Ken Nelson

Hanks was talking stupid again:

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Hanks ignores many truths from the past to try and highlight an untruth today.

Hanson takes him to task:

Despite Hanks’ efforts at moral equivalence in making the U.S. and Japan kindred in their hatreds, America was attacked first, and its democratic system was both antithetical to the Japan of 1941, and capable of continual moral evolution in a way impossible under Gen. Tojo and his cadre. It is quite shameful to reduce that fundamental difference into a “they…us” 50/50 polarity. Indeed, the most disturbing phrase of all was Hanks’ suggestion that the Japanese wished to “kill,” us, while we in turn wanted to “annihilate” them. Had they developed the bomb or other such weapons of mass destruction (and they had all sorts of plans of creating WMDs), and won the war, I can guarantee Hanks that he would probably would not be here today, and that his Los Angeles would look nothing like a prosperous and modern Tokyo.

In other words… Tom Hanks should be glad we won, and should hope we win against fascist Islam. After all, what would your typical jihadist mullah do with a guy who dressed like this:

 
Tom Hanks’s in Bosom Buddies

I’ve set the DVR to record “The Pacific”. Not cause I like Tom Hanks, but because I’d really like to see two of my favorite books – “Helmet for My Pillow “ (Robert Leckie) and “With the Old Breed” (Eugene Sledge) set to film.

 
Or Privacy SHOULD not be a crime

With Utah just trying, and failing, to do its own Patriot Act for all crimes, I thought it appropriate to look at the Patriot Act, which is up for renewal now.

I’m inclined to not like laws claiming to be patriotic. Nor laws that have names that are really acronyms: Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act

Note that name specifically includes terrorism ONLY.  I do think we need to fight terrorism hard. My main problem with the Patriot Act is that it doesn’t JUST fight terrorism. It also permits intrusive law enforcement techniques for drugs, money laundering, computer crime, border, and crime in general.

And in action most of the uses of the law have NOT been for terrorism. Not just most, nearly all.  For instance, of the 763 sneak and peak warrants used in 2008 only 3 were used for anti-terrorism. 65 percent were used for drug enforcement. And that leaves about 34% for “other” crimes.

I do not support fishing expeditions, like the BLANKET requests  for records on all customers of a number of Las Vegas businesses.

I do not support imprisoning over 200 people under this act for petty crimes committed on airliners. They weren’t terrorists.

This is so like government to use fear of one thing to spur invasive activity in another.

So, in a nutshell, I favor renewing a modified Patriot Act, limited to JUST terrorism.

Frankly, I think the law hasn’t helped anti-terrorism much and I’d be happy to see it die if that was what was needed to kill the non-terrorism stuff in it.

But if we can start over and craft a simple bill FOCUSED on terrorism and not containing every wish list the Federal law enforcement bureaucracy wants to use against citizens, then I’d support it.

Lacking that, I’d just as soon say sayonara to the PATRIOT Act and hello to the POTO (Prevention of Terrorism Only) Act.

Competitors can teach the Army about cool and clean running M16s
Shown: The JP Rifles JP-15 AR.

The NY Times covers the Army’s attempts to build an M4 (shorter variant of the M16) that won’t jam:

Watch the video closely. After several magazines, the barrel smolders. Then it becomes red hot. After 1 minute and 20 seconds the barrel begins to droop between magazines — like a piece of warm licorice. Then comes the catastrophic ending, at 1 minute and 51 seconds and after the 535th round, when the barrel ruptures.

They Army has decided to make the barrel heavier to help avoid the problem:

The barrel gets hotter and hotter, and the heat spreads throughout the weapon. The shooter wears a heat-resistant glove even to pull the trigger. Soon the barrel smolders and glows, but it does not droop and does not rupture. At 2:22 the hand guard assembly catches fire. It burns for about two and a half minutes. But the rifle keeps firing, magazine after magazine, until it stops firing on automatic at 4 minutes and 47 seconds, after 911 rounds.

In my experience fouling, not shooting too much/too fast, causes most M16 jams.  Although I have seen M16 barrels begin to get soft from heat, this was before the introduction of the 3-shot burst automatics the soldiers of today use.

