You just took the Oath for the first time. NOW WHAT?

Be prepared to E.A.T. O.D.

Educate yourself. As a new member of the armed citizenry dedicated to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic you must raise your own level of martial knowledge and that of your friends and fellow patriots. A partial reading list:



1. Guidebook for Marines. http://www.usmcpress.com/guidebook.htm If you are able to buy just one book, get this one.

2. The Tiger's Way: A U.S. Private's Best Chance for Survival by H. John Poole. http://www.amazon.com/Tigers-Way-Privates-Chance-Survival/dp/0963869566

3. Light Infantry Tactics for Small Teams by Christopher E. Larson. http://www.amazon.com/Light-Infantry-Tactics-Small-Teams/dp/1418472077/ref=pd_sim_b_3

4. Six Ways In, Twelve Ways Out by the USROG. http://www.usrsog.org/manu.htm

Finish those, pass 'em around, and then dig into these nonfiction works:

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden
King's Mountain by Hank Messick
Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer
Small Unit Leadership: A Common Sense Approach by Col. Dandridge M. Malone
The Battle for Hunger Hill by MG Daniel P. Bolger
The Minutemen by GEN John Galvin
To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face by Prof. Robert Churchill
Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
We Were Soldiers Once, and Young by Gen. Hal Moore

And these novels:

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer
Rifleman Dodd by C.S. Forrester
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
The Defence of Duffer's Drift by Lt. Backsight Forethought

2. Arm yourself. Rifle, handgun, shotgun -- in that order. Another necessary book:



Boston's Gun Bible by Boston T. Party.

Buy the best rifle you can afford that is in common caliber with your friends. Buy enough ammo to practice with it regularly until you attain proficiency. A $129 Moisin-Nagant in the hands of the man who has practiced with it is more effective that the $2000 semi-auto tack driver in the hands of someone who hasn't. If all you can buy is ammo, that's fine. Stock up on the caliber you'll be using until you're able to get a rifle. BUT DO NOT WAIT.

3. Train yourself, or find training.

Your first priority is fitness - physical training. Tough but imperative.

Your second priority is practical marksmanship. Places that teach it:

Appleseed.
http://www.appleseedinfo.org

Gabe Suarez. http://www.suarezinternationalstore.com

There are others local to you, no doubt. Beware the risk-averse training provided by some. We're not talking about the minutiae of concealed carry, but how to put an opponent down hard and fast. Ask questions before enrolling.

The third priority is military training -- how to shoot, move and communicate with your buddies. Here you're going to have to improvise. Find others willing to train with you. Start with buddy teams and then move up to fire teams. Then squads. Uncertain how to proceed? See some of the Praxis pieces (and their attendant comments) by The Trainer on this blog.

Organize yourself, your family and your friends. As above, build fire teams and squads. Assign duties to non-military persons, supply and so on. Establish caches for supply. Build communication networks. Reach out to like-minded law enforcement. How can you help them do their duty?

Defy. All the preps in the world are not worth a thing if you don't have the WILL to use them.

That's it. Sounds simple, but it is not. Organizing militia folk is like herding cats and chickens at the same time. It can be done, but not without extreme effort and massive headaches. That doesn't mean it can't be done, just that it is tough. Given the payoff at the end, why wouldn't it be?

Mike Vanderboegh
III

Hope yer "change" is working out fer ya.

Thanks to "wretched dog" for the forward.

I fight for HER future, and I raise her to fight for her own.

More photos of "Zoe the Panzerfaust girl," as Oleg Volk dubbed her.

Barking Moonbats Fly at Dawn, Dr. Schnabel, Chemtrails, Massholes, the Zionist-Hitler League, the Volcano Conspiracy & Teddy Kennedy's Funeral.

Meet Dr. Schnabel, the Plague Doctor who showed up on Lexington Green.

