Happy Blogiversery To Me.

I need to thank my pal Rave for reminding me that yesterday was my second Blogiversery. We celebrated by taking all three dogs to Petsmart for a nail trim. Linda Lou refuses to do this anymore since she once cut too deep and a dog bled a little. I, of course, don't even try with my loss of coordination.

We are trying a new trick with driving with the dogs, at least until we are finished with CAP's housebreaking. Well, carbreaking. Instead of me trying to drive I sit with her and keep her from wandering about and pooping huge piles and then walking in them and spreading ground in poop all over the van. This was a qualified success. She neither pooped nor peed. Of course she threw up all over the console.

I had to get dogs. Couldn't get a nice guppy, no. Not me. I do not know what possessed us to go to Petsmart on Saturday, with the dogs. We are retired, we could have gone any day but we chose Saturday. I think that stroke took more IQ points than I thought. Like I should only be allowed to eat with a plastic spoon. To make it worse this was not just any Saturday but was Petsmart's twentieth anniversery. The place was packed with people and critters.

During the drive CAP decided she was a little baby lap puppy and, instead of riding on the floor, got in my lap. I would have rather had a brunette with low morals, I think.

Well, we survived the big outing and it's time to go clean puppy vomit out of the car. Lucky me.

I Forgot To Take New Pictures

So I forgot to take new pictures this week. Instead I'll step back in time a little and show pics of George and Captain Fatbob, the Black Pug Of Doom. It doesn't matter how much we love the new dogs, we still miss these two.

That middle picture is Bentley and me on the California coast. Captain Fatbob loved to travel.His spot was curled up at his Mama's feet in the passenger seat.

Scattershooting

I don't remember who the columnist was, or even what paper he worked for but back when I subscribed to newspapers there was a feller who often ended his column with something he called scattershooting. It was always "Scattershooting While Wondering What Happened To...." and then he would name a person who once was a celebrity that we hadn't heard from in a coon's age. Anyway I am not wondering what happened to Belle Starr, Judge Parker sentence her to hang.

I wonder if we are still allowed to say a coon's age? Ah, even if they complain I won't go genuflect to Sharpton and Jackson.


Who is this person Sheryl Crow? She seems to be famous but for what escapes me. She must be young and has never been around anybody old enough to need prune juice. Or just incredibly stupid. One square indeed. Three or four on those pesky days? Idiot.

What on earth is up with these Donks? FDR and Truman had us set up for a Donk dynasty except Ike decided to run as a Republican. Yet after Ike's two terms we were set up for Donks as far as the eye could see. Then they got us into a war and decided it was too hard. As unpopular as Viet Nam was when they pulled the rug out from under the troops it was the end of that dynasty. Since then the only way Donks could win a national election was to ambush Nixon for less than LBJ did and to run as a Republican lite like Clinton did.

Now the Donks are doing it again. Yes this war in Iraq is unpopular. The Donks don't seem to realise, though, that it's unpopular because we can't hardly see any progress. (Note: every Milblogger on the scene seems to think there is progress. and not just the Officers who we expect to follow the company line but the Noncoms, and one enlistment EMs who tend to speak their minds no matter what the Generals say) The Donks think that they can ride to power by forcing us to lose a war. Americans do not like to lose wars. I do not see a political advantage to losing this war. Nor can I see a strategic advantage. The Donks may get a short term gain but what happens when the persons of explosion hit us again? On their watch? I submit that there is a much better chance of that than the Donks getting perpetual power from causing us to lose a war. Now the nutroots, the reality based community, will say that we are not losing because of what they're doing. Does anyone with an I/Q above room temperature really thing that the fighters, munitions and money would be flowing 'cross the Syrian and Iranian borders as they are today without the Donks fighting our guys every step of the way? Not that Dubya will ever say anything about what the Donks are doing. Note to Donks, Dubya isn't running next year. Republicans will be beating the Donks over the head with this for the next forty years.

