Author Archives: ultimaratioregis

Moore, Oklahoma

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(CNN)

By now most of us have heard the terrible news of the massive tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma.   Last coverage I saw counted 37 51 dead, but we can expect that count to rise.    The devastation from such a storm is frightening down to one’s soul.  The only thing more powerful than the winds of a tornado are the waters of a coastal hurricane.

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I know some idiot is going to say, if one hasn’t already, that these storms are due to global warming.  Remember, however, that there was just such speculation when the Xenia, Ohio F-5 super-cell tornadoes that killed 34 people in April of 1974 were blamed on global COOLING.    Which was described then as scientifically irrefutable.

The only thing more certain than nature’s occasional wrath is mankind’s arrogant stupidity.   And the ideologues who exploit tragedy for their political aims.

I loved Oklahoma and found the people to be genuine and friendly in a way that New Englanders are not.   Pray for these folks.

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Sadly, the death toll as of 0900 EDT is now 91

It seems that the confusion of the day had caused some miscalculation of the confirmed killed in yesterday’s tornado.  NBC News is reporting now that the number of confirmed dead is 24.  Perhaps some prayers were answered as well.  I do hope they are correct.

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Filed under Around the web, history, Uncategorized

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Obama Administration

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One cannot think back to the last thing that the Obama Administration nor any of its appointed officials have said about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, or the illegal subpoena of Associated Press phone records that has had even a shred of truth.

About Benghazi, Hillary Clinton lied.  She knew it was a terrorist attack when she talked about some internet video being the cause of a spontaneous demonstration that turned violent.  Hillary also knew it was her State Department, and not intelligence entities, that changed the talking points into a pack of lies.   Susan Rice lied by repeating those talking points when she knew they were untrue several days after the tragedy.    Barack Obama lied when he claimed he had called the Benghazi attack “terrorism”.  He very pointedly did no such thing, and apparently believes us lazy enough to not remember what he said, or stupid enough to make us think we didn’t understand his words.

The IRS scandal keeps growing, as well.  Despite assurances at the time that no such targeting of political opponents took place, it was widespread.  Not only that but even as the assurances were being given, high level White House and IRS officials knew that targeting was happening.  The tale that it was a few “low-level employees in Cincinnati” was a deliberate fabrication.   So when President Obama tells us he heard about it on the news like everyone else, he is either an imbecile, or he is lying.    Since he considers himself smart enough to lecture us on Naval strategy during a debate, I will have to choose the latter.

Now, new revelations that the illegal, secret, unconstitutional subpoena of Associated Press phone records is much broader than we were first told.   Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department has been nothing short of a criminal enterprise, with this episode yet another in a long list of violations of his oath, and of the law.  (Fast and Furious,  New Black Panthers)  His Deputy Attorney General is also complicit.  James Cole has been caught in a lie.   The extent of the subpoenas is far greater than we were told.  Another deliberate falsehood.   Resignation is not sufficient.  Eric Holder is a criminal and should be behind bars.

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There has been nothing that can be believed that has come out from this Administration in this first few months of a second term.  Worse, he has two people who are willing unconditionally to sell their honor and trumpet the deliberate falsehoods of this presidency.  One is a spineless political sycophant.  The other is Jay Carney.

The Obama apologists will cling to their ideas that this is either not important, or the result of some kind of media/right-wing persecution of their Dear Leader.   That the IRS scandal, the subpoenas, and Benghazi weren’t stonewalled and obfuscated until Obama was safely re-elected.  Those who assert such, and claim anyone criticizing Barack Obama (don’t be hatin’ on Brother Barack!) is either parroting Fox News or is somehow a racist are intellectually bankrupt, and seemingly incapable of serious discussion regarding the malevolence of this Administration and its statist command-economy secular socialism.

Just as a reminder, this is the Administration that wants to control dispensing of our medical care.  That believes that it is a government responsibility to care for our children.  That believes a secret star chamber of “informed government officials” determining the grounds for assassinating Americans without criminal charges, a trial by a jury of one’s peers, or conviction in court constitutes “due process” and is a legitimate power of government.   This is the Administration that wants us to surrender our firearms, our last redress against the tyranny of government, and tells us it is for our safety and protection.

And a President that tells a commencement class not to listen to voices that tell them that tyranny is around every corner.    Small wonder.

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Did I mention Fast and Furious, above?  Well, seems DoJ was going great guns, pun intended, to discredit the one who blew the whistle on Holder’s criminal activity:

The former U.S. Attorney for Arizona could be disbarred, after an investigation found he lied to the Justice Department about his role in trying to discredit the federal whistle-blower who exposed the botched gun-running scheme known as Fast and Furious.

An Office of Inspector General report showed that Dennis Burke — the former chief of staff for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed as U.S. Attorney for Arizona by President Obama in September 2009 — lied when asked if he leaked sensitive documents to the press meant to undermine the credibility of ATF whistle-blower John Dodson.

“The report brings into question, yet again, the treatment that whistle-blowers receive from this administration,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Monday. “Instead of examining the allegations that came forward, the Justice Department almost immediately began to attack the credibility and good name of a dedicated federal agent upset with what he was ordered to do.”

I don’t agree with Chuck Grassley.  There is no question whatever of the treatment that whistle-blowers receive from this Administration.  They get the Chicago treatment.

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Filed under army, Around the web, guns, history, islam, Lybia, navy, obama, Politics, Uncategorized, veterans

That Explains It! Weaker men more likely to support welfare state and wealth redistribution

Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson-20120419-28

The Daily Mail tells us the story.

