Scattershooting While Wondering Whatever to Silent Lew Walt

I am somewhat agog over the three SEAL Team members being charged with multiple "felony" charges and facing heavy penalties for allegedly giving the Jihadi that killed, beheaded and otherwise mutilated four Americans and who knows how many others, a fat lip.

All three of these men have had millions of dollars of training. Just going though BUD?S training is far more difficult than Harvard Law. I've never seen anyone in Law School have to run through soft sand while carrying full gear and an inflatable boat.

These men claim the Jihadi scumbag was in good shape when they turned him over to the Iraqis. Aside from the fact that I could, if I wanted, give myself a split lip just by bashing my face against the desk, why does anyone care? Maybe the scumbag did it himself, maybe the Iraqis did it. How on earth is anyone going to prove, beyond a doubt, that it was one, or more, of these SEALs? Furthermore, any of the Special Operators knows how to inflict massive pain without ever leaving a mark. Heck, any old street cop knows that.

Meanwhile, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, that crowd of SEIU thugs that beat and stomped Kenneth Gladney while calling him bigoted names have finally been charged. With misdemeanors.

So, lets all get this straight. Go through the toughest training the in the country under the worst conditions, chasing the lowest, most violent people in the world, all for the pay of a MacDonald's Assistant Manager and get charged with multiple felonies for a possible split lip that could have been the result of others. Oh and in today's Service just going through a court martial is a career ender, no matter the verdict. Yet in all the hoo-rah about hate crimes in the civilian side, leftists get charged with misdemeanors for beating, stomping and using racial slurs to a black man.

And there is a big uproar over Glenn Beck saying that people should not reenlist. Sorry, I agree with Glenn. I came back from the Southeast Asian War Games. I remember how it was.Anyone wearing Uncle's suit right now will be a damned fool to take any chance at all of getting hurt, anywhere. We have an administration that loves SEIU and hates the military. And please do not wave Joe Biden's hee-row son at me.In spite of that stupid television show they had a few years back JAG Officers biggest risk is a paper cut. And many of the Jag Offs act like they are on the other side in this war. Many of them swallowed the kool aid in those liberal schools. I would bet that at least a third of the military lawyers would cheerfully throw the whole Armed Services into the toilet. It was, though, a good way to get Uncle Samuel to pay for law school.

If I was wearing Uncle's suit I'd go on sick call tomorrow with back trouble. If not back trouble, some kind of psychological woe, anything that would keep me from going downrange. Fifty-eight thousand of my brothers (and a few sisters) have their names on a black granite wall in Washington, DC. Hundreds of thousands of us were injured. And for what? I look at comments about this on other sites and see base calumny against my brothers and sisters in arms. I see idiots talking about the drugs in the Services during that war, I see the blather about fragging officers. That has grown to mythic proportions.Sure there were drugs, far less than in the same age group on Civvie Street, though. And, yes, there were some fraggings, not near as many as now thought, though. One thing that make me sure that fragging wasn't very common is that I put it into Google and the entire first page was lefty sites. If fragging was a real problem the first page would be military sites examining ways to solve the problem.

Actually, there were probably more officers and staff NCOs killed by their own men in WW2 than Viet Nam, more as a percentage. There is no one as pragmatic as a combat soldier. They'll put up with a lot of chicken droppings but they won't put up with someone incompetent enough to endanger their lives.

We went up to Plano to our daughter's for Thanksgiving dinner, didn't get pictures. Linda Lou made her famous dark sweet cherry cheesecake and I, for the first time in my life, made cranberry sauce. I had several recipes to choose from, I mostly used Rhee Drummand's.Her's calls for maple syrup instead of any kind of sugar. Trouble is, the only maple syrup out here is in a twelve ounce bottle (and is REAL expensive) and I didn't have quite enough for the two bags of cranberries. So, since the other recipe called for brown sugar I just added some of that until it wasn't too tart. I must say, it's better than Ocean Spray canned sauce. Next year, though, only one bag of cranberries. I keep forgetting, most everyone else is some kind of heathen and eats turkey without cranberry sauce. And Michael and Jeniffer took their kids down to San Antone to celebrate with her parents.

