Movies in History. Platoon Leader

I keep finding out that there are Vietnam War movies I've never seen.  That's probably because a lot of them aren't that good and are therefore obscure.  Still, with a movie as bad as The Green Berets being well known, you'd think you'd have heard of them all.

This one was on cable, and I'd never heard of it, so I watched it.

It's pretty bad.

Filmed in 1988, it's apparently based on an actual memoir, but it sort of comes across as an effort to film something like Platoon, but where all the Americans are admirable and on a much smaller budget.

The basic plot follows a young officer as he tried to gain the trust of his men, a theme that's been filmed a zillion times.  In this instance, the young lieutenant is assigned to an impossibly badly designed very tiny defense position out in the bush, whose only purpose is to guard a nearby village.

From the outpost, he leads patrols.  He's always steadfast.  Three career NCOs help him, the distrusting long time sergeant, the sympathetic Christian African American sergeant, and the battle hardened corporal.  Back somewhere is his commanding officer, a rather old and crusty major.  Officers occasionally pop in to check on the post.  Pretty much 100% of the characters are cartoons.  Eventually there's a climatic battle. . . like Platoon.

In terms of material details, the film isn't horrible, but like Platoon it features a CAR 15 in the hands of an NCO.  Platoon seems to have created the myth that this was common.  The same NCO carriers a very large frame revolver, which actually isn't impossible.  All of the enemy combatants seem to be NVA regulars for some reason, although they're indicated to be VC regulars, which doesn't make any sense.

Not really worth watching.

US Stockpiles are Running Dangerously Low

 

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 130th Edition. Narratives

The things they've said.

The attempted assassination at the White House Correspondence Dinner has spawned some interesting events and narratives.

One thing is that apparently Trump called several prominent reporters who were at the event that night, and expressed concern for their well being.  That's outright remarkable given his generally abusive self centered public persona.

He also made a statement about needing to come together.

That's true, but at least one politician interviewed about it had a very difficult time not expressing skepticism.

Already, I'd note, Trump fans have yelled out about how Democratic and left wing rhetoric cased this.  Well, bull.

There is a lot of hostile verbiage directed at Trump, and much of it is due to the horrible things he says all the time.  Just a few weeks ago he noted how he was glad a public figure was dead.

Trump brought American political rhetoric into new territory when he very first started to run for the Oval Office.  Republicans who complain about the language directed at him, and some of it is vile, need to look in the mirror.  

Ballroom fixation

Amongst comments made by Trump were those stating this is proof we need his expensive ballroom, which is tied up in litigation.

The logic of that would be that the ballroom, if built, will have expensive security features.  Where it fails in logic is that the dinner event was a private one, not a state function.  Unless everything a President accepts an invitation to is held in the ballroom, things like this would not be prevented.

But here's another, and frankly radical, thing to consider. 

Maybe Presidents need less protection, not more.

At one time there was a tradition that members of the public could wait in line at the White House to shake the President's hand on New Years. That ended in 1932.  Now it would be unthinkable.

The only thing that's changed since 1932 is us.  If the President's under constant threat, and of course there were three Presidents that were assassinated prior to 1932, that's because of us or some other factor.

One thing that's clearly changed is that the President is treated much more like a king now than he was in '32.  Air Force One is the very symbol of that.

These trappings ought to be stripped away.  If a President needs to fly somewhere, on official business, the Air Force has airplanes.  There doesn't need to be a designated special one.  Nor does there need to be a Marine Corps helicopter dedicated for the President.  If he's just flying to a resort to golf, he can by a commercial airline ticket.

Maybe part of the overall problem is that they're given too much and separated from the people they are supposed to serve.

A big dumb ballroom emphasizes that.

It actually is true that prior Presidents lamented their being a lack of entertainment space. Well, too darned bad.  Rent a hotel room.  

And I'm not in favor of a giant bunker on the White House grounds either. 

Maybe if a  person is more like everyone else, they'll think twice about things that harm people.  I don't want them exposed to violence, but making things so they can inflict it video game style is not a good thing, and elevating the President above the people isn't either. 

And now you know. . .

how thousands of other people live every day.  With one exception, when I listed to interviews of people from the press who had been at the event, things were not too surprisingly focused on themselves.  The one exception was somebody who pointed out that they had excellent security but that most people don't, and that a lot of people live in fear of their family members, including children, being killed every day.