‘In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution.’

Men with low upper-body strength, on the other hand, were less likely to support their own self-interest.

No wonder why the men who seem most bent on relying on the protection of the collective instead of being the protector always seem to be milquetoasts.

these-photos-of-joe-biden-getting-intimate-with-a-lady-biker-are-pricelessht_paul_ryan_time5_jef_121011_wblog

 

It is a hell of a lot more plausible than Global Warming.    So get thyself in the gym, move steel, and try not to act like Mary-Ellen Sisterpants.   Bulk up or be crushed.

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Filed under guns, Humor, marines, Personal, Politics, SIR!, Uncategorized, veterans

Julian Bond, “Post-Racial” Racist

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Despite the howling protestations of the Grievance Mongers, a very good litmus test of the overt racism that surrounds our alleged “post-racial” President is to evaluate how an act, comment, or a situation would play in the media, and in the public eye, if the ethnicity of the aggrieved and of the alleged transgressor was reversed.

Imagine, if you will, a group of white neo-Nazi skinheads armed with truncheons, caught on video lurking outside a polling station intimidating black voters.   Only to have a white Attorney General declare that neither prosecution, nor further investigation, would be pursued because the white AG talked of such investigations demeaning “his people”.

Or a memorandum circulated by Federal Law Enforcement targeting unemployed Black men who believed in bigger gummint and more welfare as potential terrorists.

Or a white teenager with a history of drug abuse and violence attacking and beating a man, only to have that man defend himself and fatally shoot his attacker.   And then the press intentionally try to deliberately deceive the public by selective editing of audio and video, and invent a new ethnic category to try to portray the man defending himself as racist.   And to have a white President side with the attacker and say “if I had a son, he’s look like….”, professing his preference for white skin over brown.

Then there’s today’s assertion by former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, a so-called “activist” and “civil rights leader” (and, not surprisingly, Professor at American U), who believes that the government targeting of President Obama’s political opposition is not only permissible, but prudent.   Calling the “tea party” overtly and self-admittedly racist (of course), and the “Taliban wing” of the Republican Party, Bond was also adamant that President Bush was being racist for investigating the NAACP after Bond’s Bush-bashing remarks in 2004.

Do not kid yourselves.  There are many others of Bond’s ilk, in this Administration, in education, in the News Media, and in Hollywood, who believe just as Bond does.  They may not be politically imprudent enough to say so unless they feel a media-aided swell of support for their assertions (moral courage, they have not…).  But they do.  Grievance politics of the hyphen-Americans.  Saul Alinsky and Frank Marshall Davis.

The Benghazi coverup.  The IRS scandal.  Sibelius and HHS extortion.  Illegal wiretapping of the Associated Press.   The wealth redistribution scheme known as Obamacare.  Killing Americans without due process.   Much of this has been in the works since the 2008 election.   It is despicable racists like Julian Bond and others of the Obama cabal whom not only condone but encourage Brother Barack to “stick it to the MAN”, which means all political opposition, sometimes known as “whitey”.   Self-loathing addle-headed white fellow travelers who “feel good” about voting for a black man (provided, *gasp*, he wasn’t conservative) nodding sincerely in approval.  After all, we must have it coming.

The litany of Obama apologists will claim that he knew nothing about Benghazi, or the IRS targeting political opponents, or of wiretapping media phones, or that his AG refused review of cases of black criminal conduct, or that his model “son” was a violent thug.   Well, they had a common saying about such government abuses and injustices under another messianic leader about 75 years ago.

“If the Fuhrer only knew!”

Now, as then, that messianic leader not only knew, but gave direction and approval.     Using the power of government to divide and marginalize, demonize and persecute.   With  the full support of detestable men like Julian Bond, who are the very paragon of the post-Racial bigotry which permeates this Administration.

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(*** I couldn’t glean the URL this came from, but it was funny as hell.)

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Filed under Around the web, obama, Politics, veterans, war

Tap Me Maybe? Eric Holder’s New Hit

DOJ

I saw the news while eating dinner.   Salamander broke it first over on the front porch, but I was gonna finish my baked scrod, dammit.    His question as to whether the media has “had enough” of Obama and Holder and the infringements on the First and Fourth Amendment rights of the press, I am afraid I have to answer in the negative.  Most, despite the loud protestations of some, are far-left ideologues, who consider such intrusion “breaking a few eggs”.  Hell, Chris Matthews was glad for Hurricane Sandy, with its 100+ dead and quarter million homeless, because it helped his man Obama win re-election.

Sniveling sycophants aside, I have a few questions of my own.  

So, how is this new, streamlined, secret Eric Holder-style due process working for ya?    Anybody still think that the drone strike memo had anything to do with terrorists anywhere?   Or that gun-grabbing efforts anything to do with “the children”?  Or that the IRS targeting political opposition was a matter of “a few low-ranking employees”?   Or that Holder didn’t know anything about Fast and Furious?  Or that the “immigration reform” sought by Obama is anything but allowing millions of illegals onto Democrat voter rolls?  Or that repeal of DADT and women in combat arms was anything other than pandering to special interests to garner votes, at the expense of the combat effectiveness of our Armed Forces?