Well, those are my adventures. I'll probably have more to say about this SEAL mess. Like how come the Defense Dept crowd covered up all those red flags about that Nidal creep but is going pedal to the metal about the guys on the Teams?

Oh, and Lew Walt? A good Kansas boy who disgraced himself by moving to Ft. Collins, Colorado, then joining the Corps after getting a commission in the National Guard after ROTC in college. He earned two Navy Cross Medals, among other awards and retired as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. The first ever to earn the rank of General. If we had men like Silent Lew in the top ranks now we'd not see anything like what those SEALs are going through.

Birthdays And A Sick Dog

Let's see, a little catch up, Saturday was Bingo's birthday, he turned two. He didn't get a doggie birthday party for Ming the Merciless was somewhat sick with the hershey squirts. Poor girl. She just hates it if she can't make it outside. The good news is that only once did she do it on the carpet, a couple of times on the linoleum, the rest of the time she made it outside. The troubles seem to be over but we're still limiting her treats, mostly just kibble and water. Naturally, she's been sick during the rain. Now that the weather is nice again, she's fine.

We'll have Bingo's birthday party tomorrow or the next day.

In other birthday news, today is Linda Lou's mumble-mumble, cough birthday. I got up earlier than I normally do and fixed her raspberry muffins for breakfast. That was about the extent of our celebrating Linda Lou getting to the age of mumble mumble, cough.It was a while back but I accidentally brought home some blueberry and raspberry muffin mix. Somehow it became my job to make those muffins. We had them way to often for too long and we got as big as a house over them. Now we only eat them on special days as Linda Lou's Doc, and my Doc, are both pushing us to lose some weight. Ahh, Docs we have never seen or heard of want us to lose weight. It's an effing religion with Docs.

Everyone knows about those "scientists" and the leaked or hacked computer stuff. This is just icing on the cake. We knew this glow bull worming crap was a fake just by the way Algore bought a boat with the carbon footprint of Cambodia. What's that the Puppyblender always says? "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people saying it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis." Close to that, anyhow. Climate changes. Climate has always changed. Those glaciers in Wisconsin, seem to be gone. Few would say that's a bad thing, after all, there is Harvey's lovely wife. And Harvey, too, if you ever feel the need for help with your blog, or a dirty joke.

And nobody explains how humanity survived the awful warming trend where they had vineyards in Greenland that then became covered in glaciers which are now receding again. Seems to me that humanity not only survived but they made wine and ate grapes.

Actually, the problem isn't those "scientists". It's not even the politicians that used this "science" for political gain, nor is the problem those who sought to get rich over this "science". The problem is us. Ordinary people who forgot that these vermin are always with us and how we stopped coating them with hot tar and feathers and riding them all out of town on a rail. The mistake was ours. The first time those idiots said that the same process that has been going on for as long as there was an Earth is now an emergency and we didn't give him a good beating and send him on his way, bleeding and limping.

Naptime

Sometimes it is just plumb time for a nap. Now when I need a nap it's one thing. Linda Lou, though, she worked so hard when she was younger that her naps take two.

New York City Takes Another Hit.

Obama, or should I say O-Bow-Ma after his idiocy in Tokyo, and Holder must hate New York almost as much as they hate George W. Bush. Seems they are bringing Kahlid Sheik Mohammad to NYC for a civilian trial.

Not only does this lay out NYC as a bigger target than ever, plus tying up the area for miles around the courthouse for months, it shows the entire world how small the collective (and collectivist) brains of the entire Administration are.

First of all, what is the point? There is no way on earth the American people will ever allow KSM to be cut loose. If those two peabrains Obama and Holder tried to cut him loose after a hung jury more than the jury would be hanged and I don't care how many bodyguards they have.