The M16 runs very dirty because the gas used to blast  the bolt back to cycle a new round comes directly back into the receiver depositing all sorts of nasties that collect quickly there.  Shoot a 100 rounds through an M16, or AR-15, then put your finger in there and it comes back black.

Competitive shooters don’t risk their lives due to jams, but they do risk losing, which motivates them to modify the guns to never jam.  Most serious competitors in multi-gun, or 3-gun, shooting (pistol, shotgun, carbine) have moved to a gas-piston system of cycling the action. In this approach the gas doesn’t go all the way back to the bolt, instead it operates a piston that moves the bolt. The action runs clean and cool. You can go a 1000 or more rounds and not have to clean the action (you should clean the barrel to extend its life however).

These systems also typically minimize the bolt slap against the back of the receiver.  Most AR-15’s come back too hard, making recoil much worse than need be.

The Army, IMHO, would be better served moving to a clean running, lower recoil, gas-piston variant of the M16/AR-15.   The guns would jam a lot less.  And valuable soldier time wouldn’t be wasted cleaning the weapons.

I’d note that soldiers given a choice, usually in Special Ops or other specialties, generally prefer the gas-piston systems. Reliability plus less maintenance and lower recoil… you can have it all!

Missing

We were promised a “surge” in air marshal coverage after the “fruit of the boom” idiot. Now comes reports that 4 passengers on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit were unruly… and no air marshal:

A Delta Airlines spokeswoman says the crew of a Northwest Airlines flight has requested that authorities meet the plane as it landed in Detroit because four passengers did not follow their instructions.

Were these Nigerian muslims? Or were they on strike over wanting to keep their blankets the last hour of the flight?   Big difference and I wish Delta would tell us. I’d also like to know why we don’t have air marshals on all flights from Amsterdam, at least until we have confidence in their security system again.

Uhmmm… President Ken would end that doubt in a heartbeat. How?  By turning back all non-US citizens on flights from airports that didn’t comply.  Who wants to ignore what I want now?

Oh… and I wouldn’t run a crazy debt and leaders of terrorist sponsoring countries would be dead by my first week in office.

Write in Ken Nelson in 2012!

Uhmmm… I’d like to see your bags sir.

So now, 8 years after 9/11, we finally start searching everybody from bad countries?

The State Department lists four countries as those that sponsor terror: Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Iran. The other 10 countries of interest are Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen, the government official said.

What about the UK, with its too large and too extreme Muslim population? France too.

Basically, we need to interview / search everybody coming here that fits the profile – Muslim.   And we need to stop Muslim immigration NOW so that a local Muslim population doesn’t grow here and hide and provide terrorists.

A threat to a bloated ineffective bureaucracy has his laptops seized by TSA special agents:

Meanwhile an actual threat to America enters with ease:

I suppose when Al-Qaeda threatens the TSA directly they might get vigorous about, you know, checking them out.

If it weren’t so dangerously stupid the contrast would be funny.  But we spend trillions, lose freedoms, and still have terrorists walking into our country with no problem. 

Heads need to roll. Starting at the top.

Worst President ever?

A terrorist, never before in this country, not a citizen of this country, attempts to suicide bomb the plane he is in over our country, and our illustrious President lets him “lawyer up”?

Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and, after initial debriefings by the FBI, has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials.  Authorities are holding out hope that he will change his mind and cooperate with the probe, the officials said. (Emphasis added)

Are these people, supposedly here to protect us, complete and utter idiots? Are they insane?

Take the guy and interrogate him, firmly, with pain, using any means to unravel the network of terrorists he so recently left.  Slather his wounds with pig fat, make him lie with dogs, I don’t care – just make him TALK.

This guy has NO Constitutional rights, and IMHO no human rights, he forfeited them when he tried to blow up 300 men, woman and children out of the sky.

That our President doesn’t intervene and say “habius whattis? – uh uh brother, that dude is going to our little part of Cuba for some talkie time” makes him and his Presidency a dangerous joke.

Maybe narcissism will save the day… I suspect that once Obama gets wind of how much Abdulmutallab is hurting him, he may play tough with the guy.

Actually it is almost perfect. The newspaper box is extraneous. Obama in a TSA uniform is all we need.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/30/ramirez-on-systemic-failures/

Uhmmm… no thanks. You stay there.

