That Face When...

...you hear that Speaker Alzheimers and her Clowncarnucopia Of Fail Clowns have decided to go ahead with impeachment inquiries, a year out from the 2020 elections:

Just so we're clear here:

Then-Veep Biden, in a flagrant display of nepotism and outright corruption while in office, extorted Ukraine into firing their prosecutor, when said prosecutor was investigating shenanigans by the company on which his son, Hunter Biden, fresh from being kicked out of the Naval Reserve for being a dope fiend, sat on the board of directors, and was then collecting a salary of $50,000 a month. Doubtless for his sterling business acumen, and not at all because he was the ne'er-do-well son of the sitting VPOTUS.

(And I have a bridge for sale cheap if you believe that one...)

Biden has admitted he did exactly this, and no one's whispering a word about investigating that, charging or prosecuting him for it, or anyone pulling Gropey Dopey Joe aside, and suggesting he take a gun and one bullet, and go seclude himself and do the honorable thing, for the Dumbocrat Party and the country's sake.

Instead, President Trump is being investigated (!), for asking the Ukrainians, in compliance with a treaty signed into law by Bill Clinton, to fulfill their obligations, and investigate said corruption, in pursuit of criminal conduct, including that by a sitting US government official, in exact obedience to the oath of office he took on January 20, 2017, to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed", as he is charged to do in Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution.

In short, Demented Nancy & Co. are investigating a sitting president for upholding his oath of office faithfully, and thus seeking to remove him from office for doing his job exactly as intended for every occupant of the White House since 1787.

If they succeed in their fifth  sixth open coup attempt since 2016, or damage Trump to the point that he loses in 2020, and the Dems aren't swept out of control of the House next year by a landslide, you can look forward to one thing above all others.

I think there's almost certainly going to be a shooting war in the streets.

Whether over just this, or the totality of the treason going on non-stop since 11/9/2016.
(We won't even go into what's been going on since 1800 or so.)

Because at that point, there will be no further reason to do our revolutions every four years peacefully at the ballot box, as we've done for 230+ years.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. " - President John F. Kennedy

And the Dumbocrats are doing this because they think they can win that war.

Which, quite frankly, should scare the hell out of every sane person in the country.
Once that Pandora's Box is open, no one alive has any idea what the results will be before it's closed again.

YMMV.
I could be seeing this all wrong.
But that's not where I'm putting my chips.

And even if it doesn't: The other side is willing to risk that to fundamentally change  undermine and subvert the America you grew up in.

What are YOU prepared to do?

 

Sunday Music: Gold

John Stewart, California kid and once 1/3 of the Kingston Trio, had a solo career in which he recorded more than 600 songs and released 48 albums, and even wrote the Monkee's last #1 hit "Daydream Believer".

This track was the pinnacle of Stewart's solo success at #5 on the charts, as the first cut on his 1979 album Bombs Away Dream Babies, also the peak album of his solo career. He got a little help on this one, with Lindsey Buckingham co-producing it and playing guitar, and with some killer background vocals from one of Buckingham's friends. 

Why This Argument Always Ends up The Way It Does

From comments to a link of my post at Borepatch's, courtesy of frequent commentor on multiple sites Beans:

"To use your DQ reference, say I'm on my Harley and are coming back from the shooting range with my AR race gun all tricked out. And I want to use the can. So, if open carry is legal, why can't I carry muh AR, hurhur, into DQ so I can drop a deuce and get a cone?"

Stupid hypotheticals are still stupid.

Take your AR home from the range, and then go get your ice cream. The hallmark of adulthood is impulse control and learning to live with delayed gratification. (Except, evidently, for some owners of modern carbines.) Jackassery problem solved.

(And FTR, nobody said you "can't" carry there. The word was "shouldn't". Learn the difference.)

Stop pimping arguments for the childish morons, please. You're just enabling them. As is Angus.
You both ought to know better.

You can contort all you want; if someone's open carrying long arms, in most times and places, and absent exigent extraordinary circumstances, no matter how you want to twist and gyre, you're overwhelmingly likely just being a dick for no good reason.

That has nothing to do with "them" coming for your guns.
That's been true since at least the 1960s, openly.
And yet, people then didn't wander into the local store packing a rifle either, just because they could. Because it was stupid then too.

The Open Carry Retard Posse needs to stop making everyone who owns, or carries, look as stupid as the twatwaffle who thinks his wish for ice cream right now and "muh open carry rights" trumps common sense. I don't need nor want people with a mental malfunction to self-select and appoint themselves spokesholes for "the movement". Those retards are drawn to attention-whoring like politicians are attracted to news cameras and microphones. They're making the problem worse for everyone, for zero gain, except scratching the itch of their own psychosis. The end result is plenty of good cause to restrict a natural right, because they're that short-sighted. Hitching your wagon to their tractor of Dumbass isn't helping anyone, in any way, except those who are "coming for your guns".

I repeat, please, stop enabling stupid people and carrying their water.

Otherwise, take your same hypothetical, and make it stopping off for a tour of the White House, the local government building, or watching the weekend high school football game, and show your work. "Why shouldn't I be able to register my vehicle or pay my property taxes on the way home from the range with an AR-15 on my back?" It's that stupid, and there isn't enough lipstick at the entire mall to pretty up that pig.

Stupid ideas are always stupid, and nothing in either natural law nor the Second Amendment ever changes that. Play stupid games...

So why does this idiocy persist?

Because you can't argue someone out of a position with common sense and logic, if he didn't use them to get to his position in the first place.

