“They want to keep all the gains, and give nothing away themselves”: this from an article in the Guardian describing the dwindling hopes of Barack Obama’s engagement policy with Iran.
Hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough over Iran’s nuclear programme were dwindling tonight after Tehran demanded changes to a uranium exchange deal that European diplomats described as “unacceptable”.
If the deal collapses, as seemed likely, the apparent progress made over Tehran’s nuclear programme in recent weeks would evaporate, the diplomats said. It would deliver another critical blow to the Obama administration’s policy of engagement, and put international sanctions and Israeli military action back on the table. …
Hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough over Iran’s nuclear programme were dwindling tonight after Tehran demanded changes to a uranium exchange deal that European diplomats described as “unacceptable”.
If the deal collapses, as seemed likely, the apparent progress made over Tehran’s nuclear programme in recent weeks would evaporate, the diplomats said. It would deliver another critical blow to the Obama administration’s policy of engagement, and put international sanctions and Israeli military action back on the table.
The uranium deal, agreed in principle in Geneva at the beginning of the month, involved Iran shipping out most of its enriched uranium and, in return, being provided about a year later with fuel rods for its research reactor in Tehran.
Iran’s response, delivered after a week’s delay to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was not made public, but according to diplomats familiar with the details, Tehran demanded two big changes. They would only ship their uranium out in batches, and only hand it over at the same time the French-made fuel rods were delivered.
That would remove the element of the deal that made it attractive to the west: the temporary removal of most of Iran’s enriched uranium, which is currently enough to make a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful.
“This is completely unacceptable,” said a European diplomat, who said discussions were under way in Brussels tonight to formulate a common response.
“They want to keep all the gains, and give nothing away themselves,” another diplomat said.
Gee, you would have thought they would have guessed. Meanwhile, in other news, Daniel Ortega is re-establishing himself as the dictator of Nicaragua. The wolves are howling everywhere, even in the backyard. Investors.com reports:
Daniel Ortega muscled Nicaragua’s courts to permit his permanent re-election, effectively making him dictator. He’s not alone. After the U.S.’ shabby treatment of tiny Honduras, a new wave of tyrants is rising.
‘Nothing can stop me from re-election,” crowed Ortega, a man Ronald Reagan once called “the little dictator.” Last Monday Nicaragua’s Supreme Court issued a ruling permitting the Marxist Ortega to run for a second term after he and a group of allied mayors petitioned them, overruling a one-term limit in the constitution. Same old Ortega: His dictatorial hunger hasn’t changed.
But one thing is different: U.S. actions since the Honduran crisis that have only emboldened him. Last June 28, Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled that then-President Manuel Zelaya’s bid to hold a reelection referendum was unconstitutional and subject to the sanctions of Honduras’ 1982 constitution: removal from office.
Out he went, but the U.S. cried foul, shortly after Zelaya’s patron in Caracas, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, yelled “military coup.” Unlike Chavez, whose means of striking at Honduras were threats and mayhem — such as sneaking Zelaya back to Tegucigalpa to whip up mobs — the Obama administration was in a position to inflict long-term punishment on the Hondurans.
Readers will recall how President Obama dramatically announced a showdown with Iran at a G20 press conference describing Teheran’s secret nuclear enrichment program. “The accusations were made public in an extraordinary joint statement by the US President, flanked by Gordon Brown and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy before the start of the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh”. But in the weeks following, President Ahmadinejad simply gloated over his Western opponents. The Telegraph reported the Iranian President “has proclaimed victory in his battle with the West, claiming he has compelled the US and its allies to ‘co-operate’ with Iran’s nuclear programme”. Maybe it was all show and nothing down.
As Iran’s nuclear negotiator handed in the country’s response to a proposed deal to process its enriched uranium stocks abroad, Mr Ahmadinejad hailed a change in Western policy from “confrontation to co-operation”.
“We welcome fuel exchange, nuclear co-operation, building of power plants and reactors and we are ready to co-operate,” he said in a speech shown live on state television. But he said he would not retreat “one iota” in his demand that the country continue with its nuclear programme, understood by most observers to mean its policy of enriching uranium.
What happens next? The President took a lot of the nation’s hopes as political capital into the Big Casino. Now, after sitting at the tables for 9 months, there’s only a small pile left of what was once a mountain of chips. Is the next hand going to win him big? Is he going to double down again? Or get up and catch a cab home, in case what’s left in his pocket will cover it. Or will he write out a check on the basis of the family farm and spin the wheel of fortune again on the basis of his faith in the fundamental goodness of America’s enemies? Order another round of drinks for everybody on the Big Spender. Go watch a play on Broadway and keep being Diamond Jim long after all the real diamonds have been hocked for paste. Is there a point where betting on hope means being stuck on stupid? Kenny Rogers once had some advice for people in this situation. But I can’t see his hit tune being played in international diplomatic circles. It wouldn’t go with the wine and cheese.
On a warm summer’s evenin’ on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the gambler; we were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin’ out the window at the darkness
‘Til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak.He said, “Son, I’ve made my life out of readin’ people’s faces,
And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
so if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I’ll give you some advice.”So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.Ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
‘Cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
hm… iran and nicaragua eh? interesting synchronicity for such farflung locales. i wonder whether it’s just obama’s Munich spirit that appears to unite them…
Narcissists aren’t wired to react to reality. The big “O” will still be insisting everything is GWB’s fault as he slowly swirls down the drain. Can’t happen soon enough.
Wretchard looks like the Guardian quote got double-pasted into the post…sure it’s being fixed now.
Love the Kenny Rogers “The Gambler” quote BTW. Didn’t know he was big in Australia.
Gee, you would have thought they would have guessed.
Funniest thing I’ve read all day. Lord we need to get these boobs out of office
Well, that “dying in our sleep” part might be arranged for us.
Gee Ashen, you’re giving boobs a bad name.
Manhattan DA Morgenthau had a piece on Venezuelan-Iranian ties in WSJ last month
~ “Why is Hugo Chávez willing to open up his country to a foreign nation with little shared history or culture? I believe it is because his regime is bent on becoming a regional power, and is fanatical in its approach to dealing with the U.S. The diplomatic overture of President Barack Obama in shaking Mr. Chávez’s hand in April at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago is no reason to assume the threat has diminished. In fact, with the groundwork laid years ago, we are entering a period where the fruits of the Iran-Venezuela bond will begin to ripen.