This is a woodcut of the original Dr. Schnabel:



No one who was at the Oath Keepers event will forget Dr. Schnabel. He was upset about vaccines and was there to tell us all about how we were all going to die of the plague. Here's an explanation of what the original Dr. Schnabel's various clothing and accoutrements were:

A broadside on doctors in Rome and their protective clothing against the plague; with an engraving after an Italian broadside showing a figure dressed with along coat, gloves, mask and hat, holding in the right hand a stick with a winged hourglass, in the left background the same figure and children running away, in the R background a view of an Italian city.

About Doctor Schnabel's costume, the attempt to treat people ill with plague and the remedies they used:

► A wide-brimmed black hat worn close to the head. At the time, a wide-brimmed black hat would have identified a person as a doctor, much the same as how a hat may identify chefs, soldiers and workers nowadays. The wide-brimmed hat might have also been used as partial shielding from infection.

► A primitive gas mask in the shape of a bird's beak. A common belief at the time was that the plague was spread by birds. It was thought that by dressing in a bird-like mask, the wearer could draw the plague away from the patient and onto the garment the plague doctor wore. The mask also included red glass eyepieces, which were thought to make the wearer impervious to evil. The beak of the mask was often filled with strongly aromatic herbs and spices to overpower the miasmas or "bad air" which was also thought to carry the plague. At the very least, it may have served a dual purpose, also dulling the smell of unburied corpses, sputum, and ruptured bouboules in plague victims.

► A long black overcoat. The overcoat worn by the plague doctor was tucked in behind the beak mask at the neckline to minimize skin exposure. It extended to the feet, and was often coated head to toe in suet or wax. A coating of suet may have been used with the thought that the plague could be drawn away from the flesh of the infected victim and either trapped by the suet, or repelled by the wax. The coating of wax likely served as protection against respiratory droplet contamination eventhough it was not known at the time if coughing carried the plague. It is likely that the overcoat was waxed to simply prevent sputum or other bodily fluids from clinging to it.

► A wooden cane. The cane was used to both direct family members to move the patient and other individuals nearby, and possibly to examine the patient with directly. Its precise purpose with relation to the plague victim isn't known.

► Leather breeches. Similar to waders worn by fishermen, leather breeches were worn beneath the cloak to protect the legs and groin from infection. Since the plague often tended to manifest itself first in the lymph nodes, particular attention was paid to protecting the armpits, neck, and groin.

The plague doctors' clothing also had a secondary use: to intentionally frighten and warn onlookers. The bedside manner common to doctors of today did not exist at the time; part of the appearance of the plague doctor's clothing was meant to frighten onlookers, and to communicate that something very, very wrong was nearby, and that they too might become infected. It is unknown how often or widespread plague doctors were, or how effective they were in treatment of the disease. It's likely that while offering some protection to the wearer, they may have actually contributed more to the spreading of the disease than its treatment, by unknowingly serving as vectors for infected fleas to move from host to host.

OK, fascinating history, right? How do I know it was a "him?" Why because I went up and asked him. See, when he first showed up I heard this little kid scream and turned to see this grim visage strutting about. Had to be hot as heck in there, so obsessed by curiousity I went over and kind of peered in the eye lens.

"Are you my ex-wife?"

"NO," boomed this deep male voice from under the cowl.

OK, certainly a guy, but I was skeptical.

"Is your last name May?" I asked.

"No," came the same deep voice.

Still in doubt, I asked him, "Are you from Ohio?"

"NO!"

"OK, thanks," and I walked away, shaking my head. I mean c'mon, a guy dressed like that had at least a fifty-fifty chance of being ONE of my ex-in-laws.

Earlier in the day, this female street person came up and asked me if I would drive her to her car where she had some leaflets she needed to hand out. Eternally skeptical, I asked her, "What kind of leaflets?" She wouldn't tell me, but she offered to show me if I would just take her to her car. Where was her car? Why in Boston of course. Seems she had hitched a ride out to Lexington, or levitated or something. She finally fessed up that her leaflets warned of deadly chem trails in the sky over Boston and how George Bush should be tried for war crimes.