Newsflash, kids: the Second Amendment isn't absolute. Neither is the First.
They are both limited by common sense and common law.
And neither gives you the right to gratuitously scare the shit out of people, which is all this is about.
You want to exercise the right to carry a weapon when you need one, which means you can't be out flaunting your surrogate dick everywhere all the time, when you don't need to.

Try a thought experiment: Think Navy Seals. Army Special Forces and Rangers. Marine Force Recon/Raiders. The SAS/SBS. Certified Tacticool Badasses. Operating operationally way beyond you, any day of your life.
Posted below: All the times you see them toting guns to the supermarket, the bank, and the local ice cream parlor, 1960-present:




So just maybe, catch a fucking cluebat there, right in the back of your head.

And when, because of fucktards coming in with their carbine on their shoulders, and sending little old ladies and schoolkids into tizzy fits, Dairy Queen bans all open and concealed carry on all their private property, which trumps your Second Amendment rights by a country mile, because you were busy being a civil rights attention-whoring jackass, don't come crying on the internet saying the business owner hates guns.
The reality is, the business owners hates idiots. And the shoe fits.

When an entire state bans open carry, because you've made their case for them, take full responsibility. You greased the wheels on that, and then pushed right along with the gun-banners, to make guns in public less likely, because you could.

When you manage to turn the trend around, of allowing open carry, and start turning the clock back to no carry anywhere nationwide, like you will, own that too.

Well played, genuisii.

Because, snowflake Baby Duck historically clueless folks, back in the misty beyond of time out of mind, even Califrutopia was a full Open Carry state. No, really. Just like Texas is now. So, how'd that work out?

One day, somebody realized that meant for anybody not otherwise prohibited.
So we got this here:



When it's 1966, and you've lost the NRA and conservatives like Reagan, you've lost the entire country. And you did.

What could possibly go wrong now? Ask voters in Philly how they feel about Black Panthers monitoring polling places with weapons in hand. (Probably the same way cops in CA felt about a carload of armed Black Panthers rolling up to "monitor" them writing tickets to black drivers in 1966; just a hunch.) CA wasn't a Leftard Paradise in 1966. You could look it up.

And this isn't about race. It could be (will be) biker gangs. MS-13. Antifa. PETA. Skinheads. Save The Whales. Or any 57 other groups of fuckwits. And in about 0.2 seconds, people will see the gaping elephant-sized hole in your Open Carry Everywhere arguments, and that's the ball game for you, for another century or more, while the tide rolls back in those same 45 states.  (You'll be dead by then, but hey, fuck your kids and grandkids, amirite?)

Now ponder the timeless logic that "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
I blame Common Core and stupid parents for not raising kids to know the meaning of "ought". Getting the concept across nowadays is harder than teaching Chinese calculus to most folks.

Own your fucktardery, if you've been trooping your hardware in public in the first place, to be a dick, because you have no common sense. And then apologize to everyone else for making yet another place off-limits to self-selected sensible carry, or any carry at all, because of your jackassery.

Like. This. Has.

I will list, below, every instance of the Open Carry Assclown Posse owning that, since ever:











QED

So stop being dicks, stop carrying water for the dickheads, and go bandage your own dick if you think this is an unlimited black and white discussion.

Real life is harder than that.
It requires some brain usage.
The Founders saw that requirement as a feature, not a bug.
Try and keep up.

It's taken 50 years of hard, patient work to claw our way back to laws in 90% of the country based on common sense.

So, if only for the novelty where open carry is concerned, try using some

Have It Your Way

Unless you're in an episode of "The Walking Dead".

I wasn't looking for trouble.
And I'd rather not have cranked out this post.
I had thought the prior butthurt from Angus over open carry stupidity had been patched up.
Clearly, I was mistaken.

Reference the linked post: Which Is Scarier?

Here are your choices:

 

 

This isn't hard, and it isn't a trick question.

My answer at McThag's blogsite, was that #2 is scarier.
And to my best recollection, for the following reasons:

Because #2 is frequently randomly evil.

Cops are humanly stupid, and handing them a bigger hammer means the mistakes get bigger as a result.

#2 concerns me far more, because there's not a damned thing I can do about it, doubly so if it's coming after me personally, short of multiple felonies and one or more homicides.

So #2 is definitely scarier.
Now, we move on to which is stupider?

#1, by contrast, is simply enormously jackassically stupid.

#1 I can do something about, starting with beating the individual responsible (at least metaphorically) over the head with the exact bag of hammers he's using for brains, because a jackass is a jackass.

#1 (the fucktard with a slung carbine at the food court) is not a civil rights warrior, he's an attention whore with an exhibitionist fetish. (The two guys with holstered pistols I couldn't give two fucks about, in case that wasn't clear to Angus. They should rock on.)
The rest of my comments regarded an agreement with the stupidity of Califrutopia's laws regarding almost any open carry, contrary to the tide in 45 or so other states.
That was it.



According to Angus, that was impolite, and blitzed to the ether.
His blog.
His choice.

But I can and will point stupidity like that out every chance I get, here if not anywhere else. That's not impolite, and it's not a betrayal of the Second Amendment, it's a decision that I don't want screw-loose jackasses to be the PIOs for my team. If pointing out that jackassery by third parties got shell fire too far inside someone else's living room, well, tough shit.
Ban it all you want, and I'll just post it here. I could be wrong, but I suspect I've got a bigger audience. I damned sure can be more eloquent about it without tiptoeing around. Either way, it doesn't matter. No slight to the bloghost there was uttered nor intended, but clearly offense was taken anyways.