I'm in a bad mood tonight. A simple little thing like a big sale when I don't have the money. Seems that Texas Jacks, down in Fredericksburg, TX is having a big sale, including the cowboy guns. They have the Cimarron Model P revolvers, the Colt Peacemaker clone in .32-20 for two for $800.00. That old .32-20 is a great old cartridge. Depending on how we load it it is a light recoiling target and small game round. Add a little more slow burning powder like Blue Dot, 2400 or H110 or Lil Gun and it is a nifty small bore magnum with actual hitting power somewhere between the .38 Special and .357 Mag. I've always thought that the gunmakers were missing a good bet by not making a modern revolver in .32-20. Say a Ruger GP 100 or K or L frame Smith. I'd love to have a '92 Winchester in .32-20, too. It'd be a great small game rifle ans would be good for our smallish Texas Whitetails if the range was fairly close.

Another Battleground

Another thing the puppies fight over is who gets the couch. They take turns winning the place of honor by the pillow. Ming The Merciless is, of course, oblivious to all that as long as the puppies stay well away from her little bed.

I Do Not Understand.

The thing I do not understand about this mass murder in Virginia is that nobody seemed to have tried to tackle this nutcase. It seems to have been bred out of our kids, the ability to attack even when losing is a foregone conclusion.

Somewhere between when I was a child and today, something important was lost. When I was born there were still a few Civil War veterans alive, not many but some. There were even more survivors of the Spanish American War, men who had charged up Kettle Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. Men who had gone up against the Spanish Mausers while they were armed with single shot Trapdoor Springfields. Men who walked uphill, unable to shoot because the Spaniards were out of range. Those Spaniards were able to shoot, though. That's the difference between their 7mm Mausers and our .45-70s.

My Grandfather's generation went "over the top" in WW1. They charged across hundreds of yards of open, muddy fields, through barbed wire in the face of machine gun fire. My Dad's generation went across the beaches of Normandy and waded a mile through the water to get to the beach at Tarawa. My generation had the hill fights and the battle of Hue City.

When I was a child we fought back. It was important that we did not start fights but we were expected to finish them. It didn't matter if the other kids was a full head taller and forty pounds heavier, we were expected to fight back. Just as those men of the civil war would, when pushed out of a position, back away. In an age where any body hit was eventually fatal because there were no antibiotics, it still meant something to those men to not be hit in the back.

Today's children are punished for fighting back. No matter how they get attacked they get punished for fighting back. So, today, when evil walks, as it will, all these kids hide helplessly. Young men and women, older than the men of Gettysburg and Tarawa not only can't fight back against one small guy with a gun but they can't even barricade the damned doors.

That guy who shot all those girls in the college up in Canada, he ordered the men out while he lined the women up. The men went. They went.

What happened? What, in God's named happened to the young men and women of our society? A whole roomful of healthy young men and women, killed. Not killed trying to drop this skinny kid under a hail of German textbooks but killed, cowering.

Who taught the grandsons of the heroes of Iwo Jima this behavior? Is it not time to purge those people from positions of authority?

Four Hundred Dollar Haircuts?

So that champion of the little guy, John Edwards, gets four hundred dollar haircuts. Hmmph. The old guy that gave me my seven dollar haircuts is gone now, I have to drive all the way to Quinlen and pay eight bucks now. This means I get a haircut every three months instead of every two and a half.

I read a comment on some blog about how much Edwards has done for the little guy. Aside from driving up health care cost it is a mystery just what he has done.

Update On Corzine...

The powers that be have rolled all of the feces to the top of the hill and it is about to roll downhill. That State Trooper who was driving lives in the valley.

The "invesigation" of this incidnet shows that the Gov's SUV was going 91 mph in a 65 zone. Furthermore they are saying that nobody told the Trooper to go fast. Right. A State Trooper driving the Governor just decided, on his own to drive 91 mph. If you believe that my number 2 boy has some ocean front property in the hills above Charlelotte, NC to sell you.

They are also saying that the Trooper should have forced the Gov and his aides to buckle up. Right. And a PFC should demand that his General should get in step. What with the civil service rules in most states that Trooper probably would not have been fired. He would, however been reassigned to the other end of the state from where his house is and would have been working last out in Resume Speed, NJ.

Democrats, the party of the little guy. Unless crapping all over a little guy saves them the slightest bit of trouble.