The chem trails upset her most because unless they were stopped, everyone in Boston WAS GOING TO DIE!!!!!! Well, I gotta confess, I thought about that. I mean, I did a cold calculation of how many rabid liberals would be erased from the civil war equation and thought, "So, this is a BAD thing?" I was about to ask her more, but she turned around and went looking for another Mr. Goodbar to give her a ride. I don't think she ever found him, because of what happened later.

"Chem-trails."

The crowd began to gather and one barking moonbat drew attention to herself immediately -- the bow-lady.

"Baaking Moonbaat."

(NOTE: "Barking Moonbat" is apparently a Massachussetts' term in common usage. The first evening Pete and me got there, we went to a local restaurant open late that offered, among other things, "laabstah pah." That's "lobster pie." A local told us that it had been a nice family place until the new owner had fancied it up and priced it out the ying-yang. Said the owner was a "baaking moonbaat." We also discovered that other New Englanders called people from the state of Sam Adams "Massholes," but that's another story.)



Anyway, the "Bow Lady" had this huge white bow in her hair and walked around staring into people's eye from about six inches away, identifying her intended targets and then backing up, pointed her finger at them and made a cross in the air. She got in front of the podium, obstructed camera views and other obnoxious moves until we got the local law enforcement guys (and they were GREAT!) to check her out. Seems she was an inhabitant of a local group home and after speaking with the officer in charge, she declared she had made her point and left.

Her place wandering around and looking goofy for the cameras was taken up by the Court Jester (aka Mr. Propeller Head) who actually we had seen the night before sitting at a table by us in the Chinese restaurant. He engaged us in conversation then and everyone assumed he belonged to somebody else's table, probably a local. Boy were we stupid.

Anyway, he start parading around, first in his propeller beanie and then in his court jester's hat. Now my smell-o-meter gets going because he is obviously doing the "fool counter-demonstrator" deal that I remember from the 70s.

(My favorite memory from a demonstration on the lawn of the Ohio State Capitol. A stoned Yippie climbs up on the statue of William McKinley, wraps his legs around the Spanish-American War-Era President's head so that it looks like he's getting fellatio from the old boy, and interrupts the dreadfully boring speeches of these doctrinaire Marxists by thrusting his fist in the air and yelling, alternately:

"HARD ON, MAN! HARD ON!"

"RIGHT ARM, MAN! RIGHT ARM!"

"BLACK POWDER! BLACK POWDER!"

Even the hardhat counter-demonstrators began to laugh. The Marxists kept stumbling over their dialectical materialism. It was a hoot.)

But the Court Jester settles down just about the time he gloms onto the fact that I am now watching him like a hawk. Goofus comes over and sits down near me, and I manage to get word to him that I want to talk to him. Over he comes.

"Uh, hey buddy, are you from the Southern Poverty Law Center?"

He knows what that is and pretends offense, "Isn't that the FBI front?"

"Yeah," I agree, "something like that."

"NO!" he says, working on his outrage.

He walks away and don't see him until afterward when, after driving the twenty miles to the bed-and-breakfast, there he is in his Court Jester hat, eating the free food. He tries to explain to LTCMDR Cunningham about how he was offended by something one of the other speakers said. The speaker's error, Court Jester avows, was in not seeing that most of the problems of the world are caused by the forcible implementation of Talmudic Law. I separate Guy from this loon and start the process of REALLY trying to figure out who he belongs to.

While unsuccessfully and very belatedly vetting, I run into Chem-trail lady, who like Court Jester has hitched a ride to the party under false pretenses and is busy explaining, between bites of free pizza, about Bush Lied, People Died, Chem-trails over Boston, and (said in a whisper) the Volcano Conspiracy.

The Volcano Conspiracy?

Well, you're supposed to have knitting needles stuck in your ears before being briefed on this, but here goes:

The target area of this Russian Woodpecker scalar signal as the "Northwestern" part of the United States. Therefore, for the past 27 years, the Northwestern sector of the United States has been continually pinged with this scalar signal; YOWUSA reports, above, that scalar waves are responsible for building up super volcanoes like Yellowstone! The geologic location of the huge Yellowstone caldera is the Northwestern section of the United States! Is is possible that the reason the Russians have been pinging Northwest America for 27 years with scalar signals is to slowly, quietly, and almost invisibly build up the Yellowstone super volcano so that it would explode in horrific fury? The "Russian woodpecker" is supposedly a (now turned off) Soviet system that gave off regular electromagnetic signals in the 3 to 30 MHz range.