So let's be clear:

Anybody who thinks that you should be open-carrying AR-15s at the food court is a fuckwit.
Unless there are Zombies and ninja assassins there, 24/7/365.
No? Then fuckwit. Period. Full stop.
Not a calm, rational voice.

That says nothing about whether you should be allowed to, or whether the Second Amendment is a good thing or a bad thing.

Hell, since we're shooting at each other, I'll go all in:
The Second Amendment says "arms", not "guns".
The Founders weren't idiots, and the words of each amendment in the Bill of Rights were not lightly nor randomly selected.

Recall, please, that the Redcoats were going to Lexington and Concord for cannons, powder, and shot, not just muskets and musket balls. Which anybody could own.

I think I'm on damned fine ground that the Second Amendment said "arms" because the whole damned arsenal was up for ownership, not just pistols and rifles.
I think that means crew-served weapons, artillery in actual fact, and tanks, airplanes, and battleships too. (If you can feed it, you can keep it.) Otherwise the sections concerning Letters of Marque would have been pointless.

And if some guy had a frigate, and permission from Uncle Sugar to do it, and was selling spots to hunt pirates in any of a dozen worldwide trouble spots, you and I know the sign-up list of spots would be sold out in 30 minutes, with lines around the block.

Pirates would be more endangered than rhinos if we went there. And we should have, long ago.

And if anyone suggested that at an NRA meeting, the pussified leadership there would shit their pants. (The crowd of the membership would likely put you on the Board of Directors by vocal acclaim, in contrast.)

The Knob Creek Machinegun Shoot should be held in all 50 states, annually.

Even in gun-hating Britistan, a guy can take the tank to the petrol station, without Special Branch going all SWAT roid-rage on him:

But that's because even there, they haven't had 42 guys with tanks lighting up a mall, just because they could. And note that these guys also didn't train the main armament at people "just for laughs". The first time that starts to become a thing, they'll be limited to trailer-only, to certified shows and events. Or banned outright. But then again, the folks with the wherewithal to buy a tank, there or here, generally value their toys enough not to be jackasses in public with one.

The same can clearly not be said about people with AR-15s and the like.

Which is why toting a battle rifle on your back to get a burger and fries is simply jackassical stupidity, and everyone with an IQ above room temperature knows why.

We are an armed society, and also generally a polite one, and that sort of a-whoring violates common sense decorum, and gives reasonable people grounds to be very much on edge. Just to accommodate the perversions and mental incapacity of a few lunatics, seeking the farthest limits of a constitutional right. There's always some idiot who'll stand on the fence at the Grand Canyon or the zoo, and lean over, and next thing you know, everyone finds that fence moved back fifty yards, of necessity.
And who's butthurt and screaming the loudest then?

The Assclown Posse.

Now, if you were at the Hooterville Quick Sack, on your way home from deer hunting, and stopped in with your bolt-action slung over your Realtree on the drive home, fine.
Fellow comes into the roadside market or diner with a broke open shotgun and a brace of birds neckstrung during duck season after limiting out, no harm, no fowl foul.

But if you showed up in town at Chez FouFou for dinner in a tux with a slung Uzi, you deserve to get kicked right the fuck to the curb, and stepped on face-first upon landing.

Because you're violating the right to carry? Or because all open carry is bad?
O Hell NO.

Because you're a fucking moron with no sense of appropriate manners and public behavior.
Hence, probably too stupid to trust with any weapon, let alone in public. And, 80/20, in desperate need of an ass-beating going back to grade school.

And I'm not talking on behalf of hoplophobes or neutral observers. I'm telling you you're a jackass to most rational gun owners too. If anything, even more than you are to the people who hate all guns. Because those of us who own, and carry upon occasion, can tell the difference between protecting a civil right, and just being a fuckwit in public. The two are not the same thing. Anyone who cannot tell the difference has gone blind, and probably crazy.

These dimbulbs are the same jackwads who muzzle sweep the entire gun store and half the gun show, then get butthurt again when someone who doesn't think it's funny suggests they're about to activate their dental plan deductible.

In Israel, where Sudden Jihadi Syndrome can happen anywhere and anytime, that same Uzi in the pizza parlor or even for fine dining would be seen as what it is: a comfort, and simple common sense. Circumstances dictate what is sensible. Duh.

Hell, even in the Marines, we carried M-16s onto a jetliner.
But we didn't take them to the PX or the barber shop. Go figure.
Sort of like some modicum of common sense was involved.

Here, in general society, you're a loose wingnut in probable need of psychological evaluation if you do that.
(I make public exception to doing so in South Chicongo, Detroitistan, the District of Corruption, or the territory of the Baltimorons, for the same reason: Circumstances dictate what is sensible. Some people oughta write that down on their hands, lest they forget.)

But absent similar levels of violence everywhere, #1 is egregious public stupidity in most times and places you could name or imagine.

Until either general disorder, or the Zombpocalypse, that doesn't change.
You want to pack a pistol, openly or concealed, no problem.

Notice nowhere did I state nor even mildly suggest that you should be accosted, flung to the ground by law enforcement, dragged by the heels to a mental institution, nor shot on sight by other folks, simply for being such a public fuckwit.
(That it will happen anyways 99 times out of 100 is both a bonus for society, and more proof that I'm right, and you're wrong, and just gives the police grounds and probable cause to go too far in the future, because you couldn't color inside the lines of common sense, like everyone should, except in extreme situations. Pissing into the wind is always its own reward.)

