as a separate entity rather than the representative of the "protected", inside the beltway, corruptocrat class that includes all the Democrats and bureaucrats as well.
#3
Too many years of the Lucy Van Pelt "Yes, Charlie Brown, this year I will actually hold the football and not yank it out of the way just before you try to kick" strategy of the GOP in dealing with its former base. This is the image of people crawling over broken glass because of the choices you've been giving them for decades.
#4
Trump cares? Tell another lie. Look at his record on H2B at his resorts. Look at at his hiring of illeglas. Look at him softening up on immigration behind the scenes while he lies to the blue collar workers about helping them. Any "working class" voting for Trump is either ignorant, fooling themselves, or else throwing a tantrum to tear the whole thing down in irrational anger. The problem is, like Mussolini's voters, and the people that elected Hitler, they seem very capable of extreme self deception about the nature and the character of the person they are voting into power. Its a societal psychosis, and the success of Dear Leader Trump and Socialist Sanders are symptoms that this nation has lost its mind.
#5
They care only that someone for a moment seems mad like they are, and does not lecture them on their own supposed biases and shortcomings. The way to further empower Trump is certainly to parody and mock his supporters.
This. And the fact that Trump appears to be apologetically pro-American -- with is anathema among our "betters" in government, business, academia and media.
Posted by: regular joe ||
03/07/2016 11:42 Comments ||
Top||
#6
The GOP Establishment has had ample warning. Starting with Cruz beating Dewhurst establishment in Texas, and Rubio taking out establishment Charlie Crist in Florida before Rubio sold out to the Gang of 8. This should have been a wake up call.
The GOP in DC had an explicit warning shot when Dave Brat defeated future speaker Cantor in the primary in an establishment stronghold in northern Virginian in 2014. But they did not listen.
Now they dare act surprised when people are angry and self destructive? Right or wrong, these Trump voters have decided to play at being Samson, and destroy it all, to pull the roof in on them and themselves.
The GOP is broken and deserves to be replaced. The question is at what cost? Hillary and 3 justices on the Supreme court and losing the Senate? We are doomed if these angry irrational people decide that is the path they want, because that path results in armed rebellion sooner or later.
#9
OK, so exactly what is it that makes California teachers so much worse than teachers in other state? The sunshine? The beach? The jammed up freeways? The smog? The million dollar cracker box houses? It can't be the union because other states have teacher unions too.
Are you trying to convince me that I should vote for another Clinton?
If Trump screws up we'll throw him out in 2020. But it's a mystery to me how he could possibly screw up any worse than the kleptocrats we've had running things the past few decades.
#12
Trump will get destroyed by the press. Recall the New York Times and its endorsement of John McCain in late February of 2008. After Mitt Romney conceded the nomination to McCain, the same newspaper that endorsed McCain published a shabby smear that insinuated that McCain had a sexual affair with a lobbyist, and then demanded to see his medical records to ensure he was fit for office. They didn’t seem to have an issue with his personal ethics or his physical abilities when they endorsed him for the ticket, but went after McCain with a vengeance afterward.
Posted by: Herman Grumble8856 ||
03/07/2016 13:14 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Ubbang, the truth is not a smear, you poor deluded rube. Throw out in 2020? That assumes he gets elected to begin with. Less than 1/3 of the GOP is voting for him, and every poll he loses to Hillary - so what makes you think he can beat hillary?
Learn this: Trump is a liar. Lies about his wealth. Lies about not knowing who David Duke is. His lifetime is filled with lies, going back to being a star athlete at his academy and getting a Vietnam deferment for heel spurs making him unfit for service. He dodged! And on abortion, Planned Parenthood funding, the crisis in Syria, Syrian refugees, his opinion of the flat tax, and a host of other issues, it’s simply impossible to know what Trump actually thinks, because he has repeatedly taken contradictory positions. In his personal life he has gotten how many divorces due to cheating? Lies involved there certainly.
And in a possibly fascist move he said ordering our troops to commit war crimes would be followed because he is the leader, and orders would be followed without question (presumably). I guess he never heard of the UCMJ and Geneva conventions, and the Constitution. How about using H2B to avoid Americans at his hotels? Several hundred Americans applied, less than 3% were hired, yet the remainder of Trumps jobs were filled with H2B visa imports. He is on recoard at Trump University praising outsourcing and H1B. He is being sued for fraud because of Trump University. It goes on and on. Defend that, you fool. Or wake up and find a better candidate. Because if things fall apart, its on your head as the people that refused to see the facts and voted for him anyway. Stop being angry and throwing a tantrum.
#14
Separate classes? Wrong. Who's gonna pay for it? This ain't Israel and the people sneaking across the border ain't Russians.
We need to keep those people outta here.