That's an excellent point.

Trump said something about this being just part of the price of holding office, which is easy to say for somebody who has a taxpayer funded security team.  It shouldn't be part of the price of holding office, and exposure to violent death shouldn't be something you have to endure just because you live in this country.

Anti Christian?

When I went to Mass yesterday there was a Sheriff's truck parked in front of the Church. That's not a parking spot.  When I went in, there was a uniformed sheriff's officer in complete kit.  That's unusual.

I wondered if something was going on.  Maybe not.  He went to Communion like everyone else, so maybe he was just on his way to work.

Trump claimed that the shooter had been a Christian than apostatized and that was part of his motivation.  We'll see.  If so, it's ironic, as there's no visible evidence of Trump taking Christianity seriously.

What our enemies must be thinking.

It's been long believed that Iran has sleeper cells in the US.  If they do, they haven't activated them in the current war.   They either don't really have them, or they're holding back as it provides them with an advantage.

I can see where the latter might be the case.  The old joke, dating back to World War Two, was that Hitler was the best general the Allies had, and that same may apply to Trump.  He might be the best general the Iranians had.

That we went into the war with Iran with no clue what we were doing, and what our enemy was actually like, is to plain to excuse away.  We have no idea whatsoever what we're doing and have no way out of the war.  It's going to wreck the global economy.  At this point, and we're at the sixty day mark, Trump legally has to submit the question of continuing the war to Congress, which will have to determine, as a practical matter, if we're going to engage in a full scale ground invasion of the country or surrender and leave Iran stronger than it was.

The Iranians maybe gambling on the latter, and it'd probably be a good gamble.

Anyhow, assuming they have sleeper cells, they've really shown restraint.  Yesterday proved that a dedicated group of men could have breached security and completely decapitated the American government.  We participated in doing that, which is beyond the Pale in war normally, in this war.  On the basis of turnabout is fair play, it's amazing they haven't tried it. Maybe they just didn't think it'd work.

They know now it would have, although presumably the administration won't be dumb enough again to put the complete administration together in one room.

The others who must be looking are Russia and China, China in particular. But not at that, but at the war itself.

We've pretty much burned through our war reserve of missiles.  If war came with China, we couldn't fight it.

Tone Deaf

Once a week now we get identical sized flyers from Chuck Gray and Reid Rasner promising to support the demented octogenarian that put us a war that's going to completely wreck the economy, and whose wrecking a lot of other things.

Maybe that still works in Wyoming.  Trump has a lot of fans here.  But as prices get higher and higher, and we sluff into a summer that's going to be hot and dry, with a tourist industry that's going to fall flat on its face, I wonder.

For the first time, actually, I got a sort of nervous "what do you make of the assassination" from somebody whose a huge Trump supporter and knows I'm not.  I think he was looking for reassurance of some sort.  I gave analysis. That probably isn't what he was looking for.

Proof of Devine Providence?

Franklin Graham was quick to come out with what I was sure would occur.  Trump's survived three assassination attempts and that is, he suggested, proof that God wants him in power.

Adolf Hitler survived over 40 assassination attempts. There are five known plots on Stalin's life.

A person should never dismiss something being the Hand of God, but we shouldn't presume to know the mind of God either.  Nor should we ignore, as the examples above show, the Problem of Evil.

On that, we can presume that God allows an evil to occur, but does not cause it, in order to bring a greater good out of it.  While foreseeing the future is always risking, I could see that being the case here.

In spite of what Trump/Gray/Hageman/Barrasso/Rasner and others believe, or claim to believe, the ongoing use of fossil fuels is harming the world. This may actually accelerate their end.  

Let me restate that, it is accelerating their end.

Countries all around the globe, including China, are rapidly phasing out fossil fuels for power generation.  China is leaping into electric vehicles big time.  Europe has, I believe, 2030 as the date for the end of the import of Russian oil.

The war is freeing the globe of US influence, something we'll regret and with it our steadfast refusal to look at reality.  We're being put in our place, and the era of fossil fuels is coming to a rapid end.

The other thing, it seems to me, that Trump is brining about is the discrediting of American Evangelicalism.  I.e., people like Graham.  