But citizens, as a general rule, shouldn't be toting long arms - rifle or shotgun - for the same reasons police officers shouldn't go everywhere with them in their hands either.
Because it's rude, socially unacceptable, tactically indefensible, and egregiously stupid, and somebody's going to get hurt. And not just butthurt.

Tell me I'm wrong: tell me you want Officer Friendly to have a shotgun in his mitt when he pulls you over for a traffic infraction any time he feels like it, or interviews you about some matter of interest.
Tell me it's not intimidating, and needless, and inherently unsafe.

Tell me you want your neighbors in Smallville to have an AK on their shoulders everywhere they go, including to your front door. (Even in by-God Texas, BBQ guns do not include shoulder weapons, AFAIK.)

If you do tell me that, you're either full of crap, or bat-crap insane.
And if you've got a weapon in your hand or handy in that state, and neither I nor anyone else can readily tell which one it is, there are going to be problems. Mainly for you.

Leave your rifle in the rack, Jack.
You want to be a public assclown, wear an actual real clownsuit.
With floppy shoes and a red sponge nose.
At least then, we can tell what you were about in public,without asking.

If that dose of reality is impolite to anyone, I suggest the feminine hygiene products aisle at your local store, for tampons and Midol.
Slung carbine optional, but definitely not recommended.

Why Bobby Is Polling Inside The Margin Of Error

h/t Kenny

Surburbia sez, "BFYTW, Bobby. But thanks for re-electing Trump, @$$hole."

Sunday Music: Life During Wartime

A little more dystopian fun for you today.
Music by the Talking Heads from 1979.
Words from tomorrow's headlines.
Or the day after.

Dreaming, Or Planning?

A lot of people are just dreaming. About any number of things.

If what you're working on is always going to be done tomorrow, you're daydreaming, not planning or working.

Time is short. You don't know it's up until it's too late.
You want a castle?
Git 'er done.

Re: Cold Fury - Relax, Everybody

h/t Fran Porretto and Liberty's Torch

In case the (annual) disappearance of Cold Fury has you worried, rest easy:

"Some of you may have noticed the sudden disappearance of my Cold Fury websty this week, an annual phenomenon that usually occurs when I forget to pay for the domain name registration each year. It's a real mental glitch I have going on with this, I admit. I registered the CF name and started the blog in direct response to the 9/11 attacks, six days after the fact on 9/16. Oughta be easy enough to remember that, right? And yet...here we all are. Again.  

But this year is a little different."... - Mike hisownself

RTWT

Bigger, better, badder.
Patience is a virtue.

Ahoy, Maties!

h/t Borepatch

Avast, scaliwags!
We be about some other pressin' urgent affairs, so ye's can have all the day at your leisure.
Splice the mainbrace, it be five o'clock somewhere, for a surety.
Customary shenanigans will recommence some'at later in the day, possibly after the last dog watch in these parts. Or mayhap not before the forenoon watch on the morrow.
And remember me hearties, it be "Rape - Kill -Pillage - Burn" - in that order.
And be square in yer dealin's. Otherwise ye may be handed a black spot.
We're not acertain of what happens after'ards, but like as not it be nothin' to wish for.

"...and really bad eggs..."

Hey, Waitaminute...

Bummer II

It's a tough week for rock 'n roll.
RIP Cars' leadman Ric Ocasek, 70, of natural causes, in NYFC yesterday.
Another great band taken by the sands of time (Benjamin Orr went way too young), and another catalog I can play in my sleep.
Their debut cuts from 41 years ago are as fresh now as the day the needle dropped on vinyl on Track One and Track Two.

 

There's Always Someone Who Never Gets The Word

"Those six thousand ships you say they haven't got?"

"WELL,THEY'VE GOT THEM!!!"

Whether it's invasion fleets and Werner Pluskat's commander at Normandy, giant sharks and small-town mayors, or weaponized drones and drone experts, there's always somebody who'll tell you it can't happen.

More than a year ago, here and over at Peter's Bayou Renaissance Man blog, I and numerous other posters pointed out that drones were going to be successfully weaponized, and kick the ass of soft targets.

A self-proclaimed subject matter expert, who for decorum I shall not point at directly (you can figure it out yourself without too much effort) explained we had to be wrong, because using drones to attack, in my example from TWO years ago, oil refineries (among other targets) with explosives or incendiaries couldn't happen, ever, because they couldn't lift enough to ever get the job done.

It was simply UNPOSSIBLE!

Sh'yeah.
And the Titanic was UNSINKABLE.

Mea culpa. Weaponizing drones is unpossible.

Oops.
Looks like somebody forgot to tell the Yemeni rebels that this could never work.

 

But let's give the expert his due: they didn't stick with piddly little hobby drones with 1lb payloads. Hell no.

These guys have money.

The built big, long-range drones. Launched perhaps from 900+ miles away.

Y'know, like people with huge backing will do.

This time.

 

I would feign humility at being so right, if it didn't happen so frequently.

This isn't an accident, or blind guesswork.  And nobody is right 100% of the time, including me. But this was Eddie Murphy-at-a-Klan-rally obviously going to happen.

I look at things, draw rational conclusions, and extrapolate data in what appears to me to be a reasonable direction and distance.

And I called this sort of thing in 2017. So did Peter. So did others.