I don't wanna get personal here but my wife is a school teacher. When I was a kid I endured the public schools myself. Besides that I've put three of my own kids through the public schools here and I've met some very good teachers. They don't like Common Core any more than you do. I've met some stinkers too but you can't convince me they're any worse than anywhere else. If anything they're better. I will agree with you that the union sucks but, after all, it is a union so what do you expect? We'll never change it now because we've imported so many Democrat voters. That's not the teachers' fault.
I've been here all my life, over six decades, and I can tell you for a dead certain fact that California got screwed by the likes Bill Clinton, George Bush and Baraq Obama who refused to secure the border. So when Trump says he'll build a wall that's what I want to hear and if it pisses off Vicente Fox so much the better.
They are all liars. Remember? "Read my lips?" "You can keep your doctor?" "I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinski?" "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
#16
Defend that, you fool. Or wake up and find a better candidate.
Which candidate would that be? I think if a guy as smart as you are spends as much time researching them all as much as you seem to have spent researching Trump you will find every bit as much dirt. By the way, who paid you to do all that research?
#17
Oh, oh, more new names. Go back to #6. Read. The game is up. The republic has been over for a while. You just don't want to believe because you either accept the oligarchy (and the charade of rituals and ceremonies) or rebel.
#18
The answer is Cruz. His results from Saturday look quite promising.
But the angst at Trump is mis-directed. As others have pointed out, the GOP has only themselves to blame for Trump. The GOP ignored the wishes of the rank and file, and instead were all to happy to collect their votes and then do the opposite of what their voters wanted.
Cruz is the answer, but I'll vote Trump if he turns out to be the nominee. I won't be a participant to telling the rank and file that THEIR votes don't count.
#20
Trump is the result of a political party that is too concerned with operating inside the beltway and forgetting who elected them and who they are supposed to represent. The party is spending all of its energy fighting trump and not tryng to figure out why he is so popular. Their total lack of respect for their voting public, that they call stupid and backward, have had enough. The Republican Party mocked the tea party and almost lost the party to them. Now they are trying to defeat trump and if they don't figure it out they will Lose the party completely.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
03/07/2016 15:26 Comments ||
Top||
#21
IMO, Trump entered the campaign intending to write a bestseller "My Presidential Campaign", was surprised by own success and, eventually, said to himself "What the hell? I can'r possibly do a worse job than these schlemiels!"
#22
All this rage against Trump. Trump is the only one that will stand up to the media and powers that be on both sides. He has street smarts. He connects with the working people. He is their voice. Take him out and many will stay home. That's what they want. Everyone stay home and it's business as usual. Everywhere a small vocal minority smears him here and elsewhere. Implosion, whatever. So much disinformation. An old expression I heard many years ago was "if you want to be happy in this world don't watch TV or read the newspaper". True, true very true.
h/t Instapundit
...And then it turned into a nation of idiots, incapable of doing anything except conduct military operations against primitive countries. The objective performance of the latter Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations, and the Gingrich, Reid-Pelosi, and Boehner-led congresses, and most of the courts, have for these 25 years been shameful and as unprecedented in American history as the swift rise of America was in the history of the world. The people turned out rascals and got worse rascals.
...What is called for now is a clean and decisive break from the personalities and techniques of the recent past. Donald Trump doesn't remind anyone of the presidents just mentioned, but he elicited a surge of public support by a novel, almost Vaudeville, routine as an educated billionaire denouncing the political leadership of the country in Archie Bunker blue-collar terms.
...All the other candidates in both parties were vieux jeu, passe. Only a few of the governors (Bush, Christie, and Kasich) had run anything successfully, none of them had built anything, and all were up to their eyeballs in the sleazy American political system -- long reduced to a garish and corrupt log-rolling game of spin-artists, lobbyists, and influence-peddlers. Bernie Sanders gets a pass, but he is an undischarged Marxist, and while many of his attacks on the incumbent system and personnel have merit, his policy prescriptions are unacceptable to 90 per cent of Americans.
...On Tuesday night, Cruz ran strongly in his home state of Texas but his support is now confined exclusively to Bible-thumping, M16-toting corn-cobbers and woolhats, and he has no traction outside the southwest and perhaps Alaska. The orthodox Republican candidate, Marco Rubio, is now a Chiclet-smiled, motor-mouth loser, having first been exposed as such by Chris Christie (the New Jersey governor who could have won the nomination and election four years ago and is now running for the vice-presidential nomination with Trump). Rubio should bite the dust in Florida next week. On Super Tuesday evening Donald Trump made the turn from rabble-rouser to nominee-presumptive. The only early campaign excess he has to walk back is the nonsense that all the 11 million illegal migrants will be removed, and then many will be readmitted. Of course the selection process must occur before they are evicted, not after. I believe he meant "readmitted when hell freezes over"
Posted by: Sven the pelter ||
03/07/2016 10:35 Comments ||
Top||
#5
his support is now confined exclusively to Bible-thumping, M16-toting corn-cobbers and woolhats,
My. My. Learn that sort of language in prison?