That means two of the world’s most dangerous regimes, the self-described “axis of unity,” will be acting together in our backyard on the development of nuclear and missile technology. And it seems that terrorist groups have found the perfect operating ground for training and planning, and financing their activities through narco-trafficking.” ~
http://tinyurl.com/kko4pq
Iran – Contra once again! I like the worldview of the men who did this first time.
“And somewhere in the darkness, the gambler he broke even.”
The darkness comes and some will be broken.
And whatever the results, the kind of people who get below the $900B threshold of a health care bill by refusing to the mention the $250B it requires to pay the doctors will call it “even.”
Now, after sitting at the tables for 9 months, there’s only a small pile left of what was once a mountain of chips. Is the next hand going to win him big? Is he going to double down again?
Our problem is that for most of his life he’s been the local house’s favored guest. They’ve been paying for his room and praising his skill (and covering his losses) because they had plans for him.
Now he’s gone out into the world and gotten himself into a game with some very nasty people in a mean little joint on the frontier. He has no idea.
The Guardian and das Spewgal moaning about a left-wing multi-cultural US President not being…… uh, what is it that those guys wanted again? Oh yeah, not Bush. So why aren’t they happy?
I get this feeling of inverted history. Chamberlin is in the white house; the South want’s to preserve the Constitution; The DC government seems to be on the road to enslaving everybody on the federal plantation; Holder seems to think the Justice Department is the NKVD and I’m waiting for Beck or Limbaugh to vanish overnight.
The odds of Obama lasting out his term before stepping on a mine before the end of his term are getting slimmer all the time.
The Ortega thing ought to make everybody on the left happy. He’s not only a murderous ,lying, corrupt Marxist thug but he also an incestuous pedophile so his O-ness can please the campus commies as well as the short-eyed trangendered,bi-orificed crowd as well. What a coup.
Apropos of the gambler metaphor, one of Thomas Lifson’s first articles at American Thinker concerned Bush’s skill as a poker player as well as his earning an MBA at Harvard:
One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out—psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.
By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.
Quite a stark contrast with the newbie in the Big Casino, as Wretchard put it.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/02/gwb_hbs_mba.html
Toad,
In keeping with obamas czar regime I think it only fair we give him the czar’s Okhrana which I am confident he is structuring right now,and not the NKVD. But great point.
Right now we’ll hold ‘em but if the Okhrana appears in the night then it’s OK corral time.
As Mark Steyn put it in his book, “America Alone,” the world will rue the absence of a strong and exceptional America. The question now remains, will Americans themselves see this before it is too late?
It is most likely that Iran will have deliverable nuclear weapons before the 2012 Presidential election. Will the US have left Afghanistan by then?
How many ironies can simultaneously dance on the head of a pin? Americans elect an African-American President and are considered a racist society. The President campaigned on getting European allies to step up and lend a hand to a more humble USA and has less success than his predecessor. At the same time Europeans lament America’s unwillingness to shoulder the heavy burdens alone. And Europe, which destroyed its Jewish population half a century ago has traded them in for an influx of Islamic culture that threatens to turn the continent into Eurabia.
Meanwhile we are about to destroy the finest medical infrastructure ever seen so that we can give everyone mediocrity. And impair our industrial economy for the sake of a theory of global warming that even its most ardent advocates are now agreeing is going to arrive 50 years later than they told us (if it arrives at all).
As I have said before, I never could understand the psychology of 1938. In retrospect it all seems so clear. How could they have been so blind? I still don’t understand it even though I see it all around me, even among friends and colleagues whom I otherwise respected.
I thought history was supposed to repeat itself as a joke. Oh well, another time Marx was wrong.
Add Lebanon to the anti, someone’s calling “the Obama bluff” there too.
“oh that magic feeling…no where to go,…no where to go.”
What a hapless, helpless feeling to watch the evil in the world triumph over good. I’ve always been inclined to believe that good will prevail over bad but now I’m old and cynical and have this gut feeling that its all not going to turn out alright. To think that my dad and his generation put it all on the line to stop the evil’s of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and Stalin and today we are being led by the type of ideologue’s that they united together to defeat. I’m afraid now for my children as the US sinks towards despotism and the world with it. ….”no where to go.”
Every president has an enemies list. The Constitution requires it. Article 2 maybe. The problem with Obama is that his enemies list contains the names of all our friends, and his friends list contains the names of all our enemies.
Look here! Obama cried in glee
I’ve written up a list
Of all we think as enemy
Who never will be missed
We’ll spit on them and sit on them
They’ll wish ‘twere never born
A nice sackcloth will fit on them
They’ll see how we can scorn
El President, and aide did say
The names familiar are
Should Israel and dear Francais
Be drizzled with our tar?
And what about this other list
The one you call our friends
El President I must insist
You think to make amends
That’s why you’re you and I am me
Said Obie with a sneer
It’s obvious that you can’t see
What I am doing here
Diplomacy has many ends
And nuance is the game
And I shall take our foes and friends
And treat them all the same
Our enemies will see the light
And cease to be our foes
You soon will see that I am right
You’ll soon see how it goes
With love we conquer all our fears
That’s why I’ve made this list
Our enemies are little dears
All lined up to be kissed
THE ROAD BACK: FROM ECONOMIC MELTDOWN TO RENEWAL How Do We Get There? nearly surreal, or perhaps I just missed the part where Charlie Rose pulled the explanation of how we really are in a recovery mode. They spoke of “Optimism about Silicon Valley-style innovation, new technologies, and entrepreneurship as the solution to regaining economic momentum both in America, and around the world.”
Sadly they did not explain how the current administration was confident they could “incentivize” such activity at a 95% tax rate.
The affair held during the Stanford reunion ought to be entitled “great minds demonstrate how they don’t get it by opening mouths”.
Don’t worry, Richard Holbrooke is on the job, or somebody like him. Y’know, John Kerry. Or our secretary of defense, what’s his name – oh yeah, Hillary “Edmund” Clinton.
14: Habu,
Well the Okhrana structurally yes, but when I think of Holder I think of Beria who was head of the NKVD.
“Lavrenty Beria was born in Merkheuli, Russia, on 29th March, 1899. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was active in Georgia during the October Revolution.
After the revolution Beria joined the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka). He eventually became head of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in Georgia.
In 1938 Joseph Stalin brought Beria to Moscow and appointed him to serve under Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD. Soon afterwards Yezhov was arrested and Beria replaced him.
