“I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera”

Armed police in Mumbai wouldn’t shoot. Check out all the links and comments at Instapundit.

Force Science Institute research at Minnesota State University found that even naive shooters are effective in mid to close combat ranges that such an attack would entail. Their research covered police engagements with inexperienced shooters but it has relevance here. Even a complete neophyte can be effective in a gun fight. What is needed is a willingness to engage.

Something to keep in mind when CCW laws are debated in your state.

Update:

More on the police who wouldn’t shoot. And how to prevent, or at least mitigate, attacks like this one. For example, check out the Appleseed Project. Great idea!

Another Update:

One more reason not to depend on the government to rescue you. This would be comical if it weren’t so tragic.

Attitude

Take a lesson from a SEAL on how to have a good one.

Update:

Michael Ledeen has more.

Gore Maya Not Understand What He’s Saying

An analysis of Gore’s “Climate Change Killed the Mayans” claim.

It means that Gore is advocating the abandonment of the IPCC doctrine and barracking for the study and understanding of climate dynamics that ignores totally the IPCC/AWG doctrine and focuses on all the other variables, especially how climate dynamics are driven by atmospheric/oceanic oscillations, the natural internal dynamics of the climate system and the role of the Sun in climate dynamics.

That is if Gore understands what he just said. Anybody care to take that bet?

Sign of the Times

Spotted outside a gun shop. I’m guessing it predates the election.

Good luck with that.

A Woman’s Right to Shoes

(Thanks to Mark Steyn for the great headline.)

Britain is not only dead, it has become a parody of itself.

Another Cruel Anti-Obama Parody

LOL: “…his confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all.”

If you’re looking for a nice rifle

may I suggest that you not buy anything made by HS Precision Rifles. They are running an ad with a testimonial from a murderer (who escaped prosecution because of his corrupt employer – the FBI). Yes, Lon Horiuchi, the man who gunned-down an unarmed woman with a baby in her arms.

Oh, yeah. He was also there for Janet Reno’s slaughter of men, women and children at Waco.

Nice guy.

HS Precision Rifles has, apparently, absolutely no sense of shame. I hope they go out of business soon.

Update:

See this more recent post.

Reactor? What reactor?

The incompetent chief of the blind, toothless IAEA twiddles his lower lip with his fingers and says, “Duuhhh, guys? Where’s the photos?”

Ready for some good news about the election?

After a very long vote count in Northern California, Tom McClintock is heading to congress.

Butte County took a little longer to come in than we had expected, but it was worth the wait.  The count is now complete with the possible exception of a handful of votes in El Dorado County and the election result stands at: McClintock 185,615 and Brown at 183,840.

The lead of 1,775 votes is a margin of victory that puts us well outside the possibility of a recount changing the outcome.  To put it in perspective, it is more than twice the margin by which I lost the race for State Controller in 2002.

The numbers came in a little late to hold a press conference today but I expect to have a formal statement at our Congressional transition office in Roseville on Monday.

“As God is my witness…”

Enjoy Gordon Jump giving one of the best punch lines ever.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Update:

Can the Turkey Drop be far behind?

Since this week is about food

Enjoy the foodscapes.

The Black Hole

Sign of the Times

A coworker snapped this photo on his way to work today.

Verbs so overrated, don’t you?

If you like that, you’ll love their web page. I’ll let you get there indirectly, as did I, for the best effect.

The Russians Are Coming!

Not that you care or even need to know, but behind the scenes I’m being driven crazy by Russian comment spamming robots. Every post I put up gathers a “comment” within minutes or hours from someone like “Энрико” with a link to some .ru web site. For some reason Akismet hasn’t figured out yet that these are spam, and they’re the only comment spammers who consistently get through the filter. I hope they or WordPress can get this invasion under control.

Now I’ll just await the Russian Spambots on this posting. Three… Two…

Update:

That took under twenty minutes. Those bots are fast. If you speak Russian, can you tell me what the heck this blog is about? I hope it isn’t, uh, “romance novel” material. Of course, now that I’ve actually linked to them there’s no telling what’s going to happen.

I’m Shocked. Shocked!

Shocked, I tell you, to learn that our new Attorney General is a thoroughly-corrupt Clinton-era retread.