So, if KSM can never walk, what is the point of a civilian trial? Can it be to put the Bush Administration, the CIA and the United States Military on trial? Can it be to force the country to admit, in open court, her methods of gaining information? Can it be to bring out the identities of all the men and women involved in questioning these creeps?

Y'all are going to have to pardon me for bein' a pore dumb redneck but it looks to me as if this is a game to Obama and company. The far left of their base hate the intelligence services and the parts of the military that work closely with them, the Special Forces, the SEAL Teams, the Air Commandos and the Marine Force Recon guys. The far left would love to have the names and pictures of all those guys spread all over the front page of the New York Times. I do not believe that the far left and, for that matter, Holder and Obama have thought this through, though.

I believe that Holder and Obama think that they will damage Republicans in this trial, maybe figure out a way to inict Bush and Cheney. This will make their master soros happy. Trouble is this trial will endanger a whole slew of people, starting with everyone anywhere near NYC, Washington, DC and probably every other city.

More than the danger to ordinary Americans, which I seriously doubt that Obama and Holder care about, there is the danger to themselves that I do not believe they are bright enough to see. What exactly do these two bozos think will happen when the identity of a crew of trained killers is spread all over the New York Times and MSNBC? What do they think will happen when a car bomb goes off outside the home of a Sneaky Pete Soldier and it kills his family? I mean half or more of the SF Troops have been sheep dipped to the various intel community outfits, very few of those have many people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty so it's one of the boys with a Budweiser on his chest or a Girl Scout Hat* that gets the honors.

I just do not believe that Holder and Obama are smart enough to understand what happens when one threatens the safety to the families of the men and women they seem to hate so much.

* Have the Armed Services become so corporate that we can no longer destroy the furnishings of an Enlisted Men's Club by trying to buy some cookies by hollering "Yoo-hoo! Little Girl! I'd like three boxes of Thin Mints and two of Shortbreads to a tablefull of Green Beanies?"

Robin, Meleah and the Boys. We Miss Them

We got a fresh batch of pictures in the E-mail box the other day from our boy Robin, his wife Meleah and, of course, the usual suspects. It's kind of a long story how they ended up in the heart of NASCAR country, just a rifle shot from Charlotte Motor Speedway which is actually quite a little drive from Charlotte.

We Haven't seen them in way too long, we keep hoping that things will turn around and we'll be able to take a drive that way, no luck since '05 but, funny how right after the Dems took Congress back we quit being able to go places.

Oh well, those are four of the grandsons, all single, too.

In Flanders Field, In Fort Hood

In Flanders Field the poppies grow
between the crosses row on row

It's depressing to be a veteran in the United States today, a day when we still mourn the men and women gunned down by an Islamic terrorist. A day when the President of the United States has the gall to show up at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington.

The reality is that we have a President who does not deserve to so much as wash the jockstrap of the lowest E-1 at Parris Island. We have a Chief of Staff of the United States Army who thinks that diversity is more important than the lives of his soldiers.

Why do I think we'd be better off having General Casey demoted to E-2 and retired and a random infantry or armor sergeant promoted to Chief of Staff. Do a lottery, random E-5s promoted, hold the job for two years and then returned to the ranks. Oh, and Artillery and Signal, too. Any E-5 of a combat arm.

The old system worked for a long time but it isn't working now. We need a system in the military where folks putting their ideas into the services have to live with the results. When was the last time a General really had to live with the politically correct idiocy that is pervading our entire society, including the military.

I am having a minor fight with my electronic friend, Cynthia Yockey over gays in the military. I favor an experimental unit, she is just so durned sure. The difference between her and I is that I have seen the results of a unit where cohesion fell apart. I got to help carry the bodies back. This was a unit where racial strife opened young men to be killed and wounded. And this was close to 20 years after Truman integrated the Services.

The military is the most successful example of integration in the United States of America. Yet somehow we got a Tim McVeigh and a Nidal Hasan out of of the Army. And that nutjob they just executed, the "DC Sniper", too. Perhaps the Army should take a long look at itself. Is it just the Army's size that allows these clowns when we don't see them come out of the Corps or navy or even out of the wing wipers?