With the murder of Leon Trotsky in 20th August, 1940, all the leading figures involved in the Russian Revolution were dead except for Joseph Stalin. Of the fifteen members of the original Bolshevik government, ten had been executed and four had died (sometimes in mysterious circumstances).
The armed forces suffered at the hands of Beria and the NKVD. It has been estimated that a third of all officers were arrested. Three out of five marshals and fourteen out of sixteen army commanders were executed.
Beria prospered under Joseph Stalin and he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In February, 1941, he became deputy prime minister and in 1946 joined the Politburo.
After the death of Joseph Stalin in March, 1953, Beria attempted to replace him as dictator of the Soviet Union. He was defeated by a group lead by Nikita Khrushchev, Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Malenkov. Beria was arrested and accused of conducting “anti-state activities. Lavrenty Beria was found guilty and was executed on 23rd December, 1953.”
Josh@20 said “Don’t worry, Richard Holbrooke is on the job, or somebody like him”
Obama appointed Dennis Ross as ‘czar’ for Iran last January and abruptly removed him from that position in June, transferring him to the NSC with unspecified duties. IIRC, the Israeli paper Haaretz used the word “fired”. Apparently Ross had been too hawkish about sanctions. Its not clear who is in charge of Iran policy today within the Administration. Maybe we should worry.
Early in the campaign, I posited that Obama was likely to launch a nuclear weapon. Not because he is a crazy warmonger, but because he is not.
This is a perfect time for anyone hungry for land or power to swing for the fences. A historical anomaly, an inward focussed USA with a weak president. Is there any question anymore of how Obama would react to some country annexing it’s neighbor?
I made up my mind about Obama when he turned on the Wall Street people after his people had structured a deal to pay the bonuses. Weak, unprepared, craven, seemingly not able to stand on any point, even his own. There hasn’t been much to contradict the impression, and this Iran stuff confirms.
An effective US military forced enemies into insurgent type operations, or exercising the murderous urges upon ones own population. A weak and indecisive USA opens the possibility of classic state-to-state aggression.
Derek
Pres. Obama is working for the Big. Casino.
As a really smart guy I sorta know said at one time:
All of the bad actors have absolutely NO FEAR anymore. Putin, Ortega, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Castro, Karzai et al. They know that they are dealing with a weak horse. One so flawed that they have no reason to worry about doing whatever they wish.
the sad thing about this ,is that as ugly as it was ,Bush was doing things the easy way.He was keeping a lid on things. Revolutions do not occur during times of oppression ,but when that oppression is removed.Now that Obama is giving up on the Pax Americana ,and increasingly everyone sees that the globocop is going home , the thugs are crawling out of their holes.weakness, as it has been said ,is provocative.
Well at least someone here noticed that Stalin and Berea were both Georgians…FINALLY.
And if Russia is so hellbent on avenging the collapse of the USSR…why are they:
1. Allowing our troops and materiel to transit their country to Afghanistan (oh wait, after eight years it’s now just a dirty trick to keep us fighting over there in the “graveyard of empires”)
2. Buying U.S. govt debt – including at the time of the Fannie/Freddie collapse, Moscow was the 4th largest holder of gov housing backed short term paper. Or do you think Hank Paulson was in Moscow in July 2008 for no reason? It seems the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, in the sense that one part of the gov had its hands out to the Russians, and the other was helping Misha Saako plot his proxy war against them and feeding his delusional fantasies of easy victory (here’s looking at you, Randy Scheunemann, a real man of genius who tried to throw Palin under the bus after he drove the McCain campaign into the ground).
3. STILL propping up the U.S. dollar by buying dollars in intl markets – check the ruble fluctuation rate. Not to mention all those steel mills the oligarchs bought and took a bath on since steel prices collapsed in 2008.
Yes Russia is dealing with a weak horse. But that isn’t necessarily good for Russia. Cheap Afghan heroin is flooding the Motherland, even on a larger scale than the flood of drugs that came in the late Seventies (not that I’m saying that was a conspiracy to weaken USSR…BUT…the Cold War was dirtier than a lot of people here would like to acknowledge, and perhaps the boys of 9 Rota were premature drug warriors…or anti-jihadis, if Fallaci was right).
Finally, if you don’t trust Soros because he made a billion betting against the pound and spent hundreds of millions to fund the Left, why on Earth would you trust his stooges in Ukraine and Georgia? WAKE UP PEOPLE!
The Foxnews ticker just flashed that Honduras has just agreed to take back Zelaya into a power sharing arrangement until the election. Hillary Clinton quoted as praisng the decision.
This Administration is so f…..g duplicitous.
G.d help our smaller allies around the world.
I can’t help but think of W’s post on the role of “will” in warfare and foreign policy when dealing with bad actors – the “Keyser Soze” post back on the old site.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/08/usual-suspects.html
No one fears the consequences anymore. It is a world unrestrained neither by fear of God nor fear of U.S. retaliation. This seems like only the beginning.
Apologies to those who already posted similar sentiments, didn’t read all the comments because I was heated!
Ortaga’s situation is a real coup. The Supreme Court vote was not the full court. Only the Ortaga cronies were in attendance. The vote could not reversed because after the vote the doors were locked to other judges.
We are the change we have been waiting for.
PS: Hmm! locking opponents out.
Mr. X – “Russian” is a socially-acceptable synechdoche for “Soviet.”
I apologize for my tone in advance.
Drugs: who do you think facilitates the delivery of heroin from the poppies of bumblef_ck alluvial Kush to that 16 year old blond British millionaire’s daughter? Why, it’s the “Russian mafia” of course. Where do you think the CIA learned that subversive little maneuver? The CIA learned just about everything not sig-int related from the KGB/GRU and British. For that matter how does a half naked coca farmer in the Colombian Nowhere become a billionaire because 1970s California college drop outs like to dance high? What – the invisible hand just takes it there? Whose invisible hand? Not Adam Smith’s, surely.
Two observations: (1) neither Afghans nor Arabs can wipe their own asses without imperial help, and (2) the “Russians” have demonstrated pretty thoroughly over the past, Oh, 6,000 years that they couldn’t give a boiled beet for their “citizens.” Russia has been an economic sh_thole since Vladimir sat in Kiv. It certainly was under Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and now Medvedev.
And yet, they caused and cause so much trouble in the world. I think certain conclusions are pretty obvious.