Virgina Tech, A Study In Failure

In 1966 a Marine Veteran rode the elevator to the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas and started blowing people away. Within minutes there were all kinds of ordinary folks blasting back at him with deer rifles and the whole Austin PD heading towards him.

Today nobody shoots back and the local LEOs fart around , excuse me, establish a perimeter, form a chain of command, no, they fart around while people die. Somehow in the forty-odd years between UT and VT we lost something. In 1966 police had commanders, today we have administrators. Supposedly this instant communication with the first officers on the scene makes for better officer safety, which would be fine if people pinned on the badge to be safe.

I blame instant communications and the new breed of administrators. That Austin bluesuit of 1966 did not have a radio on his gunbelt with a microphone/speaker on his left epaulet. Once he was out of his squadcar he was on his own, he grabbed up an armed civilian and they climbed the stairs until they found and killed Whitman.

Remember those pictures from Columbine? They looked just like the pictures from today, dozens of LEOs "forming a perimeter" while unarmed kids are slaughtered inside. By the time the "proper chain of command" is set up and they finally move in the bad guy shoots himself, just like at Columbine.

This happens because there is no downside for these administrators. They don't lose a dime for arguing whether the Campus Police, City Police or County Sheriff is in charge. No funds are lost for the people killed while the administrators are waiting for the SWAT teams to get organized.

These shootings will keep happening, I'll leave it for those with great big brains to figure out why they do now but didn't before. Instead here is a new plan for when they do happen. Forget perimeters. Forget SWAT. Forget chain of command. Just move to the sound to the gunfire. When the panicked civilians are running out, keep saying "Let me see your hands". When you see a gun, give the person holding it one chance to put it down, chances are that there is an off duty LEO or armed citizen. We'll know if it's the bad guy if the shooting stops, right?

Those folks in that mall in Utah were very lucky that off duty LEO didn't have a radio. Instead of making the bad guy duck until the cavalry got there he'd have been forming a perimeter.

Rough Week For Donks

I am usually a compassionate person, I really do hate to see anyone get hurt. Yet I broke out in a loud laugh when I saw that New Jersey Governor Corzine was badly injured in an auto wreck. We cannot go through a newscast, hardly, without some Democrat screeching about how SUVs are going to kill us all from pollution.

It was Democrats who got us into all those seatbelt laws, too. Now don't get me wrong, I am a firm believer in pulling my sissystraps tight when I'm on the road but it shouldn't be a law. Part of the problem with America is stupid people reproducing and giving more stupid people. For evidence I offer those feminist icons Bill and Hilary Clinton.

So I broke out in laughter when Corzine was injured while riding in an SUV without wearing his belt. Ah, well, he's a democrat. They make the rules, fine us or jail us if we break them. Them? They're too important to be bothered by the rules they make.

Speaking of Democrats, who knew that Don Imus, who endorsed Kerry in '04 had switched and become a conservative? I don't much care what happens to Imus, I shudder at the thought of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton having the power to decide who should be on the airwaves. At least when one of the big preachers on the Right get caught cheating on their wives they resign, Jackson just keeps goin' and goin'. And please, Sharpton having anything to do with decency? See above about the Clintons being feminist icons.

Every time I get completely fed up with the Republicans the Donks remind me of how important it is to pull the straight Pubbie ticket each election.

Doggie Friday The Thirteenth

A lot has happened this week, I may or may not get around to writing about it. I do have some dog pics, though. It's Bluebonnet season here, along with Indian Paintbrushes and other flowers. I was going to take pics of Cochise' Apache Princess in a vacant lot full of Indian Paintbrushes but we got yelled at for trespassing. Sigh.

I have some other pics but this will do for now. There are two pics of Ming because I thought I was getting an extra pic of Eddie because he is Linda Lou's baby. The pics in the preview are so small I couldn't tell. Oh well, next week I'll have two pics of Eddie for Linda Lou.

As always, click the pics for huge.

Bullet Stopping Ipod?