Could someone help me with woolhats? I tried to look it up, but ended with a number of clothing sales and pictures of effeminate men in metro hats, which I am sure is not the intended meaning.
#10
his support is now confined exclusively to Bible-thumping, M16-toting corn-cobbers and woolhats,
My that's quite the foul-mouthed hate fest from the bigot.
Canada like that kind of thing?
Yes, in fact they do. I remember 45 years ago when I was living in Canada as a child and my friend who invited me to stand with the girl guides to see the queen, her mom couldn't say anything nice, only how Princess Anne resembled a horse.
They're actually kind of nasty. And they hate Americans, even way back then.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A political and legal decisiveness on the part of the Arab world is besieging the Lebanese Hezbollah party, which is affiliated to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. There is a wall being built which is getting stiffer and higher with every passing minute.
Hours after the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries declared Hezbollah, its branches, affiliates and leaders as "terrorist group" -- without separating the military and political wings like the Europeans, the Council of Arab interior ministers agreed with the decision. Leb and Iraq, however, were not party to this decision.
These Gulf and Arab measures are not going to end at this point. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) must also take a decision so that any subsequent international effort in this direction stands on solid grounds.
Hezbollah’s was rightly described during the Arab interior ministers’ statement in Tunisia as an entity that is "destabilizing the Arab region." It is adept at establishing terror networks and outlawed gangs, diffusing toxic propaganda and training murderers all over the Arab world. Probably its worst is yet to come.
It is just that the mask has now fallen off, revealing the threat posed by Iran to the security of the Arab world and many other countries around the Islamic world.
Similar response
Hezbollah’s reaction to the announcement was expected to be similar to that of its allies. Through its parliamentary bloc -- The Loyalty to the Resistance That'd be the Hezbullies, natch... Bloc -- it targeted Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... even though the decision was taken by the entire GCC. It was alleged that the GCC’s decision is a starting point for the development of Saudi-Israeli relations.
The Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... movement denounced the decision to ban Hezbollah. In its political council statement, Yemen’s Houthis said the decision is "reckless and serves the interests of the angry Zionist entity and its tools in the region."
"Leb’s Hezbollah is the vanguard of resistance against the Zionist regime (Israel) and Iran is proud of the group," Iranian state TV quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying.
Gulf countries had considered charging Hezbollah with terrorism in 2013 but a consensus could not be developed. However, today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... latest developments show that Gulf citizens, including Kuwaitis, have started to sense the threat Hezbollah poses to regional security.
The Arab problem with Hezbollah is that it is a source of military training and permanent internal strife, especially with its attempts to monopolize Shiite representation across borders.
Hezbollah is now under Arab siege. Hassan Nasrallah’s numerous speeches are of no use in this situation. The matter at hand is more serious than mere speeches.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/07/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
A siege? Does this mean They Have Them Surrounded, or whatever word they keep mistranslating as Surrounded?
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Any gang holding a country hostage on behalf of a foreign state is a traitorous terrorist militia, not a resistance movement and certainly not a legitimate political party, as Hezbollah has always claimed. Its tentacles, stretching from Tehran, have rendered Leb a failed state posing a threat to the region.
Given diminishing hope that the honorable Lebanese would reclaim their country, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states officially declared Hezbollah a terrorist group - together with "its leaders, factions and affiliated organizations" - because of "hostile acts" in Syria, Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... and Iraq, inciting sedition, smuggling weapons and recruiting terrorists.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/07/2016 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
h/t Instapundit
The campus wars aren’t really about race. Race and the rest of the identity politics roster are the engine for transforming an academic environment into an activist environment.
The average campus already skews left, but it maintains the pretense of serving an educational purpose. The demands put forward on various campuses begin with racial privileges, but do not end there. These demands call for politicizing every department, the mandatory political indoctrination of all students and faculty, and the submission of non-political academic departments to activist political ones.
The campus wars are a declaration that activist non-academic departments that offer identity politics analysis while contributing nothing and which often owe their existence to campus clashes from a previous generation, should dominate all areas of life and thought at every university.
Imagine if physics majors rioted and demanded that every single area of study on campus had to incorporate theoretical physics and hire physics majors. That is exactly what is happening with identity politics studies. It’s a naked power grab that has the potential to redefine academia as we know it.
#1
These demands call for politicizing every department, the mandatory political indoctrination of all students and faculty, and the submission of non-political academic departments to activist political ones. If allowed to happen, more rot will set in and it is doubtful one will be able to get a decent education in these institutions.
Things have gotten so bad at the University of Tennessee that the Legislature has threatened to cut off funding to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion; the office that came up with the non-celebration of Christmas recommendations and new pronouns to satisfy LGBT demands.