Evangelical churches are particularly an American thing.  They're strong in the US in a way they aren't anywhere else.  Where they evangelize outside the US its nearly always where Catholics have made it safe for them to go.  The latching on to Trump by them in a very public manner is hurting Christianity in general, but them in particular.  Catholicism is already growing world wide and, while the story is only now being noticed, it's growing in the US.  I suspect Trump is accidentally helping bring hte latter about.

On firearms.

On assassinations, one thing worth noting, although I won't detail it, is that so far the only assassin/would be assassin who seems to have had a clue what he was doing was the guy who shot Charlie Kirk, although even there it's clear that the shot being lethal was essentially accidental.  There's very free access to firearms in the US, although I suspect that this will start being curbed back due to Trump, but that free access doesn't mean competence.  

People who are really familiar with firearms are unlikely to go out and try to kill somebody.  This is true of "military style" firearms.  There's a group of firearms aficionados who like military style firearms, but aren't very likely to use them in any lethal fashion.

This may simply be because people know and like firearms know what they'll do, and are unlikely to be people who use them in that fashion.  It's the people who buy them just because they're worked up about politics, on the right or the left, or who have an exaggerated fear of being attacked, who are the problem here.  Fortunately, they're not all that likely to actually know how to use them.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 129th Edition. An unfortunate observation of our times.

Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Antipathy, Catholic, Christianity, Civil War, Death, Donald Trump, Empathy, Introspection, Reconstruction, religion, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Practice of Law, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 128th Edition. Attempted assassination at a pointless event.

The 127th edition of this was teed up to go before last night's White House Correspondence Dinner, or this would be that edition.  Having the other one ready to go, I went ahead and ran it. 

I didn't realize anything had happened right away until I went upstairs and my wife was watching a little of the news feed.  It was fairly typical with the press doing the usual "oh gosh, who could the target have been" routine.  We all know who the target was, Donald Trump.

This is a tragedy, even though nobody was hurt, thankfully, for a variety of reasons, one being that while there are now questions about how the assailant "got so close" (in a country armed to the hilt, Trump probably comes surprisingly close to armed people every single day), what this accomplishes once again will be to help rally people around Trump.  I know that's not supposed to be the first observation, but it's quite true.

Trump has been sinking like a rock in popularity but people rally around somebody who is attacked.  And in the MAGA camp, where quite a few people believe that Trump is on some sort of Devine mission, it'll be seen as proof of that.

That this occurred is not a surprise at all.  Trump is an illegitimate President who vomits hatred on a nearly daily basis.  He inspires hatred of him and is likely the most hated American President since Abraham Lincoln.  He is a horrible human being.  

None of that justifies an attempt at murder, but it's not surprising the attempt was made.  What's additionally interesting, fwiw, is the far right of this country effectively adopted the concept of tyrannicide during both Biden's and Obama's terms in office, so in a way, that set the table for something like this to occur in a way that didn't exist when there were attempts on prior Presidents.

With this attempt, depending on how you look at it, Trump holds the record for the most attempts on a Presidents life.  Having said that, if you limit that to while a figure is in office, he's tied with Ford if you regard him as being presently in office.

I probably would have skipped mentioning the dinner as its shameful that it even occurs anymore.  

Some outside commentary on it:

Inside the Ballroom: Chaos and Confusion

One wonders if the surreal events of Saturday night might make it hard to return to the familiar conception of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

That article by a reporter who was there.  

Surreal?  Maybe, but by this point in Trump's illegitimate reign I suspect a lot of people are like me.  We know that this was a horrible event but it hardly even registered on the attention meter.  Trump so dominates the news with his horrible behavior that even when its directed at him, it's hard to really get too worked up about it.

Again, I don't condone this, and the effect will aid Trump, who needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment.  

About the dinner itself, a lot of people, myself included, flatly feel that it should have been cancelled, or at least Trump should not have been invited.  He treats the Press horribly, and yet there they are, worshipping him.

Aid and Comfort to the Enemy

The recklessness of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s self-own

A cartoon:

The WH Correspondents' Dinner

Unethical and tone deaf

Apparently J.D. Vance and sycophantic today Mike "Toady" Johnson were at the event.  Of interest, the Secret Service rushed Vance off first.

That's interesting.

