The Federalist.

Four military officers who describe themselves as “researchers” at the Army’s highly respected Cyber Institute have published an article that adds to the growing concern about the ongoing politicization of the military. Published by the military’s National Defense University (NDU), their article purports to analyze the dangers of misinformation and disinformation and to advise the Biden administration about how to counter it.

The article’s authors all are military officers and at least two are professors at West Point. They say their article “is written in response to the Capitol insurrection.”

[ … ]

The Cyber Center authors’ thesis is that the “insurrection” at the Capitol building on Jan. 6 was a mortal danger to the country that was caused by disinformation, namely the idea that the 2020 presidential election was rigged or stolen. The “insurrection” spawned by this alleged disinformation then becomes the justification for the authors’ proposed government censorship (although they eschew the term) of free speech.

Uh huh.

What happened that ridiculous day wasn’t an insurrection.  They will witness an insurrection if they attempt to confiscate firearms.

I have a suggestion.  Perhaps these “professors” could focus on fire and maneuver warfare and go get a combat action ribbon (or whatever the Army calls that).  Otherwise, they’re just wasting time.

As for the Marine Corps, what was once a respected institution now allows females into the infantry officer’s course at Quantico, and also allows females into the infantry battalions.

This piece at business insider discusses the U.S. Marines versus the Royal Marines, and why the USMC lost in mock battles recently to the Royal Marines.

They lost because they no longer know who they are.  They began to change right before my youngest son got out (which was the reason for his having left), and he never looked back.  Today they don’t know whether they are “Soldiers of the Sea,” an Expeditionary Fighting Force, cyber warriors, or what.

They got too heavy, and experimented with the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, an idiotic idea if I’ve ever heard one.  I recommended at the time (beginning more than a decade ago) that the Marine Corps scale down the size of the force, focus more on pay, retention, specialized training, and air and sea insertion for special operations.

They have too many stupid people in the USMC today, and thus none of that advice obtained.  So any comparison between the USMC and Royal Marines suffers from the USMC not knowing who they are or want to be, wanting to be too big and too heavy, treating its Marines like crap, being [stupidly] proud of the fact that they get the short end of the stick on training dollars from the DoD, and recruiting the wrong sort of people.

Among the “wrong sort of people” are females who believe they can do anything a male can do.

As for USMA at West Point, they were lost a very long time ago.  If I were hiring today, I wouldn’t be any more impressed at a degree from the USMA than my local 2-year community college.

Via TTAG, this missive.

As a teacher in Northeast Ohio high schools for over 20 years, a special kind of horror fills me when I hear about bills like HB 99. Here are a few of the reasons why more guns in schools is no solution.

For us teachers, many experiences in our lives are teachable moments. There are lessons to be had in all that happens to us as individuals and as a society. The lessons we choose to learn will determine our actions. Bringing guns into our schools conveys one monumental lesson: that we should deal with violence in our society with greater threats of violence. As students go out into the world, will they take that lesson with them? Who else should carry guns? Doctors? Engineers? Nursing home employees? Is the effective solution to violence just more potential for violence?

Wait.  I’m an engineer and I carry guns!

In fact, I think it’s a grand idea if nursing home employees carried firearms, at least a few of them.  Whom else will defend the residents from home invasion.  Of course, it’s a better arrangement if there were no nursing homes and families took care of their own, but that’s a sticky wicket and very complicated.  I had an aunt with dementia who couldn’t be left alone because she had a propensity to throw hand towels down on hot stove units, so you couldn’t even take a trip to work or the store.

Sent from a reader, a sad analysis.

The couple found dead on a Northern California hiking trail over the summer desperately tried to save their 1-year-old daughter before all three succumbed to extreme heat as temperatures soared to 109 degrees, investigators found.

British software engineer Jonathan Gerrish, 45, his wife Ellen Chung, 31, and their daughter, Miju were found dead of hyperthermia and dehydration on a remote Sierra National Forest hiking trail in August.

Their dog, Oski — an 8-year-old Australian shepherd and Akita mix — also died on the trail.

Investigators now believe the couple was desperately seeking for medical help for Miju, before they themselves succumbed to the brutal temperatures, according to a new 77-page report obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Officials ruled out several other factors for their deaths through the course of the investigation, including murder, lightning strikes, poisoning, illegal drugs and suicide.

A survival trainer wrote in an email to detectives that in all likelihood, the parents’ panicked efforts to help the baby — who likely began suffering from symptoms first — possibly led to their own deaths.

“Sadly, I believe they were caught off guard, and once they realized their situation, they died trying to save their child and each other,” the trainer wrote to detectives, according to The Chronicle.

He called the mix of the terrain, elevation and heat a “deadly trifecta.”

“It is likely the child began to succumb first, which hurried the parents’ efforts up the hill,” the trainer wrote. “When one could no longer continue, they stayed behind to care for the child and pet, while the other tried to forge on and get help for their loved ones. It is a tragedy of the highest order.”

First of all, remember the necessary life-saving kit that MUST be carried in the bush: Rubberized poncho, parka, redundant fire start, large bore handgun, food energy, cordage, tactical light, knife, water and means of water filtration.  This might have saved their lives.

Beyond this, I was commenting to my oldest son not too many days ago that the biggest enemy of survival in the bush is panic.  If you carry the right kit, you can be in the position where you say to yourself or loved ones, “I don’t know where we are, but it’s getting dark and we need warmth, shelter, water and rest.  We have the right kit for it, so we camp here for the night and get a safe, good night sleep, and carry on at first light.”

If you panic, adrenalin rushes into your system, you expend way too much energy, your judgment is clouded and you’re more likely to do stupid things, you get exhausted, the exhaustion makes you cold, and you risk hypothermia.