Let’s be blunt here: The Marc Rich pardon was one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Justice Department. Not the modern history, the entire history. Rich was accused of mega-crimes: millions in fraud, tax-evasion, and trading with the America’s enemies. In 2000, he was a fugitive. He had been one for nearly two decades, during which the government had expended immense resources in a futile attempt to apprehend him.

Shocked, I tell you, to learn that a president who pals around with terrorists is appointing an Attorney General who has arranged for terrorists to be pardoned.

Well, Lanny Davis says he’s the most qualified nominee, so I guess he must be.

An ungodly amount of money

You have just taken on another $24,000 in debt. So has every person living in your household. Except you can’t count on everybody paying their share. So if you’re one of the most oppressed minority in US history, namely an actual taxpayer, you’ve just been royally hosed.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research crunched the inflation adjusted numbers. The bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:

• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

TOTAL: $3.92 trillion

data courtesy of Bianco Research

That is $686 billion less than the cost of the credit crisis thus far.

The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost: $288 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion

The $4.6165 trillion dollars committed so far is about a trillion dollars ($979 billion dollars) greater than the entire cost of World War II borne by the United States: $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation (original cost was $288 billion).

Please send lots of Marines

Michael Yon emails from Afghanistan:

Happy Thanksgiving from Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

The Taliban seem to be mostly afraid of American soldiers. They do attack U.S. and inflict damage, but all around I hear from Afghans and U.S. soldiers that the Taliban are mostly trying to avoid contact with U.S., while focusing attacks mostly on Afghans. Some people see the Taliban as courageous, but I am seeing more and more that they use cowardly tactics, often hiding behind women and children.

I am tonight in Zabul Province and have been out with New York National Guard. Their morale is high and they think they are winning the fight, despite the long series of frustrations that come with the terrain of war. Especially in Afghanistan.

Our cell phones are not working tonight; the Taliban forces cell phone operators to turn off the towers at night. The Taliban are afraid of being tracked, and are afraid the Americans will interrupt their sleep. The cell towers are cut off from 5:30 PM to 7:00 AM. An American captain told me that one group of operators decided to turn off the system late one night, so the Taliban came, killed one man, and tortured two others.

On an interesting side, Americans and Afghans are giving very high marks to the Lithuanian Special Forces who operate here. They are less impressed with Romanians; Afghans and Americans say the Romanians are afraid of the Taliban, but that the Lithuanians are having a field day chasing and killing Taliban.

On the Iraq front, please read Down with Barriers, Up with Iraq.

The Iraq war is over, but the Afghan playoffs will begin in 2009. This fight is just getting started. Please send lots of Marines, and lots of training teams for the Afghan Army and police.

Your correspondent,
Michael

Hoo-Ah

Meanwhile, in the other war, the one that isn’t currently going so well, about 250 bad guys ambushed 30 Marines, and paid a price for their lack of judgement. 250 vs. 30 doesn’t seem fair, especially when the 30 are Marines.

During the battle, the designated marksman single handedly thwarted a company-sized enemy RPG and machinegun ambush by reportedly killing 20 enemy fighters with his devastatingly accurate precision fire. He selflessly exposed himself time and again to intense enemy fire during a critical point in the eight-hour battle for Shewan in order to kill any enemy combatants who attempted to engage or maneuver on the Marines in the kill zone. What made his actions even more impressive was the fact that he didn’t miss any shots, despite the enemies’ rounds impacting within a foot of his fighting position.

“I was in my own little world,” the young corporal said. “I wasn’t even aware of a lot of the rounds impacting near my position, because I was concentrating so hard on making sure my rounds were on target.”

Further indication that Michael Yon’s phoned-in report from today is accurate:

Michael called by satellite phone. He is in a remote area of Afghanistan with US and Afghan forces. Michael reports that his satellite internet gear is non-functional. He has no access to internet. Please see his dispatch in the New York Post today. Michael did mention that morale among US and Afghan forces is high. More Later.

Update:

Yon also has something on Pajamas Media today.

Today’s mission — observing the progress of the peace — makes for boring journalism, but it made me very happy. I was smiling all day. This victory, like all real triumphs, is monumental and historic — though our military will not be allowed to express their feelings of pride and sense of well-earned glory.

When the war was on full-steam there was so much to report that it was impossible to keep track. And now that peace is breaking out, it’s equally impossible to keep track of all the progress. There’s still focus on the attacks, most of which are directed against Iraqis, not us. And so this “mission” was more like an armed errand to remove some concrete barriers between neighborhoods.