[Oh wait, I almost forgot the Affordable Healthcare Act.**]

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Here is an interesting quote.  It is by none other than Eric Holder, uncredited author of Fast and Furious, obstructionist in his refusal to prosecute the Black Panther Party voter intimidation case (wrong color),  champion of the authority of the Federal Government to kill any American, anywhere, without such messy and time consuming things like charges, grand juries, trials, or convictions.  Holder here in 2004, discussing the PATRIOT Act (emphasis mine):

When you look at some of the things that have done under the spirit of the act, where you detain citizens without giving them access to a lawyer, where you listen in on attorney-client conversations without involving a judge, these are the kinds of things that have been done in the name of the Patriot Act by this (Bush) administration…

…the problem that I had with the enforcement of the act is that this (Bush) administration said essentially trust us. We’re not going to involve judges, we’re not going to report to Congress on what we’re doing, and I think our history has shown us that we are best when we operate as people governed by the law as opposed to putting our trust in people and that’s the problem I have.

Seems that’s not a problem any more.   At least Bush was going after America’s enemies, and not Obama’s political opponents.

 

**100% to 400% increase in coverage premiums

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Filed under Around the web, guns, history, obama, Politics, Uncategorized, veterans

Obama: IRS Targeting Political Opponents “Outrageous”

From NBC News:

Amid outcry over revelations that Internal Revenue Service specialists specifically targeted conservative groups for scrutiny before the 2012 elections, President Barack Obama said Monday that the tax agency employees’ reported conduct was “outrageous” and “contrary to our traditions.”

I spose it is a matter of which traditions.   Socialist-communist regimes have a long history of such things.   Sounding Buck Turgidson-esque, the President goes on to say:

…he does not want to judge the findings of an Inspector General investigation “prematurely” but said that if the reports of political targeting are found to be correct, those responsible must be held “fully accountable.”

Like in Fast and Furious, and Benghazi, and with ACORN, and….?  You get the idea.   Marco Rubio has weighed in, and his commentary could be extended to a great deal of this Administration:

“[I]t is clear the IRS cannot operate with even a shred of the American people’s confidence under the current leadership,” Rubio wrote. “I strongly urge that you and President Obama demand the IRS Commissioner’s resignation, effectively immediately. No government agency that has behaved in such a manner can possibly instill any faith and respect from the American public.”

“Baghdad Bob” Carney gets into the act, too:

In a statement earlier Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president is “concerned” about the reported conduct of “a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees.”

Yeah?  Like the ones at the top?  Anyway, here is the President, expressing his outrage:

Oh yeah, I am still waiting for my Federal Income Tax refund.

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Pediatricians for Gun Control!

No surprise here.  They will try and make the hackneyed and disproved argument that legally-owned firearms present a health risk.   Physicians tend to be overwhelmingly liberal, believe me.  That is no surprise.  What I do object to is the decades-long CDC and other government-funded supposed medical research being done to forward the far-left gun control agenda.   The idea that physicians, especially pediatricians, have the right to ask about firearms ownership in the name of medicine smacks of the big-brother philosophy that our Constitutional liberties present a danger to ourselves and society, and therefore must be carefully regulated or outright forbidden.  

Funny thing, though.  Deaths by “gun violence”, two-thirds of which are suicides, and the rest largely committed by criminals for whom laws are not at all effective, number around 31,ooo in the US annually.  Deaths through medical errors?  Well, here is some data between 2001 and 2003:

An average of 195,000 people in the USA died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of 37 million patient records that was released today by HealthGrades, the healthcare quality company.

What’s that look like in a graph?  I thought you’d never ask.

firearms vs medical errors

So doctors and medical professionals kill nineteen times the number of people that non-suicide “gun violence” kills.   Apparently, those people who die from in-hospital medical errors are much less dead than someone killed by a gun in a homicide.   And doctors and medical professionals kill more than THREE HUNDRED TIMES the number of people who die in firearms accidents.

I wonder if all the time and attention and money spent by the CDC and by medical organizations to further the lefty agenda might been better spent on training doctors and clinicians to do their jobs properly.

Just a thought.  By the way, how about they “do no harm” and shut up about trying to foist their political views upon us in the guise of medical research?

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Three Days of Mourning!

Why didn’t someone tell me?  

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Fuddruckers closes on Hilton Head after 28 years

Fuddruckers was a Sunday afternoon ritual, if you were lucky to have it off, when I was at Parris Island working recruit series twenty-odd years ago.  Chocolate shakes, and incredible burgers with everything imaginable on them.  And artery-clogging fries.   Three years in Recruit Training Regiment meant lots of 100+ hour six- and seven-day work weeks with recruits on deck, which was always.  A little air conditioning and good chow were a damned welcome break for a few hours.

I will make a last trip to Parris Island before I retire, but I was looking forward to sitting down at Fuddruckers and topping off my cholesterol.    Rumor has it that the one in Alexandria VA is also closed.

Dammit, I feel old.

But that’s all shove be’ind me — long ago an’ fur away,

-RK

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Battle for Berlin, 1945

This week marks VE Day, commemorating the Victory in Europe over Hitler’s Third Reich.  The last and perhaps the most savage battle was for the German capital of Berlin.   This from the Battlefield series, which was aired weekly on Far East Network (“Forced Entertainment Network”) when I had an artillery battery in Okinawa in 1996.   The entire series is superb, and if you look, you can find most of them on line.  They are also available on DVD.   They contain a pretty good description of the higher tactical through the strategic picture, and have enough detail and technical stuff, but not too much.