Hell, Tom Clancy called a terrorist using a jetliner as a missile in 1994, seven years before 9/11, and he was just a well-read insurance agent with an active imagination.

But it was the guy who was sure it couldn't possibly ever happen because of his own expertise on drones that missed this by a country mile, 180° in the wrong direction.

 

Now cue the next round of "See? I told you no one could do anything with COTS drones from Best Buy!" Which will be true, until it isn't. Because not everyone who wants to bomb a refinery (or something bloodier) has the backing of Iran, and millions of dollars of assets to fund it. So when someone drops a soda can thermite bomb over the LNG terminal at San Pedro/Long Beach, and it looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud going off, remind yourself it's still unpossible.

 

Because who'd want to do that?

Oh, I mean, besides the jihadi on a tight budget.

 

Dear Mayor Vaughan,

 

Consider your ass bitten.

 

FROM TWO F****** YEARS AGO, GENIUS!
NOW can we close the goddam beaches and holler "Shark!"?
Or was this just a figment of our over-active imagination too???

Technology doesn't have a side.
It merely has applications.

Sunday Music: Miami 2017

Starting today, a couple of dystopian epics. This one has always been my first pick.
If you listen to it, you can appreciate the artistry and musicianship of Messr. Joel and his go-to backup band at the height of their powers. But on a first run-through, just enjoy the lyrics.

Just To Make A Point

From nearly a decade ago, just popped up on my YouTube list of random stuff.

Less than 3 minutes long, and better than the last four Disney-fornicated StarWhores movies combined (AKA "$6B Shot To Hell!").

Kudos to whoever was behind this bit of fun.
I doubt they'll read this, but if they added the Darth v. Obi Wan final lightsaber fight, and hit that one out of the park too, they'd be scifi fanfilm gods!

And next, I want the R. Lee Ermey Vader, in this vein.
If I had the skills and equipment, I'd do it myself.

Enjoy.

Of Course, This Will NEVER Be Misused

h/t Bayou Renaissance Man

For what it is, it's great.

The key component is the GPS.

Getting back to the perpetual drone-bomb topic, how long before low-tech non-country players use this method to air-deliver 1-ton bomb loads right onto a target?

Unless you've pre-degraded GPS (which we almost never do, because of civil aviation), your first clue will be when Mohammed FedEx's you a 2000-pound nitrocellulose enema.

This thing is nothing but a cardboard box with wings and a simple brain.

Of course, no one will ever do that with something you could drop from a Cessna 15 miles away.

Let alone from airliners 40 miles away at 25k'.

As if.

And if you think one-ton blivets of drugs from the cartels that can be pinpoint-dropped to a waiting van far from the border aren't going to start being a thing, just like semi-submersible coke ships are, I've got a bridge for sale, cheap.

You'll also see them dropping resupply to groups way out in the Middle Of Nowhere, to facilitate human smuggling. You read it here first. (The solution to that is to build the frickin' wall, so they can't get here in group quantities.)

This is going to make air defense and interdiction quite a thing, going forward, at every level.

What goes around, comes around.

Technology doesn't have a side. It merely has applications.

Bummer. RIP.

Former beat cop with the NYPD, and rock and roller Edward J. Mahoney, AKA Eddie Money, has died at 70, a week after the announcement that he had Stage IV esophageal cancer (for reference, Stage V is Forest Lawn).

A good guy, good tunes, and no whiff of stupidity or scandal marred his career. Guy just liked to rock.

70 years is always a pretty good run. Doubly so with a string of Top 40 hits.
But those cancer sticks will do what they do.
Here's hoping he's in paradise.

Every Day Is 9/11. That's Exactly The Problem.

Reprinted from 9/11/2018. It's a year later (or eighteen, take your pick); NOTHING has changed.

9/11/2001: A resident of NYFC gets culturally enriched by the Diversity.

I'm a guy. And while I assent to cultural tradition, if you're one too, or you've got a husband, boyfriend, son, or father, you've probably caught on that we really aren't built to care a helluva lot about anniversaries and other such dates.

Saber-tooth in those bushes? You have my full attention.
Hot steak dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy? You had me at steak.
Same spot on the calendar as one 365 days ago, or some multiple thereof? Zzzzzzzzzz

You're fighting upstream against the way our brains are wired on all three levels: human, monkey, and lizard.

And the fact is, at all three levels of my brain, every day is 9/11.
Yesterday was.
Tomorrow will be.
Today is just a happy conjunction of reality and the construct of the Gregorian calendar.
Nothing more nor less.

Because the murdering, semi-literate goat-humpers who perpetrated the act we remember are still out there.
We (you, me, Western civilization, etc.) haven't delivered to them the Third Punic War level of recompense they richly deserve, because reasons. Mostly bullshit ones, at that.

It's too much.
Hey, fuckwit, they wiped out international air travel for months, vaporized billions in the economy of every nation in the world, including the ones least able to absorb that, not just ours in the U.S., engendering a decade-plus series of wars and thousands to tens of thousands of casualties, that really hasn't stopped since they started circa the 7th Century, and won't until we end the problem, by ending the problem children.
Sorry if that unvarnished reality spoils your breakfast, but shit happens.