Ah, but someone has turned it back on. Here is what it will look like:



Well, kiss those Mormons goodbye. And all those western Free Staters, no matter what state they live in. The shift of freedom-loving people to the western states is all part of a nefarious plan to blow them up when they get concentrated. (Note how none of the collectivist-dominated portions of California are wiped out, just the independent north. And -- my current mother-in-law will be pleased -- "Vegas lives!")

That's why we must whisper the Volcano Theory -- so the government doesn't know that we know what they know that we know what they don't know. If they figured that out, then one day Dick Cheney and his fellow Bilderbergers hit the detonator and BLOOOIE!

Ooh, kay. I turn my back on Barking Moonbat #1 to deal with anti-Semite Barking Moonbat #3. It seems if we're to get rid of him, we need to drive him back to Lexington where he can get his bicycle and ride back to Cambridge. Of course. I could've guessed.

I look at Pete, he looks at me. It must be done. But first there is a struggle for who gets in the back seat. I am, I insist. He is, he insists. I beat him to it, and lock the back doors manually. If he wants a ride it will have to be in the front, where I can strangle him with my cane if he gets out of line. He reluctantly agrees. I have this flashback: "Leave the gun, bring the canoles."

So off we go the many miles back to Lexington, with Barking Moonbat #3, his pizza-greasy hands, body odor and bad teeth. On the way he explains how the Zionists and Hitler intrigued to get rid of the anti-Zionist Jews, thus clearing the way for the state of Israel. Those extermination camps, though, weren't EXTERMINATION camps, you see, just big open air labor farms where public health measures were a little off.

Ooh, kay, then. I can still strangle him, I console myself. I don't. We drop him off at his bicycle. I tell him he's the first Holocaust denier that I ever gave a ride to and lived. He denies he's a denier. I don't deny it, I just jump in the front and we drive quickly away, marvelling on the dense native population of Barking Moonbats in the Boston area. Probably has something to do with them being an endangered species and nobody allowed to hunt them, we decide.

As we drive off into the sunset, we laugh once more about how we missed Teddy Kennedy's funeral.

See, that morning we stopped at a grocery store to stock up on the favorite poison of fat Southern white boys, Diet Mountain Dew. While I was at the register, the lady running it realizes that I talk funny. (OK, no real Southerner would be fooled that I'm anything but a transplant, but she surely hasn't been south of the Potomac. I am a stranger in a strange land.)

So, she asks, "Whe-ah aah ya from?" she asks in her nasal twang.

"Alabama, ma'am," I answer.

Why, she demands both nasally and snootily, have I come to Massachussetts? I'm a bit upset at her attitude and decide to throw her a curve ball. Pete has been joking about it the whole way up. I steal his line.

"Well, ma'am, we're here for Teddy Kennedy's funeral." I smile sweetly.

Her eyes bug out of her head and she begins to stammer, "Bu-, Bu-, Bu-."

I save her from strangulation. "Yeah, I know, he's still alive." I pause. "We were misinformed." I pause again. "More's the pity." She looks ready to kill me. Oh, yeah, she wants to kill me BAAAD. Problem is, she's from the People's Soviet of Massachussetts and she doesn't have a firearm. I get to live.

That night and all the next long day, Pete and me laugh about it all the way back to Alabama while singing snippets from Firesign Theatre albums. An especial favorite is Paster Rod Flash and the Church of the Presumptious Assumption of the Blinding Light.

"Oh, Blinding Light!
Oh, Light that blinds!
I cannot see!
Look out for me!"

In between the hilarity, we agree that it is a good thing Stewart and his fellow veterans had us to cow-catch the Barking Moonbats. Somebody would have ended up with "Laabstah Paah" shoved up their Masshole.