Since the series was made, Russian archives have been explored more completely, and the number of Soviet casualties have been scaled up more than two-fold, from the 305,000 quoted in this episode, to nearly 700,000.   Note the ever-present use of artillery and mortars, rockets, and field guns, even in an urban environment.   The episode is 116 minutes, roughly the time one spends clicking on all of Mav’s aviation links and cool pictures and videos and stuff.   So get your Eastern Front geek on, and watch it.  You know you wanna.

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IRS Targeting of Tea Party: “not motivated by political bias”? Oh Please!

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Lefties, Obama apologists, and Fellow Travelers all squawk loudly in protest when anyone points out instances where this Administration and its elected and appointed officials turn the weight of government persecution against political opponents like a tin-pot dictatorship, and portrays those opposed to them as national enemies.

The FBI calling white Veterans who believe in the Second Amendment, smaller government, and God, terrorist threats.

DoD embracing “full-spectrum” war game scenarios positing law-abiding Americans as armed insurrectionists.

Far-Left gun-grabber Congressmen labeling law-abiding gun-rights advocates as “extremist fringe groups”.  (Not coincidentally very similar to the language that replaced Islamic extremists, so as not to offend our sworn enemies.)

The Attorney General openly declaring his contempt for the 14th Amendment by refusing to investigate voter intimidation by “his people”, the New Black Panther Party.

And now, of course, the Internal Revenue Service being used as a hammer for political opposition by the Obama Administration.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.

No, it was criminal.  I will not buy that those perpetrating this did not know IRS policy.  Not for a second.  Of course, the official explanation sounds awfully similar to that of the Benghazi hearings.  ”Gee, we made a mistake, we didn’t have any malice in mind.  Gosh, we sure are sorry and promise to fix it.”  In both instances, it is complete and disingenuous bullshit.

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.

Uh huh.  People in those targeted groups, which extend well past the reach of “low level workers in Cincinnati”, were decried in the beholden and supplicant liberal media as paranoid, complete with vehement denials by IRS officials to Congress.

“Yes, I can give you assurances,” said Shulman. “As you know, we pride ourselves on being a nonpolitical, nonpartisian organization.” He pointed out that only he and the IRS chief counsel are Presidential appointees, and they are appointed for five-year terms in order to overlap administrations.

Doug Shulman is either a liar or an incompetent.  Taking into consideration this Administration’s propensity for deceit and the lack of integrity of its officials, I would need to see damned strong evidence that he is not the former.   Besides, if the IRS is interested in finding tax cheats, it really doesn’t have to look far.

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Remember, this is the government that Obama touts as the solution to all our problems.  This is OUR democracy, right?  Then why does Administration behave more like Castro’s Cuba or Khruschev’s Soviet Union than the United States of America?

Tyranny is just around the corner?  Well, in your Administration, President Obama, it is in full view.  You are not to be trusted. Your motives are wicked, and harmful to our Republic and our liberties.   Nor are any officials you have appointed to be trusted.  They lack integrity and decency, and any sense of responsibility to carry out the duties they are entrusted with in an honest and faithful manner.   Those who continue to scream “benefit of the doubt” and “no proof!” when the fix is in, as it is with virtually everything this Administration touches, are willfully blind nincompoops.  That they expect others to be, and level criticism when they aren’t, is nothing short of delusional.

“It is freedom itself that still hangs in the balance,
and freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.”

-RR

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Our esteemed host confirms that the Administration’s story in this mess is all a lie.  Shulman knew.  So did Lois Lerner.  They lied.  The Administration lied.  Like Benghazi and Fast and Furious and Obamacare and gun control and transparency and unemployment and Solyndra and ACORN and…  You get the idea.

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Filed under Around the web, history, islam, Lybia, obama, Politics, veterans, war

Separated at Birth?

Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist, by and large.  But there are things that are just too coincidental for my taste.

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Either Tayyip Ergodan of Turkey played second base, or Jerry Remy is NOT from Fall River.

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WAPO Media Bias on Display

The Washington Post covers itself in glory again.  WAPO could be asked to fill the role of White House Press Secretary if Jay Carney ever choked to death on the fabrications that come out of his mouth.   Here is WAPO’s “tweet” on yesterday’s Benghazi hearings:

Who’s tweeting about Benghazi?

Rich, middle-aged men and Chick-fil-A lovers

Town Hall.com sums it up better than I could.  There is more to their story than the “tweet”, and it is worth the read.

Message one: Only out-of-touch old white guys and nutty conservatives care about this story.  The Chick-fil-A reference was a dead giveaway, just in case the other descriptors were a little too subtle.  Message two: Republicans are only beating the drum on Benghazi (you know, that unresolved terrorist attack that killed a sitting ambassador and three other Americans) to damage Hillary Clinton ahead of 2016.  In other words, this is just another political food fight, America.  Feel free to move along.

The mainstream media is corrupt.

We haven’t an independent press, for the most part, any longer.   With the current occupant of the White House, most every outlet has become a willing mouthpiece for WH propaganda and disinformation, and eager attack dogs for those Obama targets as opposing his policies or criticizing his performance.

Juxtapose that with the Valerie Plame coverage from WAPO, which originally reported that Karl Rove called a reporter in a fit of temper, deliberately “outing” what was supposedly a covert CIA agent.  None of which actually occurred.  Yet, never  a word of retraction.