Jeffrey Goldberg asks Bruce Schneir, his security guru, that question… I’m sympathetic to the answer:

I want President Obama to get on national television and project indomitability. I want him to dial back the hyperbole, and remind us that our society can’t be terrorized. I want him to roll back all the fear-based post-9/11 security measures.  We’d do much better by leveraging the inherent strengths of our modern democracies and the natural advantages we have over the terrorists: our adaptability and survivability, our international network of laws and law enforcement, and the freedoms and liberties that make our society so enviable. The way we live is open enough to make terrorists rare; we are observant enough to prevent most of the terrorist plots that exist, and indomitable enough to survive the even fewer terrorist plots that actually succeed. We don’t need to pretend otherwise.

I agree. BUT I’d put in place very stringent immigration and entry restrictions from Muslim countries.  Terrorists plotting from afar can be handled as he says above. A large, internal, Muslim population, providing haven and a place to hide wouldn’t be a good idea.

We CAN and SHOULD deny entry and immigration to cultures and individuals that put us at risk.  Muslims certainly fall into the “dangerous” category.  Individually they may be fine people, but in mass, their culture represents a danger to America.

"This weekend in Prague," he said, "I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."  
Barack Obama

Some would say “admirable goal but unrealistic”.  And they would be stupid.

Some would say “admirable goal and we should do it”. And they would be dangerous.

Why?  Because there will never, again, be a world without nukes. Even if successful getting rid of the weapons, the world would never be more than a week or two from having them again. Such a world would be dangerous, unstable, and prone to rapid preventive escalations.

I have to wonder, is Obama just naive? Or is there some underlying ill will he has against the world and our country?

Isn’t it sad I have to wonder such questions.  300+ million people in our country, and THIS is the best we can elect? Sad.

Terrorism training, like a leak in a dike, pops up somewhere else when you push your thumb on a hole in Iraq or Afghanistan. The spout currently flows in Yemen. So will we put our thumb on the Yemeni leak?

First off, where the heck is Yemen? Here you go:

To a certain extent Yemen puts the kabosh on the notion that “democracy” will prevent terror support:

Yemen (Yaman) is a Presidential republic with a bicameral legislature. Under the constitution, an elected president, an elected 301-seat House of Representatives, and an appointed 111-member Shura Council share power. The president is head of state, and the prime minister is head of government.

See that “Shura” thing… it basically means “Islamic Democracy”. You get the picture.

Culturally split between Shia and Sunni, a median age of 16 and with over half the population under age 14, Yemen is more like Somalia than its neighbor Saudi Arabia. Yemen is one of the poorest Arab countries – over 1/2 live below the poverty line. Yemeni’s diaspora largely went to England – which has about 70,000 Yemeni immigrants.

Like the Northern Territories of Pakistan the primary social unit for Yemen is the tribe not the state.  Hence, their  “Democracy” it isn’t one that we would recognize as such, and there is in insurgency underway against the relatively recent (1999) Democratic rule.

So what should we do about terrorist training and hide-a-ways in Yemen? 

Well, if it were me, I’d tell each tribal leadership that their lives depend on booting the terrorists out. Personally. There. Lives.  If not, Predators and special forces deal with them.

No need to “invade”. Make it personal for leaders and their behavior will change.

Politicians are the same all over… they will consistently do what is best for themselves.

I see no need to kill lots of Yemeni, nor put at risk lots of American youth.  Lets try something different in Yemen – put the hurt where it belongs – On older self-dealing politicians in the country and the terrorists themselves.

It should be after this jewel:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.

The only changes we should make to Guantanamo are one-way gates.

Also, Obama and company continue to consider all possible options before then acting on the worst. How? The Christmas bomber, a Nigerian, non-citizen and member of Al-Qaeda will be “tried” with full Miranda and other Constitutional rights.

He ought to get a one way trip to the water board at Guantanamo. Since he isn’t a citizen and is a foreign terrorist. He should be interrogated, tortured if necessary, and then killed.

"We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable."

Barack Obama, 10:10AM

Fore!
Barack Obama, 10:40AM

A mob of angry Iranian protestors rush a regime hanging and cut down the two victims.

It seems like we ought to be doing more to help these groups.  After all, what kind of country has portable hanging platforms readily available to their government employees?

Via Ace