I noticed that both Malkin and the Puppyblender are showcasing the story of Sgt Garrad of the 3rd ID who claims the Ipod he had in his pocket slowed down an AK round enough that his armored vest stopped the slug. The armored vests are designed to stop shrapnel and pistol bullets, not close range rifle rounds.

There are many comments claiming this is impossible, the AK is too powerful. I seriously doubt that the Ipod would seriously slow an AK round down to any useful degree but I suspect it did make a difference.

I have some small experience with the 7.62x39 round from back in the '60s. Like the 5.56mm NATO round the bullet of the AK is not well balanced, it's center of mass is way back from the point. As soon as the round hits something it starts to tumble end over end. This makes for interesting wounds. As we know, it is against the Hague Conventions to use expanding bullets in warfare, among other things. So, no soft points allowed. A bullet that tumbles does the same thing, for part of it's path it is sideways, tearing a big hole.

Then the bullet continues, base first. Assuming sufficient velocity that base can expand, the base has exposed lead. Usually, though, there will be little or no expansion, the jacket metal is pretty thick. The key here is the bullet tumbling. Instead of hitting the vest point on and then beginning to tumble the bullet was already near sideways when it hit the armor. This would limit penetration, a lot.

In the comments to these posts I saw a lot of pure hooey, that our troops are poorly equipped because their normal armor won't stop a rifle round, for one thing. Well, yes, we could put the troops in armor that will stop a high powered rifle at close range, really we could. They wouldn't be able to walk or shoot and would die of heatstroke in the desert but they wouldn't get shot. I also read that an AK round will melt a railroad rail. Sigh.

The body armor our troops are wearing is the best we have, it is proof against pistol rounds, grenade and mortar shrapnel, even *some* rifle fire, say a ricochet. To get better armor we need either a big breakthrough in the compounds that will be far more resistant for the same weight or some kind of powered exoskeleton to where a hundred and sixty pound GI or one o five pound GI Jane can wear two hundred pounds of armor and gear and still function.

Me, I'm just pleased that Garrad is okay.

Brits, Dogs And Other Stories.

So, we have the Brit Sailors And Marines back home after two weeks in beautiful Iran. No trace yet of what, if anything, the Brits gave up. Why do I believe we'd end up with a far smaller death toll if we'd bombed the foo out of Iran and let them kill those fifteen Brits?

Speaking of coming death tolls how about Speaker Pelosi, that great feminist donning the hijab for those other great feminists, the Baath Party of Syria?I would really like an estimate of the number of our men and women who have been killed by weapons or personnel routed through or financed by Syria?

Abe Lincoln deported a Congresscritter for less than Pelosi did. Yet Bush is a tyrant and Lincoln a hero. My family, those who were on this side of the pond then, were all Union from what I understand but, even so, I see nothing that really allowed the Civil War. If we agree that the nation was formed from thirteen colonies voluntarily forming a Union then it only stands to reason they could volunteer to leave.

Still, I am glad we are a Union still, I just wish that Bush could do what other Presidents have done. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Wilson jailed German sympathizers. Roosevelt was a bit more subtle, he locked people in insane asylums, except for Japanese who went to the camps. Bush, on the other hand, is worrying about his people being locked up. Meanwhile there is still a significant percentage of the one and a half BILLION Muslims in the world that want to kill my grandchildren.

It was not very many years ago that I merely disagreed with Democrats about how to reach the goal of the best for the greatest number of people. Even during Clinton I figured that Donks were okay, just wrong. Now, for over five years I have watched them side with those who kill Americans. It is past the thinking they're wrong. It is even past mere dislike. I remember what these people said in '98 when they helped pass the law making regime change in Iraq official American policy. I see what they are doing now.

I hate them. How many will die in their quest for political power?

Here are some dog pictures, only because it is not good for me to dwell on hatred.

Corporal David Emery Jr.

Corporal David Emery Jr. is in need of our prayers.He is badly injured, in the hospital at Bethesda. Hit by a suicide bomber he is barely hanging on. It will take His help to get this young man over the hump and let him see his child born.

Prayers also for the comfort and peace of the family and friends of his Battalion Sgt. Major Josheph J. Ellis who saw the suicide bomber and got between him and his Marines. Where do we find such men?

Click here for details.