Totally off topic:
Found this neat web page today in my pursuit of material for a web site tutorial:
Computer courses (Free)
Enjoy!!! (Just promise to use your powers for good!)
I think the gamble was electing such an unknown with such questionable character in the first place. This stuff is just the show.
So Habu, you’re thinking the president has in place a mock-okhrana?
I now have a vision of president macarena ‘bustin’ a move, saying “Cuchi, cuchi”.
When I dance they call me macarena
and the boys they say that I´m buena
they all want me, they can´t have me
So they all come and dance beside me
move with me jam with me
and if your good i take you home with me
A la tuhuelpa legria macarena
Que tuhuelce paralla legria cosabuena
A la tuhuelpa legria macarena Eeeh, macarena
A-Hai
Now don´t you worry ´bout my boy friend
the boy who´s name is Zelaya-ino
I don´t want him, ´cause sent him
he was no good so I – hahaaaa
Now, come on, what was I supposed to do ?
He was outta town and his two friends were soooo fine
Lach
Come and find me, my name is Macarena
always at the party,
´cause the chicos think I´m buena
come join me, dance with me
and all your fellows cat hello with me
The truly horrifying thing is that this has taken only 9 months. Things move swiftly. The Honduran mess is pure tragedy murder. There was absolutely no reason to even get involved. The regime sent some thug to “negotiate” the Honduran congress.
The US regime’s “players” are here according to Center for Security Policy.
Im not sure the sheriff is retiring. My question is who’s he working for?
Scott Johnson at Powerline sums it up quite well:
Roberto Micheletti’s nephew found executed 3 days ago is most likely unrelated.
To me Obama’s approach to foreign policy appears more and more like that of a high school girl who seeks popularity through promiscuity. It works, but it seems strange to the girl why none of her dates ever takes her home to meet their family.
That’s my .02 cents on the subject.
In C.S. Lewis’s story,”The Shoddy Lands,” the narrator finds himself transported from a conversation with a former student and his fiancée into a strange landscape, where grass and sky are blurry, and trees are dingy upright blobs. He comes upon the Walking Things, people-sized and moving, but indistinct except for an occasional detail, something a woman is wearing, or sometimes a man’s face. In all this dullness he sees that there is a source of bright, clear light, and finds that it comes from windows full of fine jewelry and women’s clothes. These things are perfect to the last detail; they are real.
When he comes upon a giantess, a vulgarly perfected version of his student’s fiancée, he realizes that he’s in the landscape of her mind, and that all the things that make life sweet to him hardly exist for her.
Lewis shows us the world of a vain and shallow young woman. But this is also the world of the narcissist.
Some things are quite real and vivid: those that serve his needs.
I think this helps to illuminate some of Obama’s apparent contradictions. About things that feed him, the narcissist is clear and decisive. About these he is not lazy, not bored or vague. During the campaign, Obama is described as driving many of the decisions, sure-footed, never hesitant. (Yes,it could be PR, but to me it feels true.) He is an expert at the one thing he has worked at all his life — the marketing of Barack Obama. We do not hesitate in the areas we know expertly.
But beyond, there is… unreality. I think Afghanistan is out there, in the shoddy lands. So are small business owners in America, and productive people generally, unless they are useful; then they may temporarily be like the daffodils and roses in the Lewis story, real because they can be cut for a vase.
To me Obama’s approach to foreign policy appears more and more like that of a high school girl who seeks popularity through promiscuity. It works, but it seems strange to the girl why none of her dates ever takes her home to meet their family.
–Sorry if this is a double post. The browser reported an error the first time.
That’s my .02 cents on the subject.
Hillary finally clears up my discombobulation over the U.S. policy regarding Honduras. Whew! Turns out there is an “inter-American system” that’s in place. Who’d a thunk it? But it was there all along, I guess, that there system, and no one saw it. Gee, I guess Obama and team sure showed me who’s got game! Wonder if there’s an “inter-Af-Pak” system somewhere too that’s guiding the Great One’s only-seems-to-be dithering?
Via AP news service report on Honduras settlement:
“The agreement, if it holds, could represent a much-needed foreign policy victory for the United States, which dispatched a senior team of diplomats to coax both sides back to the table.
“Speaking to reporters in Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called it ‘an historic agreement,’ noting ‘this is a big step forward for the inter-American system.’”
IIRC Ike was a skilled poker player.
I meant to post my comment (#38) on the previous thread, “Pick a Number.” I’ve put it there now, but it’s too late for me to delete it here. Sorry.
But beyond, there is… unreality. I think Afghanistan is out there, in the shoddy lands. So are small business owners in America, and productive people generally, unless they are useful; then they may temporarily be like the daffodils and roses in the Lewis story, real because they can be cut for a vase.
I can’t track down the reference right now, but someone (a college professor I think) made the comment that Obama seems like a person who never read a book written before 1900. I’d say it was more like never read a book written before 1965. And the books he has read are probably the worst Leftist tripe. Chomsky, Zinn, “I, Rigoberta Menchu,” Fanon, all the usual suspects.
I wonder, has he ever read a Shakespeare play? An Austen novel? A Whitman poem? A work on medieval history?
He strikes me as having the narrowest mental landscape of anyone who has ever sat in the big chair.
But then, Gore Vidal thinks he’s a genius, so what do I know?
The first mistake the Hondurans made was to allow Zelaya to leave the country alive.
In the future, when dealing with deposed Marxist dictators, it behooves the country to hold a fast, fair trial, followed by a fast drop and a sudden stop.
The mercy of those following the rule of law is often used to their undoing. Now Michelleti’s nephew is dead and the dictator is coming back…how long do you think the “power sharing” agreement will last?
reg @ 26 said:
“the sad thing about this ,is that as ugly as it was ,Bush was doing things the easy way. He was keeping a lid on things.”
No, Bush was a good President, who tried to deal effectively with clear and present danger.
With the vision of 20-20 hindsight, there is much that can be criticized about G.W. Bush. For example, he took no effective action against the sub-prime mortgage fiasco even though it was fairly evident in late 2005 (that’s when I pulled out of the market). Bush was initially blind sided by al Qaeda (a Clinton legacy) but after 9/11 he dealt with it very effectively. The decision after 9/11 to promptly shift focus from Afghanistan to Iraq and NOT swallow the bait of destabilzing Saudi Arabia showed extreme political sophistication on the part of G.W. Bush.