Unfortunately we won't see that long look, instead we're seeing a worry about their precious diversity. Perhaps if they knocked off that diversity crap and just beat into them that there is no white, black or brown but only Army Blue, kind of like the Marine Corps and the only color there is is green. By the time a recruit leaves San Diego or Parris Island he bleeds green when he's cut.

Speaking of San Diego and Parris Island, yesterday was the Corps' Birthday. Founded in Tun's Tavern, Philadelphia in 1775 you can still find a Marine in a tavern when off duty although the old fashioned hard drinking Marine is now going somewhat out of style.

Yesterday was also another anniversary. Another year has gone by in our life together, Linda Lou and I had a normal (for us) day although it was one of those wedding anniversaries, this one ending in 0. It would feel like yesterday if it weren't for all those grandkids running about. If I had it to do over again I would. I might try to take a little better care of my back but, otherwise, I wouldn't change a thing.

Random Shots At Moving Targets

What I am hoping is that when this Hasan clown comes out of his coma that they begin every period of questioning with Ha Ha, you were brought down by a woman! Given what we know about him, so far, that would be as effective as waterboarding.

I salute Sergeant Munley of the Fort Hood Police Dept. Sergeant Munley did the old fashioned police work. Instead of getting near the scene of the shooting and then hanging around, establishing a chain of command and a communications net, all the things the corporate police administrators like to do while people are dieing, she charged. She ran in and shot the guy doing the shooting. She was shot herself but she still managed to put four rounds into this waterhead. Bravo Zulu! My prayers and hopes are for a full recovery and a long and happy life.

WE have hundreds, if not thousands of Muslims serving in the Armed Forces. The vast majority seem to be doing their jobs.Some have been wounded and killed, still others decorated for exceptional service, even heroism. And regular readers here know that hero is not a word I use lightly. Everyone wearing Uncle's suit is not a hero, just like every cop and fireman is not a hero. I know, I wore the uniform and, given the choice, I am quite timid. Few people in uniform ever need to be heroic, mostly it's just a matter of following the training.

Still, here is the problem. We need those Muslim men and women in the Services. we need the language skills and knowledge of the cultures. We do not, though, need more Ft. Hoods or that clown rolling grenades into tents a la Kuwait, 2003. So, how in God's name do we sort out the loyal American soldiers who happen to be Muslim from the self service Jihadis?

And until we figure out some form of sorting procedure, how about arming at least some of the troops. Perhaps everyone above the rank of E-5 could carry a handgun. I know the military is terrified of negligent discharges but a Sergeant has the power to make men and women risk, sometimes lose their lives. If you give someone that kind of power you ought to be able to trust them with a shootin' iron. If you can't, maybe we ought to just close the Armed Services down and surrender to the Confederate Air Force. Except they changed their name.

And it is more than just the Armed Services. We have Somewhere in the neighborhood of three million Muslims in the USA. I am sure that the vast majority want exactly what you and I want, the ability to make a living, raise our families and be left alone. Thing is, if only one percent of American Muslims decide to become wild eyed Jihadis, that's 30,000. If only five percent decide to become shootists and splodeydopes, that's a hundred and fifty thousand. Now I'm pretty sure that the American people would not put up with even 30,000 jihadis running around here, much less 150,000. Mosques would start burning down, stores run by Arab Americans would be exploding, it would get pretty ugly. And the PC types have have painted us into the corner here. They have so demonized the Japanese internment in WW2 that we certainly cannot simply round 'em up and, after carefully interrogating them, or maybe truth serum, decide "you are cool, you go back to the old country."

So, we can't do that. But look here. The safety of my grandchildren is non negotiable. I would smilingly operate the wood chipper and grind every Muslim in America into liquid fertilizer to prevent so much as a skinned knee on any of my grandchildren. This might be a black mark about getting into Heaven but my grandchildren did not start this fight. Nor did I. I am perfectly willing to help end it, though.