I still don't know how Barking Moonbat #1 got back to Boston. If she told her ride about the Volcano Conspiracy, I hope she whispered. You can bet Dick Cheney's itchy trigger finger is on the Volcano button.

I'm sure Dr. Schnabel drove himself. Be tough to hitch a ride in that get up. I'm still not convinced he wasn't one of my ex-in-laws.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters and recently a stranger in a strange land, thankfully back in Dixie, where most of our loons are safely tucked away in political office.
III

"Oath taker or oath keeper?": Another view of Oath Keepers on Lexington Green

Stewart Rhodes, Founder of Oath Keepers, speaks on Lexington Green.

From the Boston Gun Examiner Ron Bokleman go here to read his description and take on the event as well as see more slides and video.

CMDR David Gillie, USN, current serving.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this caption stated that CMDR Gillie was a SEAL, he is not and I knew that. Blame it on two hours sleep and a temperature of 102. Sorry. -- MBV

Len Savage as Will Shipman

Len Savage as Will Shipman. Photo courtesy of Oleg Volk. Suppressed MAC-10 courtesy of Charlie Quintard. Attitude is all Len's.

Oath: "It means that I have to die if necessary to protect the Constitution."

Minuteman Statue on Lexington Green.

On Sunday, 19 April 2009, “Oath Keepers” rallied on Massachusetts’ historic Lexington Green to renew their oaths to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. Held on the 234th anniversary of the revolutionary war battles of Lexington and Concord.

I have not yet sorted out my own reactions to this amazing event. Here's how Pete summed it up:

- Success.

- Hundreds of current and former military and police personnel publicly renewing their Constitutional oaths, along with hundreds of other freedom fighters who took the oath for the first time.

- The beginnings of a groundswell which, even in its early stages, is introducing strategic uncertainty into the plans of tyrants and thugs at the Federal, state, and local levels.

- Plans for another oath renewal ceremony, this time on the Mall in Washington on June 13, 2009 as part of the Gathering of Eagles Victory in Iraq ceremony.

Plan to be there.

The most vivid speaker was 29 Palms Survey author Lt. Commander Guy Cunningham, who set the crowd ON FIRE with his explanation of how and why the 1990s survey of Marines' attitudes to UN jurisdication and gun raids came about.

Stewart also had the crowd roaring. As reported in the New American:

“The only way a tyrannical government from the left or right can succeed is for active duty personnel to obey unlawful orders,” former Army paratrooper and Oath Keepers’ founder Rhodes told the crowd. “If you took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution, you have a duty to disobey unlawful orders. When you took the oath, you lost the option to duck out.” Rhodes is also an attorney, Yale University graduate, SWAT magazine columnist, and former staffer for Congressman Ron Paul.

Rhodes stressed that although Oath Keepers’ supporters were about to renew their oaths to the Constitution, the American people did not get their rights from the Constitution. “Where do our rights come from? There was no Second Amendment in 1775,” he told the crowd. “The Bill of Rights protects our rights, it doesn’t grant them." -- http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/1021.”

The only press account so far is, as I said, found here in the New American. Why the blackout? I don't know. Perhaps the media find this story too dangerous. I know the administration does. Here's one reason:

Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers and Peter of Western Rifle Shooters Association were talking at the reception after the event when a twenty-something young man dressed in tee shirt, jeans and a windbreaker walked up to them. He wanted to shake Stewart's hand and thank him. The conversation went something like this:

Stewart: "Are you ex-military?"

Young man: "No, sir."

Stewart: "Did you take the oath?"

Young man: "Yes, sir."

Stewart: "Do you know what it means?"

The young man paused a moment and then said: "It means that I have to die if necessary to protect the Constitution."

Stewart: "That's right."

Pete later told me, "They were the eyes of someone who has made the first serious decision of his life and intends to stick by it no matter what."

Here's what I concluded.