It's mean.
Really, dipshit? Meaner than destroying the lives of thousands of strangers in the service of your child-molesting leader, and his fanatical devotion to an imaginary death-cult deity?
Meaner than setting buildings on fire, and subjecting thousands of strangers to slow torture by fire, smoke, and worst of all, the time to contemplate the full hopelessness of their situation, such that they'd rather, in hundreds of cases, try flying from the 80th floor of a skyscraper rather than burn to death, or wait to be crushed under hundreds of tons of smoking rubble, screaming all the way to the impact at the bottom?
Okay, you win. I hereby concede that justice demands that every fanatical follower of theirs, including their bomb-toting children, should only be lit on fire, and kicked out of an aircraft at altitude, to scream in unspeakable agony the entire way until impact. Call it Hammurabi 2.0.
Happy now?

That's not who we are.
You got a mouse in your pocket, soy-boi?
Who we are is a disgrace. Who we should be, are the guys who nuked Mecca and Medina, same day, then slaughtered everything left after that, in a feat worthy of Genghis Khan, and then introduced endangered species to graze there in perpetuity, so as to have enough lions and crocodiles handy to feed any stragglers to for the next few centuries.

They aren't all like the terrorists.
Really? That's why the "moderates" cheer and hand out candy when the "fanatics" kill your fellow citizens? How many times will you have to be jihaded by "moderates" who experience Sudden Jihadi Syndrome™, in San Bernardino, or Ft. Hood, or Tennessee, or a hundred other places, before the penny finally drops for you?
By their own doctrine, they're either fanatics, or apostates.
Moderate is a western invention, like unicorns and the Easter Bunny.
You could look it up.

Have a nice big steaming hot cup of Reality, Snowflake:
 

Fanatical Muslims give the other 1% a bad name.

When we should have been whole-heartedly focused on depriving their civil rights, with high explosives, until there wasn't even a single breeding pair left in captivity, we instead had undisguised opportunists waiting to violate our civil rights, submitting us to indignities and violations that would have made Heinrich Himmler and his acolytes salivate, if not progress to actually lewdly abusing themselves in public. Groping my underpants and forcing me to walk shoeless to board a plane hasn't stopped a single terrorist incident ever, nor ever will.
Meanwhile, the recidivism rate for those granted a new .223 caliber third eye in their foreheads is still running at a flawless perfect 0%, every single time it's tried. Suck on that mathematical reality, and get back to me.

We have the spectacle of entire nations self-destructing under the onslaught of "refugees", suspiciously all military-aged males, minus women and children, streaming from every not-at-war Turd World Shitholia and Trashcanistan, raping entire populations in plain sight, for decades, with the full approval of the authorities, and pillaging the cultural heritage of the entire civilized world. And Stockholm Syndrome times Battered Wives' Syndrome is alive and well; but not just in Stockholm, but in Berlinistan, Londonistan, Paristan, Romistan, Rotherham, Chemnitz, and every other future no-go zone in the caliphate that's spreading like cancer from Spitzbergen to Sicily.
To Syracuse.
To San Diego.
Let me know when realization dawns for you.

Charles Martel, Ferdinand of Spain, Vlad The Hero, and the entire interred Knights of Malta are twirling in their graves so hard it should be gyroscopically spinning the planet out of solar orbit.

And we elected an illegal alien jihadist here, who spent most of a decade denying the obvious truth before everyone's lying eyes: we know who the problem is, we know where the problem is, we have the means to solve it, but none dare speak that, or they'll be fact-shamed for their truthiness, and banished from the public square.

When Ann Coulter nailed it on 9/12 or so, the shrieks hit pitches that were heard by dogs in space.

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

I'm far less missionary-minded: I'd settle for 2 out of 3, and add "kill them all, burn their homes, slaughter their livestock, salt their fields, and throw the corpses in their wells, after we crap in them." If they have spiritual aspirations, that's just fine. And the sooner we arrange that meeting for them with God to be face-to-face, the better for all concerned.

But I'm sentimental like that.

Remember 9/11??
You must be joking.

The half-assed, half-witted, half-stepping pseudo-response to 9/11 has ensured that every day is 9/11.

Ask a thousand English girls enslaved for sex in their own country, and passed around like so much white meat. For a decade, while Britistani officialdom watched.
(Dear British pussies: you should be hunting down like Adolph Eichmann, and beheading, on YouTube and LiveLeak, with dull rusty saws, every public official who did that, and putting their freshly-severed heads on London Bridge, but you're all women now, the best part of your DNA ran down the legs of French ladies of your grandfathers' era in the countryside outside Verdun, and you deserve the butt-raping you'll be getting in your own towns until you fix that. If ever. If you're too squeamish, maybe you can hire it out to the Gurkhas, but it still needs getting done. Sorry about the shoe fitting and all.)
Ask numbers beyond account stabbed, shot, or run over in France.
Ask the women of Germany and Sweden and Norway, gang-raped in 100% of cases by the very same swarthy "Asian" hordes of rapefugees they foolishly welcomed into their homelands.

So far, outside of a few divisions of veterans of places like Samar, Mogadishu, Fallujah, Anbar province and the like, and a handful of Americans armed with rolled up newspapers and butter knives on a flight over Shanksville PA until it ended as a smoking hole in the ground, we haven't done nearly enough, and until we do, we're going to keep remembering, and re-living, the unspeakable agony of that day, until either there's no one left who cares, given that they're all bowing five times a day facing Mecca; or until there's no one left to do it to humanity again, ever, for all time.

When someone tells you they're coming for you, take them at their word.
If it's going to come down to that, it's always better to be the one twisting the bayonet, rather than the one impaled on the end.

Sooner or later, you're going to figure that out.
Hopefully, the light will dawn while you still have the means to make a choice in the matter.