Again, someone figure out a way to separate the sheep from the goats. Again, I am perfectly willing to stipulate that the vast majority of Muslims are good, law abiding citizens. Okay, great. The vast Majority of the Germans in Hamburg in 1943 had nothing to do with the Nazi Party, either. Funny, it sure got hot there, thanks to the 8th Air Force dropping high explosives by day and the RAF dropping firebombs by night. I read that Germans jumped in the canals to escape the fires and that many died when the water got so hot it cooked them. Now the Germans were unusually stubborn and took a lot of convincing before they gave up the fight. I'm not sure it was really lucky for them that the Russians rolled into Berlin before we developed the A Bomb, though. Perhaps European and world history would be somewhat better had we dropped those bombs when the Russkies were a couple hundred miles east of Budapest.

Anyhow, pray for the souls of those killed down in Hood and that He comfort the wounded. Pray that we figure out a way to keep the loyal citizens and eliminate the Jihadis. If we don't it will eventually be a bloodbath.

In other news tomorrow is a sad day in the Poorfarm here. I am taking my target/varmint rifle to the gunshow to try to sell it. I have not had the courage to try to shoot it since my stroke, I just don't trust my kinda numb and jerky right hand on that twelve ounce trigger. And, since I can't shoot it, she might as well go somewhere where she'll be appreciated. I hate this, I had intended to spend my retirement really studying precision shooting.

So, last chance to buy a Savage Model 12, with a stainless Douglas XX air gauged barrel, twist one turn in twelve inches, chambered in .223 Remington. This rifle has a target/varmint stock and a Burris Signature 8x32 power scope. The barrel was put on and the action truing work done by Fred Moreo, the Savage magician up at Sharp Shooter Supply in Ohio.

This rifle would, on a day when I had it together and the wind wasn't causing anvils to blow past, put five shots into a quarter inch group. Now that is not enough to win a real benchrest match but it's certainly good enough for varmints 'way out past Fort Mudge.

But wait! There is more! There is also the original barrel and stock, the barrel because one might want to shoot some of those long, heavy bullets and so would need the tighter one in nine twist, the lighter stock for if one would like to use this as a walking varmint rifle, a Savage barrel wrench for changing barrels, all the reloading dies and two boxes of one thousand each small rifle Benchrest primers, one thousand Federal, one thousand Remington. Don't even ask how much those primers are these days, plain vanilla primers are up to fifty bucks a thousand. The benchrest primers? Last seen around 2007 or so. Oh, and five hundred Sierra Matchking 53 grain flatbase hollowpoints and a slew of home moly coated fifty five grain bullets. Oh, yeah, and the original trigger.

Anyhow, I'm going to miss the old girl but if I can't shoot it, it might as well go somewhere where she can be shot. Maybe someplace in ground squirrel or prairie dog country. Maybe I'll be able to buy a couple seasons worth of cowboy action shooting with it.

A Waking Nightmare

It's a large room, deep in the heart of Texas. There is a large crowd of men and women on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan, many for their second, third or more tours. Suddenly shot ring out and men and women around you start to fall. You hit the deck and try to get behind something, anything. At the same time you try to shield someone, that's what you do when you're a warrior. And you start to pray and to curse the people who decided all the weapons need to be locked up, for safety. Safety.

This is what our bothers and sisters faced down in Fort Hood. A stateside military base is a gun free zone. The guns are kept locked up except when the brass want the troops to do something. And most of the time when the troops do have the shootin' irons, like when they get trained in marching around and such, the ammo is locked up. The Armed Forces are terrified of the idea that soldiers will go around shooting each other over two dollar bets and who gets first crack at that slightly overweight divorcee working the swing shift at the Dew Drop Inn.

The brass didn't think that an Army Major, a doctor who got all his training on the US taxpayers dime, would start shooting. The soldiers and the brass need to review and rethink the contract. Here is the deal...I sign up and agree to wear funny, unflattering clothes and get really bad haircuts. I agree to do what I'm told and go where I'm sent. I agree to put my life in danger getting into all sorts of really silly predicaments. I agree to go where a whole slew of complete strangers want to kill me for reasons I do not fully understand. I agree to try to kill or capture those strangers under rules of engagement that makes said killing more difficult.