If that comes up again, I'm sure there will be some solid explanation, but I wonder if its just not a combination of fatigue on the part of security as well.  Vance and Trump probably have separate security details and Trump's is probably numb from having to be around such a horrible person constantly.

On clearing the room, the excessive number of iPhone cameras anymore means everything is photographed to the hilt and then over analyzed.  That's already happening, but as horrible as something like this is, it can lead to some semi assuming photographs, none of which would be the slightest bit amusing if you were there.

One is that Kennedy Jr. appeared to leave his wife behind as he was escorted out to safety. His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, later explained that her formal dress hindered her ability to get out and she had to be carried.

Stephen Miller basically shoved his wife out, which is understandable, but photographically unfortunate too, as he was leading her while behind her and his hand was unfortunately placed for control on her upper torso, um, well anyhow.

On the post scene photographs, one security figure is clearly carrying a SIG M17 in the same photograph as a female security officer carrying a Glock 19.  The M17 is way larger.  It had the conventional iron sights.

The man carrying it was way larger than the female officers as well.  I know that in 2025 a person isn't supposed to feel these things but in at least two of the Trump attempts a female secret service officer has been present and just the photographs don't inspire confident in me.  That's probably just me.  Anyhow, well. . . 

Well, a slight addition.

Since the decline in sartorial standards, Secret Service officers are absurdly easy to pick out. They're always wearing dark suits.  I have a photograph of Theodore Roosevelt from 1903 or so in which a Secret Service officer is wearing tweed and a newsboy cap.  Much harder to pick out.  The women are even easier to pick out as women don't normally wear dark business suits.

Glocks leave me unimpressed as well.  M'eh.

Trump promised to reschedule the event, which of course, wasn't his to schedule in the first place.

Trump offered some comments from the White House.  Included in those were that the military is demanding the ballroom.

The military probably doesn't normally provide any sort of security to the President at all, although the man with the M17 is interesting as he was clearly in some security role, and was not in the Secret Service, and probably in the military.  That aside, the military probably doesn't give a rats ass about the ballroom in this context.  Trump just makes crap up.

What does seem to be the case is that there's a giant bunker being built under where the ballroom is supposed to go, but won't.  We only know the details of that which we know as Trump can't stop his verbal diarrhea. 

It is an interesting aspect of this however is how much of the White House destruction was motivated by a military request, and then taken advantage of by the White House, if it was.

I'll add that building giant bunkers leads to an inflated sense of self worth on the part of everyone involved.  That part of this project ought to be halted as well.

One final note.  Most people who attempt to assassinate Presidents are nuts.  This is notable as by an large, their efforts are incredibly poorly done.  This is true of nearly every historical assassination attempt.  Of all of them, Lee Harvey Oswald's was by far the most competent attempt, which is probably why people insist it must have been a conspiracy.

Not that this isn't already happening here.  I've already read claims that this attempt, and all the prior ones, on Trump's life were staged.  They weren't, but something remarkable here is that Trump, Vance and Johnson were all present, which is stupid.  The argument would be that you know they were staged, as the government would never be so dim as to put the first three people in line for power in the same public room.

Oh yes it would.

Rubio was there too.

Given the line of succession, if a competent attacker was president, Chuck Grassley might now be President.  That would assume a lot of skill that most attempted assassins really lack, which is a good thing for everyone.  Indeed, even well trained assassins tend not to pull regime change off, as the repeated German Army failures on Hitler demonstrate.

It does demonstrated a lot of hubris, however.  We are presently at war with a country whose entire leadership was assassinated early on.  Murdering the leadership of opposing combatants is generally regarded as beyond the Pale in war.  We did not do it in World War Two, and our opponents didn't attempt it either.  The targeting of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in Operation Vengeance during World War Two is still controversial.  It was well known that Trump would be at this event and it was likely known that members of his cabinet would be too.  That Iran did not regard the event as a target of opportunity says a lot about their restraint, and frankly, their intelligence.   They could literally have decapitated the administration and left a person so old in charge that he would have had to resign.  I don't know how many members of Trump's cabinet were in fact there.  Maybe all of them.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 127th Edition. The Dipshit Edition. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides the a General officer of the U.S. Army is too "woke" to be the President of UW.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Army, Education, Ignorance, Stupidity, United States Military Academy, University of Wyoming, Woke, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Zeitgeist

Tuesday, April 9, 1946. The Bomb, the accused, and pregnant Fräuleins.