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ADT*; Lucky Gunner Ammo Evaluation

PMC45A-2

Waaaaaay back late last Autumn, Anthony at Lucky Gunner sent me two boxes of PMC Bronze .45 ACP ammunition to evaluate.   Well, winter came not long after Thanksgiving here in Vahmahnt, don’tcha know.  And it lasted until about two weeks ago.  (So much for Global Warming.)  I have become rather unwilling, in my old age, to endure misery without a damned good reason.   And, unfortunately, I consider standing in the sleet or in a 20 knots breeze generating a wind chill of single digits or below zero to be somewhat miserable.

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Bottom to top: Para-Ordnance 12-45 with 3.5″ bbl; M1911A1 with match trigger and 5″bbl; Colt Gold Cup M1911A1 with 5″ bbl.

Enough sniveling.  A couple weekends ago, the weather was sufficiently improved (40 and sunny) to take those two boxes of ammo, and three of my 1911s, to the range.   I hadn’t pulled triggers for real in four months, being limited to presentation, dry-fire, and magazine change drills.   So I did some warming up with all three pistols, a modified full-size 5″ 1911 with a match trigger and hammer, a 5″ Colt Gold Cup, and my carry piece, a 3.5″ Para-ordnance 12-45, using CCI .45 ACP at 230 grains.

Once I re-established sight-picture for each weapon and gave each a few strategically-placed drops of CLP, I was ready to test the PMC ammo.   The ammunition was 230-grain round-nose (“ball”) FMJ, generating 350 ft-lbs of energy with a MV of 830 fps.    I fired first two strings of slow fire (5 rds ea.) from each pistol at 25 yards.   Recoil was very consistent, as was ejection of the casings.  Each pistol functioned flawlessly with the PMC ammunition, without any feeding, chambering, or ejection problems.  Except for a pair of wanderers when the hammer fell in the wrong spot on the “figure eight”, all the rounds were tucked safely in the eight-ring, nine-ring, and ten-ring, with a number of X-shots.

The next string was 25 yards rapid, firing a magazine as fast as I could re-acquire the target from each weapon.  The ammunition was again as accurate as the shooter, and then some.   I fired some pretty good strings, and had that sense that the ammunition was impacting exactly where I’d been aiming when the hammer dropped.   Each weapon again functioned flawlessly.   Recoil was smooth and consistent, making second-round acquisition quite manageable.

The final string was 15-yard double-tap drills with each weapon.   One mag of 6 rds each from the Gold Cup and the custom gun was fired, but I concentrated, not surprisingly, on my carry sidearm in expending the remainder of the ammunition.  The PMC ammunition went through each weapon without a stoppage or malfunction, the consistent recoil paying big dividends with accuracy in the double-tap, especially with the Para 12-45.

I inspected each weapon thoroughly upon the conclusion of firing, and found that the PMC Bronze burned cleanly and without leaving brass shavings from the primer or case rim, as others have.   Cleaning was light lifting.  I would highly recommend PMC Bronze from your 1911, or from any .45 ACP-chambered handgun you might own.

*About Damned Time

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Sometimes, the Headline Tells You Everything You Want to Know, Part II.

“Horror as Bear on a Bike EATS a Monkey at the End of Sick Circus Cycle Race”

This is one of those headlines.  The UK’s Daily Mail tells you the rest.

It is not clear when the latest video was taken but Shanghai Wild Animal Park said in 2006 that the Olympic event had been scrapped following complaints and ‘out of consideration for the safety of our visitors.’

The VISITORS?   What about the poor damned chimp?   I always said I was sure glad I was not a sailor on a Soviet Nuclear Submarine.   I will have to add “monkey in a Chinese circus” to that.  

 

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Benghazi: Obama Administration Caught in Coverup

The “whistleblowers” in the Benghazi attack have finally been heard from.  And the news is entirely unsurprising, though no less maddening for it.

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Susan Rice lied.

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Hillary Clinton lied.  

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CJCS General Martin Dempsey lied.

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Barack Obama lied. 

The Administration knew the truth, even as the Benghazi attack was occurring.  They deliberately misled the American people, and the Mainstream Media outlets were complicit in the cover-up that followed.  

Not that anyone who paid the slightest attention to the events as they occurred and immediately after the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans had any doubt as to the deliberate falsehoods being promulgated by this Administration through the news media, who willingly and unquestioningly trumpeted those falsehoods.  In addition to the media’s complicity in the Administration’s deliberate deceit, media personalities attacked those voices who were critical of the botched tragedy in Benghazi, and who were suspicious of the unconvincing tales being told by Administration officials.

The one I have the most contempt for is Marty Dempsey.  He has shown himself time and again of questionable loyalty and lacking in integrity.   He sold his honor cheap.  And there is no recovering it from the bazaar of the political marketplace.    He is unfit to lead, and no longer deserves to wear a uniform.   He is despicable.

The individual with the most to lose is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who may yet see this testimony (which the mainstream media can no longer ignore) damage her chances as the Democratic nominee in 2016.   Because it does matter, Hillary.  And you know it.

The biggest hypocrite, however, is the sitting President.  He spoke yesterday at Ohio State’s commencement, where he derided those voices who warn that government isn’t to be trusted.    Perhaps his Attorney General, Eric Holder, can label any US citizen calling Barack Obama a hypocrite as an “extremist”, maybe even a “violent extremist”, and target them for death by Hellfire.   The new, streamlined due process arrangement should make that easy enough.

So much for this democracy being “ours”.

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Obama at OSU: “They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner.”