This is also why government takeover is so important in education. If we have a free market the response is the institution of private schools that don't play these games.
It is classic rent-seeking behavior to get laws and regulations passed to prevent this kind of competition.
#4
Don't forget, if you aren't a 'named' institution these are in the business of enrollment, not education. Headcount is student loan finance. Funded work-study programs are magnets for INTELS (international and telecommuting students).
Pretty much government funded late-term indoctrination and money wash.
#5
I like the idea of requiring Physics content and faculty in every major - add a dose of reality. I am willing to leave the math at pre-calculus until upper level English Lit classes. And PDE & tensors until grad level Socialogy.
#11
Glenmore, the last time I talked to a physics professor I got the impression that political correctness and the necessity of toeing the line in certain subjects (like global warming) were becoming a problem.
#13
Glenmore, I stopped taking physicists seriously the third (maybe fourth) time one tried to explain to me that evolution can't work (apparently some minds just can'r encompass the idea of variation followed by selection)
[The Diplomat] Over the last several months, the debate about the future of the United States’ nuclear-powered carrier (CVN) fleet has picked up speed again, with several major contributions coming from both sides of the aisle. Back in October, Seth Cropsey, Bryan McGrath, and Timothy Walton published their very detailed take on how to keep the carrier weapon system in the game. Not long after, well-known carrier critic Jerry Hendrix followed up on his earlier thinking on the subject in Retreat from Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation. Most recently, Kelley Sayler contributed a study on the Growing Threat to U.S. Aircraft Carriers. The issue was also discussed at length in House Armed Services Committee hearings on February 11, 2016.
While the debate revolves around the viability of the carrier and its future roles (if any), it is inevitably bound up with current events in the Asia-Pacific, including China’s continuing militarization of the South China Sea. As People’s Liberation Army (PLA) anti-access and area denial capabilities continue to grow in density and sophistication, and as the underlying technologies spread to other actors, Sayler and other skeptics argue, they will "plac[e] greater constraints on U.S. carrier operations than ever before." In the following I will argue that this amounts to a major distortion of the U.S. Navy’s historical experience, and of the evolution of the capital ship more generally -- one that needs to be addressed if the U.S. is to make realistic choices about its future naval force structure in the coming years.
#1
The problems associated with the South China Sea are not best solved with sea based naval power. Instead they should be addressed with land based naval aviation and satellites.
As for every other place we want to deploy force, the air craft carrier is good. It can dump $10K bombs on targets that destroyers and submarines need to use $10M cruise missiles on. So, fundamentally, it is an expensive delivery system for cheap bombs. And since it lasts for about 50 years, it is really not that expensive. Less than $100M per year in capital costs.
On a cost benefit basis, if a carrier delivers somewhere between 10-100 bombs on enemy stuff during a year, then it is straight up cheaper than every other ship in the fleet. And that doesn't count the FUD factor it causes in our opponents' plans.
#9
"Problems wid the South China Sea" > not just the SCS but the East China Sea + ultimately China's de facto recovery of Taiwan.
As per VARIOUS OLDER NET NEWS ARTICS, the East China Sea is Japan's #1 National Security problem + focii, while TAIWAN as above is Mainland China's = Beijing's.
I have argued or said that China will NOT allow or accept any de facto or formal Inter-Korean Reunification between NOKOR + SOKOR [DPRK + ROK] unless it first gets back Taiwan, + that Pudgy = NOKOR is well-aware of this. IFF THE COLD WAR "STATUA QUO" ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA + NE ASIA DOES NOT CHANGE, IT IS MORE LIKELY THAN NOT THAT MAINLAND CHINA, AS NOKOR'S ALREADY PREDOMINANT TRADING PARTNER [read, "Sole"], WILL SE ITS EXCESSIVE SHARE IN BILATERAL TRADE WID NOKOR RISE TO NEW HEIGHTS POTEN EVEN TO NEAR OR AT 100%. Iff the latter occurs, it won't be long for China = Beijing to formally take over the NOKOR Govt + Army.
CHINA WILL TOTALLY CONTROL NOKOR IF NOT ANNEX IT AS A ITS NEW NE CHINA SOVEREIGN PROVINCE.
The Kim Regime doesn't want any takeover of NOKOR by China for any reason, and neither does SOKOR.
#10
Yes, I remember, back in 69 or so, that we ran a simula90 9tion of nuclear war with the carrier my air wing was assigned to blasting off its planes. We figured we had about 90 minutes or so AFTER the launch codes were sent to exist; then we would be some radioactive dust settling on the sea bottom. But, the planes would have launched and a lot of other places would be radioactive as well. Yet, the carriers are still able to project power, not just bombs, over a very wide expanse of the ocean and the world.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...All the latent class biases of the Republican gentry are now on the table, and they prove more compatible with Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. Republican nihilism is the result.