The Rocky Mountain News reported on expenses associated with The Bomb.

The tragic story of Viola Elliot was back on the front page.  She first appeared there on February 8, 1946, when she gave birth while a prisoner due to the homicide in issue.

As we noted then:

She was accused of the beating death of her stepson, Robert.  She denied it, but she was convicted of second degree murder.  Her 8 year old son by a previous marriage was a witness for the prosecution at the trial and Mrs. Elliot admitted at the time of arrest that she had hit and kicked the child on the occasion of his death.  She later changed her story and claimed he'd tripped on his pajamas.

Her parents and husband said they'd stand by her at the time of her arrest, but I wonder if that was still the case later on.  At her sentencing, she stated that Leslie was just as responsible for the death and the judge agreed.  Leslie had already been arraigned for assault and battery and assessory after the fact.  In April she petitioned the County to make her children wards of the County, to which her husband objected.  They were noted to be "estranged" by that time.

Viola was 27 years old and on her second marriage at the time.  She would have had her first child, if her son who testified was the first at age 19 in 1937 or 1938.  The paper mentioned that there were three children, including the murdered boy.  Interestingly, I can find one other reference to a "Miss Viola Elliot" from 1937 indicating that Viola Elliot was employed as an arts and crafts teacher.  A 1943 edition mentions a Viola Elliott as being just back in town after visiting her husband in Tennessee, who was probably in the service.

Viola received 15 to 20 years for the murder.

Leslie would receive six months for assault and battery.

Her mother, Alice Faber, testified at the trial, as did her father.  Alice died in 1966 and is buried in Denver.  Her obituary listed Viola as still living, still with the last name Elliot, and in Denver.  The Fabers also had a son named Wilmer, who was alive at the time.  The boy who testified at the trial was living in California.

Her father died in 1961.

The impacts of the war in addition to the bomb were a story several pages in.

Peacetime conscription had not been a thing prior to 1940 and there remained a lot of opposition to it.  Indeed, it would go away for a time.

The plight of pregnant German girls in Munich, made so by American GIs, was seemingly without a solution and without sympathy.  By this point the Occupation Authorities were allowing for fraternization, but the U.S. Army was not approving enlisted marriages.  The young women seemingly expected help from the Army.

Munich had been Hitler's adopted town, we'd note, which is interesting in context here as the women in question would have become pregnant by American GIs very soon after the end of the war.

Last edition:

Thursday, April 4, 1946. Hirohito lucks out.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Far Eastern Commission, Hirohito, Marilyn Monroe, Playboy, Standards, War Crimes, Women

Tuesday, March 28, 1876. The Haitō Edict.

The Japanese government issued the Haitō Edict, The Sword Abolishment Edict (廃刀令) prohibiting people, with the exception of former lords (daimyōs), the military, and law enforcement officials, from carrying weapons in public, including swords.

It was an attack on the former samurai class, with their establishment itself having already been eliminated.

Heavily romanticized, the samurai were one of the traditional Japanese classes which were an impediment on the Meji government consolidating power and modernizing the country.  Regular citizens bearing arms had been banned in 1870 as part of the effort and the Imperial Japanese Army, with conscription, established in 1873.  The moves were resented, but successful in consolidating imperial power.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 26, 1876. Big Horn Expedition returns.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, 1877, 1890s, 1899, Army, Big Horn Expedition, Great Sioux War, Personalities, Wyoming (Ft. Fetterman)

Two Weapons stories as the US heads towards ground troops deploying, again, in the middle east.

The Marine Corps, which insists on avoiding equipment adopted first by the Army, looked at the M7,and said, nah. . . 

M7 Rifle.

Marines not interested in switching from M27 to Army’s M7 anytime soon

Chances are good, I'd rate them as overwhelming, that the USMC will be using M27s within a week or two in Iran.  This will be the modified HK416's first major combat use, maybe its first use at all.

M27 Automatic Rifle.

It's a mistake, the M7 is definitely the better rifle with better ammunition.  But the Marines, if allowed to have a different rifle, will always do so.

Marines in China with M1895 Navy Lee, at the time at which the Army was using the Krag.  They didn't use it long.