Mo doesn't like Western civilization? Wants to bring about global sharia?
I'm your Huckleberry.
I'll see your jihad, and raise you the Last Crusade. I'm all in, in fact.
So quit dicking around, and flop that last card.

"Let's roll."

When You're Hitting Your Head Against A Wall...

...it feels so good to stop.

Cdr. Salamander is a stand up guy, with a solid blog bailiwick.
Regarding the Navy in general, and the Surface Warfare side of Big Blue in particular, he's a pure gold go-to destination.

Infantry topics and small arms: not so much.

Case in point: 6.8mm on the way

"Ground combat is not my specialty, my professional toolbox has big things that make big fireballs going out and going in, look cool on video, and require AC power - but please. There are more bad theories there than you can shake a stick at. I thought we stressed Aimed Fire? Spray and pray is what poorly trained targets do. Say what you want about the Soldier or Marine of 2006, but "..poorly trained and clueless 18 yr old" isn't very accurate. There was a move post OEF/OIF experience to go to a 6.5/6.8mm, but the bean counters, again, are trying to kill it."

To which we remonstrated, quite a bit more on-point:

1) Unless the laws of physics were revoked while I was off fishing, WTH difference is caliber going to make in accuracy for Sam Snuffie?
Either you train your people to shoot straight (Marines/most SOF), or you don't (Big Green and everyone else).
A new caliber will give you precisely Jack and Squat in that endeavor.
The only thing that'll help is proper initial training, and regular refreshers.

2) Adopting .26 or .27 caliber versus .223 or .30 will change nothing except how many shots per pound, the size of the hole (if you hit your target in the first place), and the penetration achieved/achievable.
Nothing else notable.
No other result is possible.

This windmill-tilting quest is the Military Industrial Complex version of vinyl/8-track/cassette/CD or Betamax/VHS/DVD/BD/4K, except without any of the helpful improvements in quality of the latter two examples. It's change to make a profit for everyone but the buyer.
A business deal is good when both parties come off better off.
When one side gets the money, and the other side gets the shaft, the useful forensic terms for that are fraud and swindle.
I'm assuming that was not the desired intent...?

3) Oh, except for one definite change:
making obsolete overnight every bit of stockpiled ammunition and parts, and requiring an entirely new procurement chain, delivered product, ammunition, spares, maintenance tools and equipment, training materials, affecting everyone from the issued item's end users to third-level maintenance, and shooting ground combat readiness in the pants for a few years during the changeover.
This is the Manager's Special, where you get $1/lb ground beef for $15 for 10#. The Manager loves that. The customer, not so much.

So, we're going to go with new Magic Beans, because the old beans were just...beans?
Except you're spending non-infinite dollars to get them.
So, how did that approach work for the F-35 Thunderjug, the Little Crappy Ships, and the Ford?
Got plenty of money left over for shells, bombs, fuel, training, and maintenance, have you??

And when you buy the New Hotness, what changes, other than the bottom line of certain Military Industrial Complex corporations and salesmen?
The only thing driving this change is people looking for commendation medals and promotions over in the Braid Grades.
It does bupkus for the grunts.

This is why Pentagon Wars is more documentary than black comedy.

You want to help the grunts?
Get them the best machineguns, mortars, and artillery, which each kill more than rifles, in any war since 1865.
Our issue rifles work fine, and have been top-notch since 1903. (If you want to buy new replacements exactly like the old ones every decade or two, when the old ones are shot out, well and good. But that doesn't require scrapping the entire alligator from tooth to tail, even if you can.) 
Even the Krag wasn't that bad, and twenty years of product improvement even turned the M-16 into what it was meant to be before the Army fornicated up the original concept. Nobody's come up with anything better in rifles since the FAL and the Armalite. Nor, likely, ever will.
Most changes since 1945 have been keeping up with the Joneses/STANAG problems, or raw envy. And the result of that has been mixed, at best.
Even our obsolescent stuff from 80 years ago is and would continue to be quite deadly and adequate, which proves the point that a new rifle is a genuinely stupid idea.
And nothing anyone dreams up will change anything in that regard until we adopt phased plasma rifles in the 40W range.

In this respect, the bean counters are trying to stop someone from making a stupid mistake with Other People's Money (and lives, when it gets down to it).

You really want to help the grunts out?
Can the Ordnance Branch. Wholesale.
It took them 25 years and more, plus two-three wars, to admit the FN-MAG was superior to the M-60 p.o.s. our troops were force-fed.
They didn't improve our WW2 mortars for forty years.
They adopted a too-heavy 155mm towed howitzer, only lately (finally!) replaced.
They still barely noticed that a quality 105mm light howitzer might improve on the WWII relic in use for 50 years afterwards.

Then, if you're really serious, double the training budget, and quadruple the ammunition budget allocation, every year, forever.
The only way to shoot better, is to shoot a lot.
And you can't get a qualified ATGM shooter if you only give him one round/yr.

In Salamander terms, I can buy you the sexiest new guns for every surface combatant, but if your fire control party has their heads up their fourth point of contact, and can't hit the side of a mountain, and never gets to practice doing it, nothing I buy will make any difference.
If no one has pointed this out to you with regard to proposed 6.5/6.8mm Magical Bean Launchers, allow me to be the first.

And if someone says "We'll include more training and ammunition in the budget for the New Hotness, then WTH not do that now with current products, and save wasting $1B or three on change for change's sake?!?

But that's not sexy, and minimally affects anyone's stock price or brings home more pork to anyone's congressional district.

But that's what it means to give the troops the best.