This Oath Keepers' movement is the greatest threat to tyranny in this country -- whether it comes from left or right. It is a dagger pointed right at the heart of those who would violate the Constitution in order to achieve their own ends by using the blunt instrument of the military. The military and the law enforcement officers of Oath Keepers will not be pawns in anybody's scheme. The best thing we who have sworn to frustrate the tyrannical appetites already evident can do is to get behind this Oath Keeper movement and push. Donate money, organize veterans and current serving military men and women and law enforcement officers. If the means of oppression are denied them, the tyrant-wannabes will have to admit defeat, at least in the short term.

So build Oath Keepers. Come with us in June to Washington DC to the Gathering of Eagles. Can you imagine the press ignoring one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand or even a quarter million soldiers, cops and veterans taking the oath on the National Mall? This isn't a dream. It is possible. IT IS DOABLE. If we but make it so. So, make it so.

Mike
III

PS More later. I'm off to the doctor now to get my pneumonia and bloody feet treated. I should have stayed home. I couldn't. And next time, neither should you. I know I won't. WE MUST NOT FAIL AND WE NEED EVERY MAN AND WOMAN TO SUCCEED.

The "Gun Lobby" is YOUR last line of defense, E.J., not the other way around. (An Open Letter to the WaPo's Arsonist of Civil Order.)

"They've got us surrounded, the poor bastards." The 101st Airborne at Bastogne.

E.J. Dionne is upset that the Lightworker apparently doesn't want to start a civil war and burn the country down to the ground around all our ears. YET. My open letter to the silly putz follows.

Mike
III

Who Will Face Down the Gun Lobby?

By E.J. Dionne Jr.Monday, April 20, 2009

Try to imagine that hundreds or thousands of guns, including assault weapons, were pouring across the Mexican border into Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, arming criminal gangs who were killing American law enforcement officials and other U.S. citizens.

Then imagine the Mexican president saying, "Well, we would really like to do something about this, but our political system makes helping you very difficult." Wouldn't Mexico's usual critics attack that country's political system for corruption and ineptitude and ask: "Why can't they stop this lawlessness?"

That, in reverse, is the position President Obama was in last week when he visited Mexico. The Mexican gangs are able to use guns purchased in the United States because of our insanely permissive gun regulations, and Obama had to make this unbelievably clotted, apologetic statement at a news conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderón:

"I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment rights in our Constitution, the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe, to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we know, here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence.

Violence in our own country as well. Now, having said that, I think none of us are under the illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy."

In other words: Our president can deal with all manner of big problems, but the American gun lobby is just too strong to let him push a rational and limited gun regulation through Congress.

It's particularly infuriating that Obama offered this statement of powerlessness just a few days before today's 10th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado -- and just after a spree of mass homicides across the United States took the lives of least 57 people.

No other democratic country in the world has the foolish, ineffectual gun regulations that we do. And, unfortunately, what Obama said is probably true.

Earlier this year, when Attorney General Eric Holder called for a renewal of the ban on assault weapons -- he was only repeating a commitment Obama made during the presidential campaign -- the response from a group of 65 pro-gun House Democrats was: No way.

Their letter to Holder was absurd. "The gun-control community has intentionally misled many Americans into believing that these weapons are fully automatic machine guns. They are not. These firearms fire one shot for every pull of the trigger." Doesn't that make you feel better?

Those Democrats should sit down with Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. "Time and time again, our police are finding themselves outgunned," Rendell said in Harrisburg last week. "They are finding themselves with less firepower than the criminals they are trying to bring to justice."

The Democratic governor told his own state's legislators that if they didn't support such a ban, "then don't come to those memorial services" for the victims of gun violence. "It's wrong," he said. "It's hypocritical."

And why can't we at least close the gun show loophole? Licensed dealers have to do background checks on people who buy guns. The rules don't apply at gun shows, which, as the Violence Policy Center put it, have become "Tupperware Parties for Criminals."

But too many members of Congress are "petrified" of the gun lobby, says Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), a crusader for sane gun legislation ever since her husband was killed and her son paralyzed by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.

Family members of the victims of gun violence, she says, are mystified by Congress's inability to pass even the most limited regulations. "Why can't you just get this done?" she is asked. "What is it you don't understand?"