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President Obama’s commencement address to the graduates at the Ohio State University contained the following remarks:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

One would hope, at least, that the History majors and Political Science majors were squirming in their seats because their respective educations gave them insights that would cause them to disagree fundamentally with Obama’s assertions.  However, after sixteen years in the leftist secular-progressive socialist indoctrination camps that are secondary and higher education in this country, I am not optimistic.  Though it might be instructive to include an essay question on a final exam in which students would be asked to identify where forcible wealth redistribution, government-enforced equality, and government-dictated behaviors did not end in tyranny, oppression, and death.

Just whose voices are they that warn “incessantly” of tyranny that Obama begs to be rejected?  If you are scoring at home, here are a few of the no-account alarmists unreasonably suspicious of government overreach:

  •  Thomas Jefferson
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Voltaire
  • Martin Luther King
  • Edmund Burke
  • Alexander Hamilton
  • Thomas Paine
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • Patrick Henry
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Plato
  • Frederick Douglass
  • Samuel Adams
  • CS Lewis
  • Aristotle
  • James Madison
  • Ronald Reagan

Whose voices have extolled the virtues of government authority and the necessity to limit the freedoms of citizens, for their own safety and well-being?  Here’s a sample of Obama’s esteemed colleagues:

  • Mao Tse-Tung
  • Pol Pot
  • Malcolm X
  • Fidel Castro
  • Earl Browder
  • Friedrich Engels
  • Saul Alinsky
  • Hugo Chavez 
  • Vladimir Lenin
  • Eugene Debs
  • Leon Trotsky
  • Idi Amin
  • Karl Marx
  • Che Guevara

In his speech, Obama remarked, “Because we understand that this democracy is ours.”   That phrase, and the plural possessive, has an entirely different meaning for those who warn against the encroachment of government authority on individual liberties than it does for those who believe that government, America’s experiment included, is about collectivism, and “what can be done by us, together”.   That difference is precisely the difference between liberty and tyranny.

Class of 2013, ignore five centuries of despotism at your own peril.  Because tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.      -Camus

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150 Years Ago: Chancellorsville, May 3rd, 1863

Union soldiers waiting to advance, Chancellorsville

An interesting post over at Op-For by the redoubtable LtCol P commemorating the 150th anniversary of the famous Stonewall Jackson flank attack in the middle of the week-long battle.

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While the Battle of Chancellorsville was a stunning Southern victory, and the end of General Joe Hooker’s time at the head of the Army of the Potomac, the battle was not all disaster for the Federals, nor did their soldiers fail to fight.   Some fought extraordinarily well.  The 240-odd Officers and men of the 115th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, fighting under Dan Sickles’ Third Corps, held the western wall of the Federal position just west of Wilderness Church, in and around Hazel Grove.  The Regimental History for the 115th PA Vol. Inf. tells the story:

At daylight on the 3rd, the first line was attacked.  After holding its position for an hour, it fell back on its supports.  The Second line was then ordered to advance.  With alacrity it sprang forward, driving the enemy, when Colonel Lancaster fell, pierced through the temple with a minie-ball, [sic] the command devolving on Major Dunne.  Without faltering, the line pressed forward, recapturing the breastworks, taking four hundred prisoners and two stands of colors…  The position was held against the desperate efforts to carry it…

The price, including the desperate fighting withdrawal on the 6th, was high.

The Regiment entered the battle with fourteen Officers and two-hundred thirty men; of these, Colonel Lancaster, and Captains John J. Donnelly and George Cromley were killed,  and Captains Richard Dillon and Wm. A. Reilly, and Lieutenants William J. Ashe, James Malloy, and Evan Davis were wounded, the two latter mortally.  Captain Dillon lost his left arm.   Eight men were killed, seventy-three wounded, and twenty-two missing; an aggregate loss of one-hundred eleven.

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One of those seventy-three wounded was Private C. A. Warner of D Co., who was struck in the chest by a Rebel musket ball.

Warner, C.A. Private Wounded at Chancellorsville, Va., May 3, 1863 (Pa. Archives); Tr. to Co. D, 110th Regiment, P.V., June 22, 1864 D

Surgeons could not remove it, so it remained in his chest for the remainder of his life, which was all too short.   Just weeks before his son, my grandfather, was born in 1885, Christopher A. Warner died of complications from his wound.   He was 43.

One of the most incredibly moving experiences I ever had was walking through the Chancellorsville Battlefield in 1986 while at the Basic School.  Our 25-mile MCCRES hike was conducted there, and while 25 miles in 8 hours with a full march order is no leisure stroll, the venue was inspired.  On our breaks, Park Rangers would conduct impromptu lecture on the course of the battle.  I asked a Ranger at one point where the 115th PA Volunteers had fought, and he informed me that we were standing on the spot.

Knowing that I was within yards of where one of my ancestors had been wounded in the Civil War was both a thrill and a strongly compelling experience.   Even after the nearly thirty years, I remember every detail of the spot, and of the few minutes spent in thought, before shouldering MY pack again and falling into the long column of men being trained for war.  It is something I shall never forget.

[Update-XBrad]- Of course, for ALL your American Civil War blogging needs, be sure to check out Craig’s blog To The Sound Of The Guns. He’s devoted considerable space to Chancellorsville.

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If We Don’t Have It, You Don’t Need It!

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Here is a quick quiz:

Where can you go for a shopping trip and get everything on this shopping list without leaving the building?