…

Chalk another one up for the military leaders for standing their ground. When the barriers went up, it was a sign that we were trying to get a grip on the civil war, and it was “exciting news” to some in the “further evidence of failure” camp. But when I stood and watched some of the barriers being taken down, the only camera there was mine.

Giving Thanks

Appreciate the things you have.

Celebrating VI Day

There are surely many people not informed enough to recognize that the war is over and we won, but these dogs seem clear on the matter.

A Nation of Thieves

Walter Williams is, as usual, right on the money (if you’ll pardon the pun).

Imagine there’s an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here’s my question to you that I’m almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady’s lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I’m hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow’s lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I’d say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate’s mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn. This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive.

Got an Extra Christmas Card?

Consider sending one to this address:

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical  Center
6900 Georgia Avenue,NW
Washington,D.C. 20307-5001

British Death Watch

I thought Britain would be killed by its multiculturalism and long-term trampling on that most basic of all human rights: self defense. I’ve chronicled here how it’s essentially lost the war with radical Islam. But the coups de grâce may hit its banks.

Celebrate!

Today is VI Day.

Dissent

is the highest form of patriotism.

It’s no laughing matter.

As Deputy Attorney General, Holder was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called “assault weapons” (cosmetically incorrect guns) by anyone under age of 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, national gun registration, and mandatory prison sentences for trivial offenses (e.g., giving your son an heirloom handgun for Christmas, if he were two weeks shy of his 21st birthday). He also promoted the factoid that “Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence”–a statistic is true only if one counts 18-year-old gangsters who shoot each other as “children.”

…

Holder played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez. The pretext for the paramilitary invasion of the six-year-old’s home was that someone in his family might have been licensed to carry a handgun under Florida law. Although a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showed a federal agent dressed like a soldier and pointing a machine gun at the man who was holding the terrified child, Holder claimed that Gonzalez “was not taken at the point of a gun” and that the federal agents whom Holder had sent to capture Gonzalez had acted “very sensitively.” If Mr. Holder believes that breaking down a door with a battering ram, pointing guns at children (not just Elian), and yelling “Get down, get down, we’ll shoot” is example of acting “very sensitively,” his judgment about the responsible use of firearms is not as acute as would be desirable for a cabinet officer who would be in charge of thousands and thousands of armed federal agents, many of them paramilitary agents with machine guns.

Please Just Go Away, Maverick

Weeks Away from the Innauguration

And already the useful idiots are discovering they’re no longer useful.

Hope! Change!

Maybe they just didn’t get the memo.

And Now, a Study from Obviousland

Want to stop mass killers? Stop making gun-free zones. Like schools.

“The other statistic that emerged from a study of active killers is that they almost exclusively seek out “gun free” zones for their attacks.

In most states, concealed handguns are prohibited at schools and on college campuses even for those with permits.

Many malls and workplaces also place signs at their entrances prohibiting firearms on the premises.

Now tacticians believe the signs themselves may be an invitation to the active killers.

The psychological profile of a mass murderer indicates he is looking to inflict the most casualties as quickly as possible.

Also, the data show most active killers have no intention of surviving the event.

They may select schools and shopping malls because of the large number of defenseless victims and the virtual guarantee no on the scene one is armed.

As soon as they’re confronted by any armed resistance, the shooters typically turn the gun on themselves.” [emphasis added]

Hither and Yon

A few Michael Yon updates.

There’s this radio interview from Kuwait. Money quote:

You can prove you’re a bad guy in about a minute. It takes a long time to prove you’re a good guy.

Listen to the last half especially where he talks about Afghanistan. A key difference he notes between Iraq and Afghanistan is that Iraq is an actual country, whereas Afghanistan is “kind of an area”. Expect Afghanistan to get as bad as Iraq ever was, if not worse, this spring. Speaking of which, Michael (who just arrived there) recommends reading Shakedown.

In related news, there’s the milblog reaction to victory in Iraq.

And be sure to read the story of the happy beginning of Bashar.

Why the surprise?

VDH wonders why people are chattering about the fact that “change” means “Clinton retreads”.

[G]iven Obama’s absence of executive experience and brief tenure in the Senate, Obama never was in a position to assemble an insider team other than the Chicagoan Axlerod. So what was Obama to do when he needed savvy advisors and a brain trust he could count on from the old days to form the nucleus of his advisors and cabinet?