Now you, the brass, agree to a few things, also. The most important is that you agree to not make my risks, and my life worthless. You also agree that, when you have me place my life in danger, I be the best armed, best equipped guy on the block. Now, brass, if you are going to put people like this Nidal Malik Hasan guy in the middle of the largest Army base on the continent, give me an effing gun! I would really prefer that, once you discover that Major Hasan is writing blog entries proud of what the homicide bombers are doing you let him practice his profession of Psychiatry in a slightly better place, one more suited to his talents. Like maybe inside the Federal Max Security Prison in Marion Illinois. Or perhaps on our government since it sure seems as if they need a shrink. Anyhow, brass, you are not supposed to put me, unarmed, into a big room with a nutcase armed with two pistols and God only knows how many loaded magazines and me and my pards nothing but our butts hanging in the breeze. Remember, brass, if my life doesn't mean much to you it still means a lot to my family.

Oh, and brass, please tell the FBI that it was too a terror incident. Okay, maybe this clown didn't belong to alQueda. It's quite probable he was acting alone. Please, brass, tell the FBI to look at the pictures of those wives and husbands waiting for word of their spouses and ask them again, was it terror? If they again say no, hit them in the face with a shovel and get some Federal cops with half a brain.

Can We Make It Two Thousand Pages?

So Pelosi and company have put out their 1990 page "health care" bill. Can Pelosi, Reid and Biden combined win a thinking contest with a rutabaga? It does not seem so.

Any dispassionate observer can look this bill over and see that it has nothing to do with "making healthcare affordable" This bill is, instead, all about power. This bunch simply thinks that Americans will fall into line and do what we're told when some unelected board of pencil necked geeks and ugly women in comfortable shoes can say "no, you voted wrong and now your grandson will not be treated for his expensive to treat condition".

Who will staff these boards after the first half dozen or so have been messily killed? It seems that this crowd of meatheads have lost touch with who lives in America. Here is the first clue, Nancy. We are the ones that didn't stay in Europe where we were all but slaves to an inept nobility.

We got here and found the folks that wouldn't, for whatever reason, stay in Siberia. It was a pretty good tussle for a couple-three hundred years but we finally ended up with the most fertile swath of the whole North American continent. It wasn't easy, there are untold thousands of unmarked graves spread all over this country. Why the Oregon Trail alone has an average of one grave every eighty yards from Independence MO to the Willamette Valley. And that was only one trail.

Nor are those of us who emigrated from Europe to come here unique. We have our Mexican Americans, most of whom cut ties with the old country, just the way we "Anglos" did. Although many, perhaps most, have kept in touch with their relatives better than most of us did still, they made a pretty big jump.

The Chinese, Japanese and Korean Americans took an even bigger leap, not to mention those who came from the Vietnamese Boat People.

Do those chowderhead Democrats, and their accomplices in the Washington Republicans really think the grandchildren of those who settled the west will put up with this nonsense?

Speaking of Washington Republicans, have you peabrained idiots learned anything? This Skuzzy person in NY-23 endorsed the Democrat after the conservatives in the District revolted and supported Hoffman. You Washington Republicans must have brains the size of walnuts. Y'all supported Ol' Arlen, to the tune of how many millions? You supported ol' Jumpin' Jim to the tune of how many millions? You supported this Skuzzy woman to the tune of most of a million, in a rural district, no less. And yet you keep crying that we must reach out to the moderates! And you wonder why your grassroots donations are drying up. Maybe you should stop sending boxcar loads of money to Democrats with an "R" behind their names, it ain't like they do any good and you can't even depend on them in things like votes for Speaker.

Just how many more elections to you clowns have to lose before you learn that Democrat-lite is not a winning strategy? Normally I wouldn't care but the clowns you idiots have allowed to "run" the country are running her off a cliff.