And there's now drone killing ammunition:

U.S. Military Unveils "Drone Killer" Rifle Cartridges | An Official Journal Of The NRA

The pelletized ammunition sort of resembles "snake shot" for pistols used by outdoorsmen in the summer months.  It was developed by the Navy.

Thursday, February 14, 1946. ENIAC.

The Bank of England was nationalized.

The U.S. Army introduced the early computer ENIAC, which calculated rocket trajectories.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 13, 1946. Harold Ickes resigns.

Labels: 1930s, 1933, 1940s, 1946, Department of the Interior, Franklin Roosevelt Administration, Harry S. Truman, Truman Administration

The Trump Administration decides the Second Amendment ain't that much.

One of my predictions is that we're going to see a violent couple of years.

The other is that within a year and a half the editorial pages of the American Rifleman, who fawned over Trump, will be decrying a GOP embrace of gun control.  Fans of radicals who proclaim themselves to be for democracy and freedom while ranting about others as enemies should here to study history.  

Gun control came in to the USSR with the Communists, after they'd secured power at the barrel of a gun.  It was the Irish Republicans who brought gun control into Ireland, after the republic had been won with guns.  People like to claim the Nazis brought gun control to Germany (they didn't), but those who like to yell that should recall that Hitler was elected into office as part of a populist movement that promised to fix the economy and which hated "others", so to speak.

As soon as Trump sees the populace as the enemy to his safety, he'll act to preserve himself.  It's not, after all, as if he's been competing at Camp Perry and he doesn't need anyone's vote in four years.  If he acts, what are those who supported him on this issue going to do, join the Democrats?

Yeoman, January 6, 2025.

Alex Pretti, who was shot down by the Border Patrol, with Border Patrol shooting ten rounds.¹

I'm seeing one of my predictions about the Second Trump Administration coming true.

Everyone should have seen it.

Of the many people I know who voted for Donald Trump, there were three groups of what I'd call "single issue" voters who voted for him on the solid belief that he shared their views on one single issue, and that overrode everything else. There are: 1) opponents of abortion² , 2) opponents of gun control, 3) opponents of wars overseas ("forever wars").³

Trumps betrayed you, if you are in one of these categories, on all three.

The betrayal on gun control is simply epic.

A few days ago the Border Patrol gunned down Alex Pretti.  They actually shot ten shots.  People will defend the Border Patrol on this, but it's indefensible.  He was carrying a handgun legally, and it had been removed from him before he was killed.⁴

For decades the NRA insisted that Americans, and indeed everyone everywhere, had an absolute right to carry a firearm anywhere and campaigned for the right to carry, concealed and unconcealed, everywhere.⁵   Pretti had availed himself of that right.  He was going absolutely nothing illegal at the time he was gunned down.

The Administration's reaction has been to make every left wing gun control argument you've ever heard.

I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.

Kash Patel.  Well, Kash, don't come to Wyoming then.  There aren't any, and I mean any, largescale demonstrations were people aren't carrying, concealed and unconcealed. Shoot, I saw a guy with a M1 Garand and fixed bayonet a couple of years ago.

Patel tried to claim that Pretti was breaking the law by carrying a sidearm at a protest, apparently ignoring that this guy became a hero for something like that:

Minneapolis police officials, at any rate, quickly disabused that notion, noting in the press and on Face the Nation that this simply isn't true.  Pretti wasn't breaking the law.

That same comment was made House Majority Leader Steve Scalise who was flat out confronted by Margaret Brennan on the same topic on Face the Nation.  Scalise stumpbed all over himself and said he was for the Second Amendment had had sponsored a concealed carry law down in Louisiana, but that if you are carrying a gun while breaking the law it's a felony, and Pretti was breaking the law.

Pretti wasn't breaking the law, but it does give you a pretty good idea of what the former Republican Party, now the Fascist Party, thinks of the 1st Amendment as well as the 2nd.

The ever nervous Scott Bessent had to appear on Meet the Press.

KARL: He was an ICU use who worked for the VA and there's no evidence he brandished the gun whatsoever

BESSENT: But he brought a gun

KARL: I mean, we do have a Second Amendment

BESSENT: I've been to a protest -- guess what? I didn't bring a gun. I brought a billboard

The always nervous Scott Bessent.⁶   

Bessent has been to a protest?  Was it a super megabucks soybean protest? 