  • Loaf of oat bread
  • Oscillating lawn sprinkler
  • $150 bottle of rare wine
  • 11/16ths combination wrench
  • Dress pattern for a prom gown
  • An apple-maple muffin
  • A box of .35 Whelen in 250 grain FMJ
  • Spread satin latex paint
  • A fill-up of premium gas
  • A post card of wintertime Norwich VT
  • The classic electric game “Operation”

Yep.  Dan and Whits.   The leading image in the post shows the building when it was Merrill’s Hardware, around 1890.  The building to the immediate right is the Norwich Inn, which inspired the setting on which the 1980s sitcom Newhart was based.

So, if you ever find yourself in eastern Vermont, and there is something you really need, head to Norwich and stop in.  You might find you need some deer urine, and remember suddenly that you have been meaning to pick up a crochet hook for the missus.  You might even see Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.  The real-life version, of which there are surprisingly many.

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“What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door…?”

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It sounds so reasonable, at first.    I mean, everybody wants to “prevent violence”, right?    That is at least the initial premise in Palm Beach, FL.

But the idea of giving the government, through its law enforcement arm, “needed information to keep a close eye on things” flies in the face of every lesson the totalitarianism of the last century taught us.

“How are they possibly going to watch everybody who makes a comment like that? It’s subjective,” said Liz Downey, executive director of the Palm Beach County branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “We don’t want to take away people’s civil liberties just because people aren’t behaving the way we think they should be.”

A damned good question.  Never fear, however, for the efficiency and compassion of government employees and institutions will protect you:

Bradshaw acknowledged the risk that anyone in a messy divorce or in a dispute with a neighbor could abuse the hotline. But, he said, he’s confident that his trained professionals will know how to sort out fact from fiction.

“We know how to sift through frivolous complaints,” he said.

I bet you do.  Wait until the term “troubled people” gets a definition that looks an awful lot like political opposition to the far Left.    Giving such unfettered power and invasive authority to law enforcement is dangerous in the extreme, for  is a violation of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and Sixth Amendment.

Not long into the article, the real  agenda pokes through the veil, just a little.

“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said.

Hating the government, and the mayor, and wanting to shoot him is not a crime.   Doing so, or threatening to do so, is.  But it seems Bradshaw doesn’t care to wait on such things as the commission of a criminal act, or even probable cause or reasonable suspicion.   I am sure we will be told that the urgency of the problem precludes due process yet again.

Republican Governor Rick Scott should take one of two paths.  He should veto such a frightfully dangerous proposal and make it clear that such an example of egregious government overreach will never get his signature,  or he should simply appoint a Gauleiter for Palm Beach County and drop all pretense to civil liberties.

After all, crimes and violence committed by “private citizens” in the Third Reich or the Soviet Union was historically low compared to crime rates in US cities.

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The government?  Not so much.  And it started with police knocking on doors.

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Atheists in Foxholes

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Seems it might become policy for the US Military.  Unless you are Muslim.  Which is fine, provided you can somehow refrain from blowing up your CO with a grenade, or shooting four dozen comrades while yelling “ALLAHU AKBAR!”   And even if you do, we can conjure terms like “pre-traumatic stress” and speculate about discrimination being the cause if not the justification for such acts.

But those Christians.  They’re monsters.

Those who believe this will end up as a “common-sense” regulation against those forcing their religion, unwelcome, upon comrades and juniors must have missed the DoD genuflecting (pun intended) to Islam, Global Warming, Diversity, Gun Control, Feminism, LGBT, and the various other “religions” that General and Flag Officers spend an inordinate amount of time proselytizing as a matter of command influence.

Could one imagine the Defense Department having ANY dealings with someone who declared sharing the Koran with fellow Muslims to be “spiritual rape” and those who do so are “enemies” of the Constitution?

The reason, perhaps, that this grates so is that it is another in a long line under this Administration, with these GOFOs, of political pandering to the far-Left, anti-Christian, anti-cleric secular progressives.    With no end in sight.

But don’t worry, Marty Dempsey and your band of bended-knee political servants.  Jesus loves you.

Some of the rest of us can’t stand the sight of you.

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No Money for Diapers?

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tattoo-done

I know I can’t take pictures, or video, without facing a lawsuit.  I dearly wish I could, though it is likely that the idea of shaming some people would lead them even more to consider themselves “victims”, with the concomitant parade of State-salaried do-gooders egging them on and “advocating” for them.

Coming back from a quick lunch today, I see a very young mother, baby on her hip, toddler at her side.  She is hitting the welfare office, across the hall from me.  Her baby has a full diaper, evident as soon as I opened the hallway door.  The guy in the hallway comments to her that the kid needs a change, to which she replies that she hasn’t got any money for diapers.

What DOES she have?  Tattoos.  A bunch of them.  (No, that is not her, above.  She was bigger than that.)  Too many for me to count, not that I care to.  What else?  As I was heading TO lunch, she was out having a cigarette.  Or two, or more.

Diapers can be found for about fifteen to twenty bucks a box, containing between 60 and 100.

Cigarettes in Vermont are almost eight bucks a pack.  $72 a carton.

I don’t know what tattoos cost in Vermont these days, not having priced them.

Everything we need to know about the malignant decay of our burgeoning welfare state was standing in the hallway outside my office.  Our money goes (we think) for diapers and formula.  HER money goes for cigarettes, and Lord knows what else.  But she NEEDS our money.  She is entitled to it.  And we are bound to give it to her.  For the children.