In the bush, panic is your enemy.  It sounds as if they didn’t have the right kit, and they panicked.

It’s a sad but preventable story.

ZeroGov makes the following points at Gab.

It’s the anniversary of Pearl Harbor and I remain sure that Comrade-President RedDR knew the Japanese plans and desperately needed to get into the conflict over the objections of a population that wisely was choosing to sit on the sidelines as the world went to war.

I am further convinced that Hitler and Stalin knew each other’s intentions months before 22 June 1941 when Hitler would start to lose the war strategically with Operation Barbarossa. Stalin could not survive a two front war with Germany in the West and Japan in the East; he had to get the US to contest Japan in the Pacific, hence the many espionage and “useful idiot” operations in the US to shape conditions for the conflict. The 1930s was the high point for American communism and Stalin’s agents had penetrated all the way to the Offal Office to include Harry Lloyd Hopkins (one of Roosevelt’s closest confidantes [his “co-president”] & Soviet code name: “Agent 19”) and Harry Dexter White (Soviet code name: “Jurist”), among others.

Alger Hiss’ wartime KGB controller [Ishhak] Akhmerov “identified the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States,” the book, “American Betrayal” by Diana West, says, ”as Harry Hopkins.”

You will note that all post-WWI construction capital ships were not in Pearl harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941.

It may not have been a popular opinion during the life of my one-time seminary professor, Dr. C. Gregg Singer, but he was convinced that the Pacific theater of the war was a totally unnecessary and wasteful mistake, and whatever differences we had with Japan could have been solved peacefully.  Furthermore, he was convinced that the embargo was the catalyst for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And it should come as no surprise that FDR was eager to assist Stalin.  He was always an admirer of Stalin, ceded way too much in the post-WWII order to the communists, and did so in spite of the objections of Churchill.

In retrospect, it would have been a much better outcome for Japan to have handled China before they owned most of the world.  Even now, I expect [and hope] that Japan amends its constitution to allow a more robust military.  They’re going to need it against China.

Steve Kirsch (seen at WRSA).

ICYMI, here’s a chart from a recent post by my good friend Mathew Crawford. It basically shows, the more you vaccinate, the more cases and deaths you get.

Critics would argue, “it’s confounded! more elderly are vaccinated.” But the same critics cannot show us this is false. They can only do “hand-waving” arguments that it must be wrong. Not very convincing …

We actually agree with the critics that it is confounded but here’s why: governments don’t release the breakdowns publicly …

Let me say it a slightly different way.  The counter argument that this data/conclusion is confounded only works if there is data/conclusion to the contrary.  We have no data with cases/deaths without the shots because they’ve forced the shots on everyone with religious fervor.

Here’s another way of saying it.  They never conducted testing with a control group.  Naysaying the conclusion someone else comes up with is easy.  Conducting proper testing – not so much, especially if you want to make money.

The naysayers are unpersuasive.

American Rifleman.

“So we’re planning a mid-December launch of the Marlin product line,” Ruger Chief Executive Officer Christopher J. Killoy commented. “…[I]t’ll probably be less than the market wants. In fact, I’m sure based on the overwhelming demand we’ve seen from consumers and retailers, I’m sure it will be fewer guns and fewer SKUs than the market wants, but we will launch it probably on or about December 15, somewhere in that time period, begin those shipments to distributors.”

The earliest offering will be a classic, too. “The first sample that I saw came off the line a few weeks ago and it was a beautiful model, 1895 in 45-70 caliber and it just looked gorgeous,” Killoy said. “So we’re very excited about that and we are on track to that into Q4 launch.”

As for finding any available in mid-December, he cautioned, “And again I expect there’ll be lots of calls and e-mails in…looking for more Marlins because the first samples frankly, were just outstanding.” The above image is an 1895 from the company’s 2006 catalog, and likely doesn’t represent the first ones scheduled to appear.

Well that’s too bad, because I love the look of the gun with its beautiful pistol grip Walnut stock sleek lever design.  I hope it doesn’t look much different than what’s in the picture.

I’d like to see them distribute the 30-30 soon.

The Guardian.

A US congressman has posted a Christmas picture of himself and what appears to be his family, smiling and posing with an assortment of guns, just days after four teenagers were killed in a shooting at a high school in Michigan.

Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted: “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”

[ … ]

The Democratic US Representative John Yarmuth condemned his fellow Kentuckian’s post. “I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Yarmuth tweeted, apparently referring to calls for gun control laws.

“I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive asshole,” he added. The shooting in Oxford, Michigan, was the latest in a string of such incidents that have prompted fierce debates over school safety, gun control and gun rights.

It’s good to see Rep. Massie trolling the progs.  Never quit!

Now for the readers, name the guns in the photo?  If I’m not mistaken, Massie has a collection of Class 3 weapons.

TFB.

The first shot taken was just to foul the barrel. The second shot was to be at 1500 yards. It was an impact.

Since 1500 was easy-peasy, Bill decided to just go for it. The rest of the shots were taken at the plate at 1780 yards.

This is a heavy gun, with a heavy rifled barrel.  The entire configuration is a custom job.

It would appear this is a first.

Seen at WoG, this report from Missouri.

A Missouri lawmaker is planning to introduce a new bill that he claims will strengthen the state’s “stand your ground” law.

Sen. Eric Burlison (R-Battlefied) pre-filed the legislation Wednesday. It would grant a person criminal immunity for using deadly force in self-defense unless the force is used against a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.

Now why would it be necessary to add the part I’ve bolded?

Because they can’t allow anything to escape the blanket indemnification they grant to all LEOs in every circumstance.

And what about a home invasion by SWAT in the wrong home where they bust in and point guns at your children, with you not knowing anything about who they are?

How about that one, Burlison?