Same thing here.  Now bringing a gun to a protest marks you for death.

Kristi Noem, whose thugs committed the killing, really went after Pretti, calling him a domestic terrorist.  That is now the official line for any of these protestors, they're terrorists.  Neom sated:

I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.

Noem falsely accused Pretti of brandishing the weapon.

Stephen Miller called Pretti "an assassin" and accused him of trying to murder Federal agents.  

J. D. Vance repeated that lie, and Gregory Bovino more or less did.  Only Trump, who was initially claimed to have said something falsely, apparently hasn't.

Ironically, it was the press and the police that were defending Second Amendment rights to carry the past couple of days. You shouldn't bring a gun to a protest.  Pretti's handgun, which is a fairly typical 9mm SIG, was a "military weapon" (it is, but just about any semi automatic handgun could be), he had "multiple magazines".

And finally, we have the Dear Leader himself:

I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it. But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.

Donald Trump.⁷ 

Basically, the Administration's position is that if you are carrying a handgun, the Federal Government can gun you down.

All things right out of the left wing gun control handbook.

The very thing, I"d note, that the NRA warned us about, in regard to the Federal Government, with the irony being it comes right from the man they backed.

Not that any of this should be a surprise.  I've never felt for a moment that Trump had any actually affinity for firearms or was a member of "gun culture".⁸    He's a salesman, and he sold gun owners a line of bull.

Now they know better.  But it will be too late.

The things is, however, the accomplishments on the Second Amendment have been made. They can be taken away.  Therefore, a real "fool me once" thing is at play here.  A lot of gun owners are going to keep backing Trump as they'll refuse to think on this.  

And that's why support for Trump will prove to be too late.  W.E.B. Dubois declared that "only a fool never changes his mind".  How many gun owners will choose to be fools?

Footnotes:

1. The large number of shots suggest that the Border Patrol falls into the keep shooting category of policing, which many large city police do as well.  

I'm not a fan of magazine capacity laws, but I"m at the point where I don't think most policemen of any type should carry a firearm at all, and that when they do, it's time to go back to .38 revolvers.  They're simply less likely to kill people if they are med in that fashion

2.  A lot of people who find this to be a deep moral issue, and I do see it that way, voted for Trump on the false belief that they had no other choice.  There were other choices.

Now Trump is urging his supporters to soften their opposition to abortion. Mitch McConnel gets credit for the conservative judiciary that Trump put in place, which issued the Dodds decision, but there would be no real strong reason to feel that Trump cares much about the issue himself.

Trump's own sexual history is immoral, and usually multiple partners indicates a casual attitude towards abortion.  There's nothing to indicate that any of Trump's tarts had one, but he has shifted his position, and its still shifting, over the years.  

3.  Trump really likes to brand himself as a peace president but there are no wars that the US was involved in when he took office that we are now out of, the only real lingering one being the war in Syria.  He's started a new conflict in Venezuela, conducted a largescale mixed result raid in Iran, and appears to about to hit Iran again.

4.  Pretti's parents said that they knew he had a permit, but didn't know him to actually carry.  I'm in the same category.

My reaction is probably a lot like a lot of people in Pretty's category.  I'm going to start carrying.  

5. A spokesman from the NRA initially defended the shooting, slightly, and then the organization, waking up to the fact that it's about to be dumped by its members (it's already in financial trouble) backtracked and came out supporting carrying, but in a very muted fashion.

6.  Bessent is another figure who doesn't square with what MAGA claims its view of the world is.  He's an open homosexual in a homosexual union, something that MAGAs declare as abhorrent and which they repeatedly sneered at Biden's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for.  It's been interesting that Buttigieg and Jean-Pierre were condemned for the very same thing that Bessent does at home, the point being that like a lot of members of fascist movements, MAGA adherents will suspend all of their supposedly deeply held beliefs to follow the leader.

7. The two magazine thing is a real left wing talking point.  

Use of the terms "very powerful" and "bullets" in place of cartridges almost always demonstrates firearms ignorance.  9mm pistols are not "very powerful". Quite the contrary. That's why some police forces simply blaze away with them, and why soldiers are taught to shoot an opponent more than once.  The 9mm should be a good police round for that very reason as its unlikely to kill anyone with a single shot.