Not buying some new rifle, and doing the same dumba$$ failure to budget/failure to train, and allocating paltry sums for annual refresher training.

Buying a new caliber weapon isn't just pointless, it's like buying an LHD, and then not allowing any time or budget for paint and dockside maintenance, and then sending it to a Baltic dog-and-pony show looking like a refugee from the Red Banner Fleet circa 1991.
So, just wondering, how's that approach working out for ya?

Asking for 2,000,000 friends.
 

Stockholm Syndrome: Denial Is A Marker

h/t Tam

Ammoman wants to try and find some rationale for Fail-Mart's recent publicly anti-gun stance. Lord only knows why, but Stockholm Syndrome is not beyond the realm of possibility here:

The gun industry has been a bit soft lately. There was a significant amount of panic buying leading up to the 2016 Presidential election. I’m not surprised by that. What we were all surprised about was the outcome of that election. The result was a drop in the market. Lots of guns waiting to be bought. That was matched with lots of folks feeling relieved over avoiding a political nightmare. Without political fear motivating consumers to make purchases, retailers saw low prices and slow sales. Many argue that this didn’t happen, but there is a name for it. We are in a “Trump slump.” Is Walmart dumping the Second Amendment for more profitable products? Maybe. 

 RTWT.

Roundabout, he eventually comes to the proper conclusion, in so many words:
Fuck Wal-Mart; shop elsewhere.

But FFS, stop trolling the bottom of the outhouse for some rationale beyond "WalMart is run  by elitist anti-gun fucktards who think they're better than you, and want to take both your money, and your rights, and have you pay for the privilege and thank them to boot."

The appropriate response to that ends with "...sideways, with a rusty chainsaw."

Does Wal-Mart have the right to decide what products they'll sell, and who can bring what into their store?
Absolutely.

Do they also get to own the backlash that such jackassical moral preening engenders?
O, fuck yeah they do, and will.

(Hey, Fail-Mart, how's that Cunning Plan worked out for the National Felony League, Dicks, and Jillette™?)

Because, rather than trying to find some financial rational for their amoral and anti-freedom kneejerk, let's note that they haven't stopped sales of liquor, auto parts, or gasoline to cut down on DUIs, nor thrown out big-screen TVs to cut down on wife-beating during the Superbowl, nor stopped selling kids' pools to cut back on drownings, nor stopped selling prybars and hammers to cut back on burglaries, nor banned ski masks and knives to help with cutting down on robberies and muggings. The one hallmark of WallyWorld is that when it comes to products, they're quite simply the amoral whores you'd expect them to be, on pretty much everything. And those auto burglaries and robberies frequently happen on their premises, and they have studiously looked the other way, and will continue to, for sheer profit's sake.
Except with guns.

So let's stop crapping around with trying to left-handedly justify this corporate horseshit by looking for some shred of credibility in "unprofitable lines". They will buy a metric fuckton of corn cob holders and happily make 1¢ a ton, and they never stopped making a profit on guns nor ammo (proof being they're selling all remaining stocks at normal price, not dumping the lot out at sea immediately), so this isn't about low profits, or responsible corporate management, it's about low-IQ senior management sucking up to the communists, and letting the people who run Antifa dictate what's right and wrong.
That's delusional mania, not management.

(Word to your mother: when you drag in the dicks at Dick's to explain your theory, you've already driven through the guardrails and off the Cliffs Of Insanity. Just saying.)

This is a business that's electing to tell you all to fuck yourself before they set themselves on fire.

The proper response to that is to hand them a torch, throw gasoline on them, and get a wind machine to fan the flames once they're gloriously alight. They will be missed not a bit, and the engine of capitalism will swallow them under the waters of companies too stupid to succeed, under which tidal flow they'll sink without even a small burp or bubble to mark their passage.

And good riddance.

The last thing they need is someone to float over on a raft and hand them a hanky for their tears, and sing them soft lullabies as they burn, then try to explain afterwards they were turning their lives around before their unfortunate bout of corporate insanity.

That's on a level of delusional people who put up flowers and candles for roadkill.

Wal-Mart didn't do this because guns and bullets weren't making them enough profit.
They did it because their owners are anti-freedom fucktards from Arkansas with a superiority complex in regards to all of America. They think corporate might makes right.

There's a cure for that: poverty.

Dulce et decorum est. Pour encourager les autres.

While they get what's coming to them, put the bong down, and stop trying to rationalize the irrational, and quit assuming no one in business could ever shoot themselves in the foot, with their feet in their mouth.
It's as common as morons on the freeway and chickens laying eggs.

Jeebus crispies, has no one ever heard of Hollywood?!?
Some of the biggest entities in America, and they burn $100 bills by the minute to make a pointless point non-stop every day for fifty years, and no end in sight.
Because they CAN.

Compared to them, Wally-World's owners are exactly the bunch of small-time Ozark inbred Jeds you'd expect them to be, compared to the world-class morons running the biggest media empires on the planet.

In both cases, they are certainly reasons for what they do; but none of them rise to the level of being sufficient excuses for the behavior.

For that, we have to resort to psychiatric diagnoses.

Let's don't, ever, endeavor to be apologists for the insane.
If you're feeling charitable, just put up the orange cones and caution tape, to warn passers-by.

If you're feeling a bit more motivated, fan the flames, and throw more logs on the fire.
If you soaked them in gasoline first, so much the better.
And don't forget to bring marshmallows and sticks.
Never let a crisis of sanity go to waste.