Bush has been extensively criticized for initially agreeing to a small military footprint in Iraq during the early occupation of that country. However Bush was following the lead of key advisors and General Abizaid who speaks Arabic and is sensitive to Arab culture. I would have done exactly the same thing but it was precisely the wrong decision. This error became evident after the first battle at Fallujah. Bush then replaced Abizaid with Petraeus who then implemented a new strategy (The Surge) that ultimately brought about victory in Iraq. Knowing to drop a competent (but incorrect) general like Abizaid and make a radical strategy shift represented a very daring political move by Bush.
Where Bush can be justly criticised was in his allowing traitors to function within the intelligence community. The infamous NIE declaring that there was no nuclear weapons program in Iran destroyed Bush as an effective foreign policy President. Bush knew that there were scorpions within the intelligence community who were leaking classified information to the MSM (this was happening on a well timed basis that showed significant sophistication about agitation and propaganda). Bush should have rooted those bastards out early in his administration but instead he allowed them to consolidate themselves and formulate effective counter strategies like the NIE.
38. KareninPA — Thanks for that post. I think your insight is correct. The President is focused on BHO and dithers on everything else. I’m going to read that C. S. Lewis story now.
Off Topic:
The stock market is getting “interesting” (it’s currently down by 214 points on the DJIA). The Federal Reserve has been manipulating equities since March (this is well documented over at http://www.zerohedge.com). The GDP numbers published yesterday were obviously bogus, reflecting government programs like Cash for Clunkers, etc. The clueless imbeciles in the MSM talked it up as they always do and the Plunge Protection Team worked their usual magic to push up the stock market for exactly one day. Now the $64,000 question:
Has the Sucker’s Rally ended?
The Casino imagery is very apt. As today we read about the association between Zelaya/Restepo/drugs–it’s a mafia-like thuggish contol group that oversees current decisions.
Eggplant, the Fed has been manipulating securities prices since 2001, or I’m a cauliflower.
I browsed zerohedge, don’t see anything specific.
Is the rally ended? Looks like indu may touch bottom of bollinger band today around 9650, but if manipulation continues, it will bounce and close higher, I think. What if indu falls to 200ma at 8700, maybe spike down to 8500 – would that be a buying opportunity? Or would we collapse back to last March’s 6600 – or worse? Stay tuned, same bat market, same bat economy! But I think it will require some “event” to get below 8500 again, even briefly.
47. Eggplant: I am betting that it has, the bills will start coming due, all indications point toward another housing crunch, credit card defaults are rising rapidly, the banks are awash in liquidity that has nowhere to go…the list goes on. Between defecit spending, monetary expansion, falling dollars and ecomony wrecking polices there is precious little room for “green shoots”.
But here is the $64,000 question as far a I am concerned; Where do we go to hide from the implosion? Try to look a year into the future and discern a position you would like to hold and try to figure out a pathway to get there. I am not optimistic.
There is not much stretch left in the financial bungee cord and it won’t take a lot to snap it. Commercial real-estate failures, oil-price snap up due to conflict, Medicare cuts inspire seniors to become suicide bombers, or whatever?
anton said:
“But here is the $64,000 question as far a I am concerned; Where do we go to hide from the implosion? Try to look a year into the future and discern a position you would like to hold and try to figure out a pathway to get there. I am not optimistic.”
Groan!! I can see the bullet coming and my name is written on the side of it.
If I was young and single, it’d be no big thing. I’d just hunker down, weather the storm and look for opportunities. However I’m 55 years old and have two children that I need to support for at least ten more years.
toad said:
“Medicare cuts inspire seniors to become suicide bombers, or whatever?”
It’ll be a repeat of that ugly scene in “Soylent Green” where they hand you a nice tasting poisoned drink and you can watch high definition nature movies while listening to pleasant music. That’s what Obama-Care really boils down to. We’re in a very deep hole and still digging.
Iran and Nicaragua – 70s redux, anyone?
52. Eggplant: I am stepping on your shadow buddy, 51 and three of my five kids are still home (2 x college, one a sophmore in HS) and my 401 is only half of what it was supposed to be at this point. I’m too old (and poor) to give up police work and buy a farm to protect me from most of the coming wreck, heck I’m getting too old for police work!
I have stocked up on dry goods, water, fuel and ammo in case the wreck gets nasty. Pray to God that I don’t ever have real need of them but, as my Grandpa used to say, “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it”.
51. toad: “…seniors to become suicide bombers…” The classic situation of pushing people to the point that they have nothing to lose; you lose control over them and they become unpredictable. Unintended Consequences indeed.
54. mozemoose: Carter 2.0, the new and disimproved (is that even a word?) version!
Same sorry Socialist drivel, slick new package!!
#54 mozemoose
He’s not compared to Jimmy Carter for nothing. Then again, maybe Carter and Obama are just psychics who are simultaneously channeling the ghosts of Neville Chamberlain and Pollyanna. Who can say?
And then again, they might be prophets. Is there any religion that includes in their pantheon a God of Surrender? How about a God of Apologies?
And then again–they might just be idiots.
57. Tcobb:
“And then again–they might just be idiots.”
That is probably my favorite quote of the day, laconic and accurate ( and funny to boot).
Wretchard: “Nicaragua’s Supreme Court issued a ruling (arbitrary law from “We the Judges”) permitting the Marxist Ortega to run for a second term after he and a group of allied mayors petitioned them, overruling a one-term limit in the (Living) constitution.”
“Throughout the book, Napoleon and Squealer break the Seven Commandments, the tenets (supreme laws) on which governance of the farm is based. To prevent the animals from suspecting them, Squealer preys on the animals’ stupidity and (arbitrarily) alters the Commandments from time to time as the need arises (The “Living Constitution” for pigs).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squealer_(Animal_Farm)
Your diplomats at work:
Clinton puzzled at Pakistan failure to find al Qaeda
Even when I more or less agree with her, she’s as subtle as a crutch.
“Maybe they are not ‘get-at-able’.
Yikes! and they complained about GWB’s use of the language.
Wretchard: “Nicaragua’s Supreme Court issued a ruling (arbitrary law from “We the Judges”) permitting the Marxist Ortega to run for a second term after he and a group of allied mayors petitioned them, overruling a one-term limit in the (Living) constitution.”