8.  I'll have to get into gun culture, which I use as a positive expression, not a negative one, elsewhere, but I've never trusted anyone in the Second Amendment movement who wasn't an active member of a shooting sport, if even only a collector.  While Eric Trump is a hunter, Donald Trump's only outside interest seems to be the incredibly boring sport of golf.  If you can shoot, you wouldn't send much time on the golf course.

Wayne LaPierre, the former head of the NRA, struck me that way also, but I don't really know much about him.  Chuck Gray in Wyoming strikes me that way also, although I could of course be wrong.

Friday, January 25, 1946. Soviet nuclear program gets s jump start.

Igor Kurchatov was summoned to Moscow by Stalin and ordered in an evening meeting to spare no expense in developing a nuclear weapon.

The ironic is so thick it's astounding.  The Soviet Union's anti intellectual campaign had resulting in wholesale murder of engineers and scientists early on, and now the country was depending upon them.¹

Of course, the Soviets had penetrated the U.S. nuclear effort, which was quite a help.  Indeed, western scientist of all types, cooperative and captive, would be a boon to Soviet post war efforts on all sorts of weapons.

The United Mine Workers rejoined the American Federation of Labor.

Czechs began the expulsion of Germans from Sudetenland.

Sweden began the deportation of Baltic refugees to the USSR.

MacArthur recommended that Hirohito not be put on trial for war crimes.

Allied forces returned control of the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands.

A manhunt was on near Sheridan.

Footnotes:

1.  It is of course worth noting that the U.S., currently in the hands of the GOP, is itself engaged in an outright denial of science and engineering.  Americans can almost take hope in the fact that the USSR, in spite of having murdered intellectuals and scientist, was able to make up the deficit and produce an atomic bomb in short order, suggesting that the current anti science and anti intellectual atmosphere of the GOP lead government migh talso be overcome.

Last edition:

Wednesday, January 23, 1946. Soviet Agent installed by Truman.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Army, Espionage, Harry Dexter White, Harry S. Truman, Health, J.R. Williams, Strike Wave of 1945-1946, The Cold War, Whitaker Chambers

World’s Oldest Harpoons Show Whaling Much Older than We Thought

World’s Oldest Harpoons Show Whaling Much Older than We Thought: Several harpoons and the remains of whales on the south coast of Brazil show that people 5,000 years ago were able to hunt the big cetaceans.

Older than we thought?  Well of course it is. 

Blog Mirror: Air Force relieves security squadron commander at FE Warren.

 

Air Force relieves security squadron commander at FE Warren

Lt. Col. Tyler Hiatt was removed from the 90th Missile Security Forces Squadron following disagreements with his commander and several deaths involving members of the unit.

Going Feral: Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Ri...

Going Feral: Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Ri...: Charming story, but nothing remarkable about it: Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968 The truth of the ma...

Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968

Charming story, but nothing remarkable about it:

Hunter, 82, Still Bagging Wyoming Big Game With Rifle He Bought In 1968

The truth of the matter is that there isn't a big game rifle on the market today that is any better than the Mauser 98, introduced in 1898, and if you insist on going with a non Mauser action, the 721 action, used in the 700, was introduced in 1948.  

Optics, however, have improved.  But even at that, for hunting purposes, not as much as might be supposed.

And finally, if you can't hunt with an iron sight (not that you must, but that you are incapable of doing so), you need to retrain yourself as a rifleman until you can. Then go back to the scope.

We'll get into this more at some later time.

Friday, November 30, 1945. Executing Germans for ordering the killing of civilian sailors and for directly killing downed airmen.

German U-boat commander Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, age 29, German U-boat , was executed as a war criminal for ordering his crew to shoot the survivors of the Greek merchant ship Peleus in March 1944.

Seems like I've heard of that happening recently . . . 

Rudolf Hess declared he really didn't have amnesia and was prepared to stand trial.

German civilians were executed for killing downed airmen.

The news was full of the return of long absent servicemen.

"Atomic" was already being used as a synonym for powerful.

Even the cartoons dealt with the return of servicemen.

     

Last edition:

Tuesday, November 27, 1945. Slinky first sold.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, China, George C. Marshall, Norway, Personalities, The Cold War, toys, United Nations