How heartless are they who would take food out of her children’s mouths.   And the cost of the health problems caused by the tobacco usage and weight issues must, and will, be borne by all of us, except her.   Because health care is a basic human right.

Any guesses what my objection to such a paradigm has gotten me labeled as more than once?  You betcha.  Racist.  Problem is that, without exception, the many, many people of similar appointment whom I see on a routine basis there and lighting up in front of the WIC offices, are the same race as me.   Government handouts enabling a life without consequence are an addiction that robs people of pride, ambition, judgment, and morality.   And yes, that is all about race.  The Human Race.

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What, Again?

Hollande-Merkel

The Telegraph, which has had a few ringside seats for these kinds of Franco-German spats, tells us that there are differences between the two Continental states, and those differences are sometimes a source of friction.  Perish the thought.

The ministry’s paper said: “French industry is increasingly losing its competitiveness. The relocation of companies abroad continues. Profitability is meagre.”

Relations between France and Germany are chilly after Mr Hollande’s Socialist party accused Mrs Merkel of “egotistical intransigence” and called for “democratic confrontation” with Berlin.

While France clings to its totemic 35-hour working week, workers in Germany are increasingly discontented at having to endure years of low pay rises.

It points out that France has the “second lowest annual working time” in the European Union, while its “tax and social security burden” is the highest in the eurozone. It also warns that France has made too little investment in research and development.

One cannot but think of the stereotypes of the humorless, hard-working German looking over his factory apron at his lazy, decadent French neighbor with contempt and frustration, while the Frenchman stares back from his sidewalk table, eating his wine and cheese, confident of his moral and cultural superiority.

What could go wrong?   It isn’t like these two countries would actually fight over something.  That would be unprecedented….

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All That for a Flag; Navy Officer who Provided Iwo Jima Flag Dies at 90

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Navy Lieutenant Alan Wood, Communications Officer aboard LST 779, the man who provided the second and larger Iwo Jima flag raised by the patrol of 28th Marines in the war’s most iconic image, has passed away at 90.

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Semper Fidelis, Lieutenant Wood.   You may report into the growing formation of heroes mustering on the fantail above.

 

 

 

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VX in Syria; A Vexing Question

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The Telegraph reports, in an article on the fight for the Al-Safirah chemical facility:

The Syrian regime’s chemical warchest is indeed vast – the biggest in the Middle East, and the fourth largest in the world. Started in the 1970s ranks with help from Syria’s Cold War sponsor, Russia, today its programme includes facilities for making mustard gas, sarin and another nerve agent, VX, which stays lethal for much longer after dispersal.

Of course, this is not the first revelation that Assad’s chemical inventory contained VX.  Former Syrian Army Chemical Officer MajGen Adnan Sillou discussed the matter in a December 2012 interview:

He listed mustard gas along with the sarin, VX and tabun nerve agents as the main elements in Syria’s chemical arsenal, whose existence Syria doesn’t even acknowledge.

Despite the anguished cries of the Bush-haters, the question of VX in Syria is a vexing one for the “no chemical weapons in Iraq” crowd.   Only four countries have ever been known to produce VX; Great Britain, where it was discovered/invented, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Iraq.

So, how did VX end up in Basher Al-Assad’s arsenal?  One of two ways, it would seem, or some combination thereof.  It was either provided by what the Telegraph calls Syria’s “Cold War sponsor” (the Soviet Union, not Russia), or it came from Syria’s southeastern neighbor, Saddam’s Iraq.   Or both.

Methinks that the VX stockpiles have MAKSIM‘s fingerprints all over them.  The presence of a KGB General in Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion cannot plausibly be explained by casting him as an “adviser”.    Primakov had intimate knowledge of Iraq’s chemical capabilties, and would have been in an ideal position to help remove Saddam’s remaining stockpile, along with evidence of Soviet/Russian culpability.

Another alternative is the possibility that the Soviet Union (or Russia post-1991) provided Syria with VX directly.    Were that the case, the likelihood that the Soviets/Russians did the same with Iraq (or provided technical assistance to manufacture) increases dramatically.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Putin’s Russia has remained in the protector role of Assad in Syria, far and above that which would logically attend a regime on such shaky ground internally.   And would explain Primakov’s presence in Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion.

In either case, those who refuse to acknowledge Syria’s possession of VX, the most lethal of nerve agents, and by far the most difficult to produce, have to do some soul searching.   It might serve them well to search all the way back to 2003.

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The Ice Age Cometh!

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Second Coldest Start To Spring In US History

It wasn’t just my imagination.  Behold, from Steven Goddard’s Real Science post.

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Huh.  To show how significant this catastrophe is, all one has to do is “AlGorify” the data.  (Not to be confused with “algorithm”, which could lend some statistical validity to the process.)

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So, there’s where next year’s spring temperatures will be come the end of April.  Just a little above freezing.   2015?   Frozen solid.   Anthropomorphic?  I dunno.  And I am also confused by what to do about it.   When the coldest spring of 1975 happened, we were told that we needed to stifle industry and redistribute wealth to the Third World (and Environmentalists’ pockets) to keep the world from freezing.    THEN we were told that we needed to stifle industry and redistribute wealth to the Third World (and the pockets of those same Environmentalists) to keep the world from roasting to oblivion.

I can’t for the life of me understand why 0.00000000035%  of the data is not conclusive.    Even though it was unevenly collected with a wide variety of instruments and methods.   But hey, it is “settled science”, innit?   Like predicting Presidential election results by counting four tenths of a vote.

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