“You seem to consider the judges the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges … and their power are the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and are not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves….When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves….” Thomas Jefferson
“Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual (our sacred rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness – private property; and our right, as part of a Constitutional Republic, to be the ultimate arbiters of our American law).” Thomas Jefferson
What has happened in Nicaragua has already started in the United States with the Marxist invention of “Living Constitution” – as good an example of Orwellian “Newspeak” as there ever was.
How do we stop it?
We stop it with a Constitutional Amendment which provides for Congressional and Supreme Court term limits. The amendment must also provide Congress with 2/3 override power for Supreme Court decisions so that “We the People” (through our elected representatives) are the ultimate arbiters of American Law – not “We the Judges.”
In the meantime the States must enforce the Tenth Amendment; dismantling un-Constitutional Federal Socialism (Medicare, Obamacare, Social Security, Federal education matching grants to the States, etc.), and replacing them with State programs and corresponding diversion of all Federal Taxes earmarked for these programs to State accounts. It has already been written – so let it be done.
Without such a Constitutional amendment and State-level defense of our Bill of Rights (including the Tenth Amendment), government of the people, by the people, for the people will perish from the earth.
Anton said:
“I have stocked up on dry goods, water, fuel and ammo in case the wreck gets nasty. Pray to God that I don’t ever have real need of them but, as my Grandpa used to say, “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it”.”
My Grandpa (who was also a policeman) made similar comments. I’ve been stocking up stuff too but what’s the point? I have five cases of MREs at $80 a pop (mainly as earthquake insurance). Each case holds 12 MREs, so 5 * 12 = 60 MREs. I have a family of four. Assuming we eat only one MRE per day, this can keep us fed for exactly 15 days. I also have enough canned goods to keep us going for another 15 days. I’m well prepared for earthquakes but this isn’t insurance against economic implosion.
I don’t have a gun in the house. I’ve thought about getting a semi-automatic shotgun. However what does this really buy me? If the bad guy facing me is armed with a modern assault rifle and wearing body armor, that shotgun becomes a liability rather than an asset, i.e. the bad guy will want to kill me to take my shotgun.
Leftwing juriprudence (and its only a matter of time before it arrives here):
Honduras’s Supreme Court rules against a Marxist dictator wannabe and the decision is deemed illegal.
Nicaragua’s Supreme Court is hastily assembled, and with a partially assembled court, rules in favor of the Marxist dictator wannable and the decision is deemed legitimate.
I hope that Zelaya behaves because now he’s Obama’s man.
The must-read on the topic is Spengler’s essay
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ20Ak03.html. Here is also link to description of another poker champion, mr. Putin, with whom Obama better not attempted to gamble:
The Russians know better. As I wrote in my January 8 endorsement of Putin for president of the United States:
Putin understands how to exercise power. Unlike Iraq, the restive Muslim province of Chechnya now nestles comfortably in Putin’s palm, albeit with about half the people it had a decade ago. Russian troops killed between 35,000 and 100,000 civilians in the first Chechen war of 1994-96, and half a million were driven from their homes, totaling about half the population. But that is not what pacified Chechnya. Putin bribed and bullied Chechen clans to do Russia’s dirty work for it, showing himself a master at the game of divide-and-conquer. Working from a position of weakness, Russia’s president is the closest the modern world comes to the insidious strategic genius of a Cardinal Richelieu. That is the sort of strategic thinking America needs.
63. Eggplant:
I have laid in about six-months worth of food supplies, water I can obtain fairly easily as long as there aren’t any bio threats. Fuel is problematic, I have two-three weeks laid by but after that it gets dicey.
I have many guns and even more ammo (been collecting since I was eight years old) and my entire family are good shots. Being directly north of, and bordering, the septic would that is the City of Detroit has lead me to take serious defensive measures, and to discuss them with my like-minded neighbors. As long as the bad-guys don’t have missles or mortars we can hold our own for a few months.
If you are seriously considering weaponry I would suggest a pump-shotgun (almost as fast as a semi-auto and much easier to keep up) and a solid old bolt-action rifle. For close work a good semi-auto pistol is almost required. A decent 22cal auto rifle (al la Ruger 10-22) would also be a good investment. Practice, as I am sure you know, is the most important aspect.
I pray to God every day that I’m dead wrong on this sort of stuff and that I can spend the rest of my life target shooting with the ammo I have stashed.
“septic would that is the City of Detroit ”
should read “septic wound…”
one of these days I will learn to proof-read!
I don’t have a gun in the house. I’ve thought about getting a semi-automatic shotgun. However what does this really buy me? If the bad guy facing me is armed with a modern assault rifle and wearing body armor, that shotgun becomes a liability rather than an asset, i.e. the bad guy will want to kill me to take my shotgun.
Very few criminals have body armor. And even if you do have body armor, a close range blast from a 12 gauge shotgun will feel like a heavy-weight boxer has just landed one of his best blows where it hits you. And it is rare that anyone has any body armor that covers the face.
You shoot–it knocks them down–advance and shoot at their head. I knew a fair number of people who fought in Vietnam that used pump shotguns rather than assault rifles, and every one of them agreed that at close range a 12 gauge shotgun was much deadlier than an M-16 or an AK-47.
anton: “I have stocked up on dry goods, water, fuel and ammo in case the wreck gets nasty. Pray to God that I don’t ever have real need of them but, as my Grandpa used to say, “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it”.”
Your grandpa sounds like my Dad and Grandpa (God rest their souls) – both common-sense, tough, farm-raised Americans.
1. Spend more time with your patriotic neighbors – bond together
2. Get more ammo, fuel, water, batteries, etc.
3. http://www.mountainhouse.com/
4. Lay your ears back and face the storm
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
This a most famous site ,where we can have many helping hands for our favou.
Detroit –the democratic party’s shining city on a hill, glittering showcase of gloriously unimpeded egalitarianism. Decent, solidly-built homes for sale at a few bucks per square foot –and no takers.
If I may belatedly add to Anton’s advice to Eggplant:
Depending on exactly where you live, if there are critters that are edible in the area [birds, squirrels, rabbits, deer, etc.], consider not only heavier shotgun pellet loads for combat and/or larger game, but also lighter loads for taking small game. For your bolt action rifle, nothing too exotic as far as caliber. One advantage of keeping to 7.62 mm NATO and 5.56 mm NATO [civilian names being .308 Winchester and .223 Remington] are that since they are our military standard rounds, there will always be some around somewhere. AK-47 and SKS civilian variants are not bad, but the 7.62 x 39mm Russian round they chamber may get scarce as almost all of it is imported.
If you do find yourself restricted to a shotgun [12 gauge for combat, anything smaller is really only good for small game hunting and close in home defense] and you think the hostiles are wearing body armor, keep in mind that femoral arteries bleed real well. Drop down from center of mass shots to crotch and thigh shots, as they are not usually armored.
Pistols. There is an old saying, “Never attend a gun fight with a pistol whose caliber starts out with anything less than “4″. If you have to use something smaller, use jacketed hollow point rounds as round nose and fully jacketed rounds tend to drill neat holes and not stop the target. Oh, and 9mm = .38 caliber in semi-automatics. There is a reason that a lot of troops carry their own .45′s since we adopted the 9 mm Beretta. Same reason we developed the .45 in the first place. If you cannot get a semi-auto, a revolver in .357 magnum is good. Speed loaders are your friend in that case.
Assuming that you have those tools [*], the next thing you do is to Practice. The second thing you need to do is Practice. And then after that you are going to need to Practice. In a crisis, you react as you have been trained. It is a developed skill to acquire and hold a sight picture while under stress. And there is a psychological barrier that can be at least partially overcome with muscle memory if you have to shoot at a human being.
[*]- Yes these are tools. They are tools for killing. Sometimes you have to kill critters. Sometimes you have to kill people. They are not for intimidation, show, or bluff. They are for preserving the lives and freedom of you and yours in one way or another.
When it happens, you are going to be running on adrenaline, your heart will be pounding, you will be light headed, your hands will be shaking, and you will have tunnel vision. To some extent, even if trained. Your trained reaction time may get you inside their OODA loop and keep you and yours alive.
If you have someone you can trust who is knowledgable in the use of firearms, convince them to train you. Otherwise, look for NRA courses.
If you have like minded friends, it would be productive to get together with them. More firepower, more eyes, people to share the duty with, and the better ability to exploit local resources while protecting the women and children.
If it comes to a firefight, there is no such thing as fair. There is only alive, or dead, afterwards. And keep in mind that prisoners have to be watched and fed with your limited numbers and resources.
Finally, and this is not feasible for most; it is always better to avoid a fight with superior forces if you do not have a specific reason to engage. Cities are high in goblin count. Further, if city services go Tango Uniform; y’all are scrod. Power, water, sewage systems, and communications are not guaranteed, nor is there room to forage.
Food supplies in urban areas are problematical. The “Just in Time” scheduling concept is used more for food supplies than in manufacturing. Most urban areas have at most a 3-5 day supply of food in stores and warehouses. The whole system depends on constant resupply from the outside. That may not be happening. Given the less than perfectly acculturated segment of the population in cities, within a week or two long pork may be on the menu.
Do not run away to the woods or the mountains, because that is not really survivable unless you are an expert. You need a prepared safe haven to fall back on.
If you have connections to have a fallback point amongst family or friends in a small town away from an urban area, if you get a heads up, it would be good to be there when the organic waste impacts the rotating airfoil.
Just a few thoughts. And once again, proof that I am not a nice person. Just someone who aspires to be a Grey Tribe Sheepdog.
Subotai Bahadur
Never ever buy a house in Detroit before hell night. Only after so you have at least a year in it before the torchies come back. Sometimes I think it is the local govt that is setting these houses on fire.
And look what happens when you post the word csanio (post 70) and I see our vodka pals are back too…
73. JFSanders031:
I just got home from delivering subpoenas for our court, about half were in the Big D (and I don’t mean Dallas). Fewer fires in years past due largely to the fact that a full 40% of the city has burned down already. The freakshow was in full swing by dusk. I would follow your advise only as far as the first sentence and stop three words short of the end. If any place in America epitomises the failure of Liberal Dem policy it is Detroit.
Check it on Google Earth, there is room inside the city limits to reintroduce farming on a significant scale.
72. Subotai Bahadur:
I forgot to include in my advice my old Sergeant’s favorite phrase: “Three rounds rapid, center of mass. Repeat as needed”
Good points all in your piece, particularly the bit about talking to neighbors. I was suprised back in 2000 at how many had made serious prepartions, then the Great Power Outage a couple of years later gave it a real boost. There are ten good men in my area that I am sure I can count on if the SHTF.
Sorry eggplant, can’t afford the carbon credits to turn on that bigscreen plasma for you. But you can stare at the nature mural Ms Twitchbeaks’s 3rd Grade Class from Oabama Elementary painted a few years ago.
.22s are good for small game. They’re cheap so you can buy several, and the ammo is cheap as well as still relatively plentiful (compared to the combat rounds anyway) so you can stock up. Nothing you’d want to bring to a gunfight, but something you could use for filling the stock pot. Plus, it means you can save your heavier rounds for defense.
If, y’know, it comes to that.
Three and a half centuries ago England was convulsed by civil wars (1641-1651). The man frequently credited as the first modern political philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, described the course of these wars in a book titled Behemoth or, the Long Parliament. He wrote that if men could view the England of his day from “the Devil’s Mountain” they would see “all kinds of injustice, and all kinds of folly.” It was a case, he explained, of “double iniquity” on one side, and “double folly” on the other. It was a war between democracy and monarchy that claimed about 190,000 lives at a time when the population of the country was a fraction of what it is today. Hobbes, of course, was a critic of democracy. He believed that order was fundamental, and monarchical authority was the key. Hobbes blamed the civil disorders of his time on many factors. He said that ongoing debates over the Bible led to a growing interest in ancient languages. Educated men thereby “became acquainted with the democratical principles of Aristotle and Cicero, and from the love of their eloquence fell in love with their politics … till it grew into the rebellion we now talk of….”
>>excerpt from new Nyquist essay, The Executive Branch and the Roots of Order
Anton and Subotai Bahadur,
Both my grandfather (the ex-policeman) and my father swore by the M1 Garand. My father served in the USMC during the Korean War and was designated to carry a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). He absolutely hated that weapon. It was heavy, bucked like a mule and difficult to maintain. However my father had nothing but praise for the M1. My grandfather (who was also a corporal in the USMC) insisted that the M1 was the finest weapon ever made. I strongly suspect their opinions are obsolete and modern infantry rifles like the M16 are superior. My uncle, who served with the US Army in Vietnam, disliked the M16. He said the weapon felt like it was made by Mattel and had a nasty tendency to jam. My uncle manned a machine gun on an armor personal carrier. However my uncle always kept a shotgun handy which I believe was his preferred weapon.
George Patton called the M1 Garand “The greatest battlefield implement ever devised”.
i remember being a little kid in 1950s Baton Rouge, Louisiana. we lived close to downtown where there was (and still is i’m sure) a big Nat’l Guard armory near the state capitol building, with several ‘army surplus stores’ (as they were called then) nearby. Back in the rear of the stores there’d be stacks and stacks of used M1 Garands (i have a mental picture that some were rusty & muddy as if straight from the field someplace) selling for iirc about five bucks apiece.
Had Miss Polly Hebert been thinking entrepreneurship in her first-grade classroom at Fairfield Elementary, maybe we coulda cornered the market on the cheap.
–’course i didn’t have the five bucks to get started, but that’s just a detail –a good business plan and maybe a fake moustache to look a little older, and ….
I imagine those same rifles are still around, for about fifteen hundred or two thousand bucks per, i’d guess sans searchi.
77. Eggplant:
The M-1 is a superb rifle, the M-14 is basically the same thing with a magazine instead of a clip. I my mind either is superior to the M-16/M-4 family. They are dead easy to maintain, have greater range and hitting power and will happily function in filth that would demand a complete strip and clean in the M-16 family. The downside is that the M-1 is a collector’s item and will easily set you back a grand or more (not that an M-16 wouldn’t cost as much), unless you can get a CMP issued one. A solid bolt-rifle (deer or miltary surplus) are even easier to keep up and far cheaper. Spend the extra money on ammo and range-time.
The biggest thing to remember is that bad guys are rarely the psycho-killers of the movies, they are looking to steal something and be alive to use it. If you open fire they are apt to back off and look for a softer target.
Subotai Bahadur’s advice about practice cannot be overstated. Shoot at man-profile targets, shoot at small targets, practice rapid loading, do thirty or forty push-ups and then shoot right away so you will know what your group will look like under stress.
All that said, my weapon of choice out of the hundred-plus guns that I own is my Remington 870 pump loaded with buckshot and slugs alternately. Nothing says “Get The F%$k Out!” (in any language) the way the sound of the slide slamming forward does.
78. buddy larsen: I collect old rifles, my first one was a Mauser that I convinced my dad to buy at Montgomery Wards sporting department for $10.00 in 1966. It was greasy with cosmoline, the stock was dented and chipped and the bore was pretty rough. I had to cut the grass at our house and my uncle’s all summer to pay for it. But it was mine!
I couldn’t swing the thrity dollars for an M-1 but my dad had one that he shot regularly. A fine rifle if there ever was one.
Eggplant, try checking Gunbroker.com for prices. There has been a real run on guns in general since about July of last year with the assualt rifles leading the price wave. You could probably get three shotguns and a deer rifle for the price of an M-16.
#77 Eggplant
I have nothing against the Garand. My dad carried one across Europe with the 71st Infantry. He qualified Expert with it and bloody near any other weapon they had, including the BAR. I found this out after I found his military records after his last heart attack while helping look for his medical insurance papers. He never regained consciousness, and he never did talk much about the war. Turned out that he was one of the first non-white squad leaders in the combat infantry. I’m pretty sure that besides his natural inclinations to do everything the best he could, it involved the necessity of being able to beat the odd racist at every point of competition, including I suspect behind the barracks. I’d like a Garand myself, for family historical reasons.
It is a good weapon, albeit a bit heavy by modern standards. It is chambered for the older 30.06 instead of the .308/7.72 mm. 30.06 is made in this country, is still fairly common, and is heavily reloaded by private individuals. If I could not get a 7.62 NATO weapon, I would consider the GARAND a very acceptable substitute.
The M-16 in all of its modern variants [the old ones DID jam constantly if not religiously maintained] has its advantages and disadvantages. The 5.56 NATO round is our military standard so it has the logistical plus the same as the 7.62 NATO. It is lighter. The full auto mode is over-rated and is not on the modern versions because it is inaccurate and wastes ammo. 3 round bursts are all you need.
There are disadvantages in that it has a shorter effective range, and in brush it is more affected by what is growing between you and your target. These were partially compensated for with the SS109 round and a tighter rifling twist in the modern versions. Still and all, it is not going to reach out as far, or hit as hard at its extreme range as the 7.62 NATO or 30.06. This can have consequences if you are in more open country either in combat or are after large “bush tucker”. You have to stalk closer before firing.
A lot of the deployed troops, especially SpecOps types, have complained bitterly about the lack of effective range and killing power of the 5.56 round, and there is now a special upgraded 6.8mm version that does better that is being issued to deployed SpecOps. But the Army as a whole does not want to pay to replace its battle rifles with something better, so 5.56 is going to be around for a long time. Ammunition for the upgraded version is far from common, so even though it is a more effective weapon, unless you have a secure source for enough ammo, I would pass on it.
In “Military Operations in Urbanized Terrain” [MOUT] the M-16 is lighter, handier in tight spaces [especially the M-4 carbine variant], and range and killing power problems are cancelled by the shorter ranges involved.
Take your planned tactical situation into consideration as a factor in weapon choices.
Especially if you have a group of kindred souls, it might be worthwhile acquiring a couple of different Field Manuals for cash at gun shows. MOUT and Basic Combat come to mind, for study. Remember, your goal is to defend you and yours, not to go Goblin or Orc hunting; at least at first. If they don’t encounter you, they cannot hurt you. If there are later requirements to hunt Uruk Hai, hopefully there will be Oathkeepers about to organize things.
Subotai Bahadur
i do believe i’d rather have Subotai wif me than agin me
BTW, this week’s Glenn Beck show features a good look into the administration’s media activist revolutionary operatives –really a must see. As well he interviews the notorious Sir Moncton on the Copenhagen manifesto. A replay is on Fox at this moment –there’ll probably be another tomorrow. Thank you lord for our favorite Australian and defender of constitutional government Rupert Murdoch.
Uh, make that “one of our favorite…”
…and, you really should hear Moncton’s debate challenge to Al Gore. it’s in the closing minute of the show. What a hoot –how can Gore ignore ? but then, how can he not ?
Wretchard,
That is as hard hitting a piece as I have ever seen.
The best hand President Obama has left is “the dead man’s hand”. The problem we have is that we are the bet. An aweful lot of thugs will figure they can beat aces and eights.