Obama, at least, should understand this: He was not elected by the gun lobby. It worked hard to rally gun owners against him -- and failed to stop him.

According to a 2008 exit poll, Obama received support from just 37 percent among voters in households where guns are present -- barely more than John Kerry's 36 percent in 2004. But among the substantial majority of households that don't have guns, Obama got 65 percent, up eight points from Kerry. Will Obama stand up for the people who actually voted for him?

Yes, I understand about swing voters, swing states, the priority of the economy and all that. But given Congress's default to the apologists for loose gun laws, it will take a president to make something happen.

TO: ejdionne@washpost.com

An Open Letter to E.J. Dionne: The "Gun Lobby" is YOUR last line of defense.
re: Who Will Face Down the Gun Lobby?"
Mr. Dionne,

Ho Chi Minh once cautioned his followers to "cherish your enemies, they teach you the most valuable lessons."

Ensnared by your own prejudices and cut off from a complete sense of reality by your isolation from other folks (us) who do not agree with your world view, citizen disarmament advocates such as yourself present our side of the argument with a moral dilemma. Should we explain to you how little clue you have about the dangers you face or should we just let you walk forward unwarned into a minefield that you unwittingly made yourselves?

As an owner of the types of heretofore legal semi-automatic rifles you are seeking to ban, I will try to save you from your own worst impulses.

What you must understand is that the old political verities no longer apply. You berate Obama and other members of his party for failing to embrace further gun control while you are in ignorance of the fact that there are gun owners far more uncompromising than the NRA who refuse to obey any more gun restrictions. Such "bitter clingers" are known as "Three Percenters."

If such a law as you propose is passed, we will resist it and defy you to enforce it upon us. And the Government, being the government, will attempt to do just that. Shots will be fired and the next American civil war will be joined.

Now, as we come from entirely different world views, you may not believe this. It is nonetheless true. And as an advocate of other people's disarmament and the official theft of their liberty and property, you should hope that they don't choose to play by Bill Clinton's rules should push come to shove.

Surely you recall when Clinton decided to expand the rules of engagement with the Serbs in 1999, declaring that the political, media and intellectual underpinnings of their regime were legitimate targets of war? Do the precision guided munitions he had directed into the headquarters of Serbian Television and Radio ring a bell?

At the time this was roundly condemned by free speech and press advocates all over the world, and rightly so. Yet, the precedent WAS set, the point WAS made. Can you be entirely confident that it won't be invoked once more against you?

Here's the thing about "enemies lists" such as Napolitano's "Right Wing Extremists" report -- the sloppy scholarship represented by the elisions and conflations of the very real differences between veterans, constitutional militias and small government activists and mad dog white supremacist terrorists convinces all of us that we are intended victims regardless of what we believe. And the dangerous thing about "enemy of the people" lists in the real world is that they work both ways.

So cherish the "gun lobby." The way many on our side see it, as long as they exist and are able to use traditional politics to protect our rights, they protect YOU from uncompromising gun owners and not the other way around.

This may not be the "hope" and "change" you were looking for, but it is the hope and change you got.

I expect to be in Washington in the month of June and would welcome the chance to discuss these issues and answer any questions about the great percentage of your countrymen of whom you seemingly know so little.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

Message to Stewart Rhodes: Barking Moonbat Delivered Safe to His Bicycle

You owe us one.

More, gentle readers tomorrow. Today we are on the road back to Dixie. I will report in full on the moving Oath Keepers ceremony on Lexington Green and the barking moonbats who hovered at its edges tomorrow. And to the law enforcement officer who left me a message: I got it. Thanks. Keep reading. I'll try to make it worthwhile.

Mike
III

20 April: The monster still lurks.

And let us also recall that tomorrow is the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the birth of the Austrian homosexual prostitute known to history as Adolf Hitler. His morally-bereft acolytes will be celebrating tomorrow, perhaps, as at Oklahoma City, with bombs. Keep watch.

19 April: In Memorium

And let us take more than one moment today to reflect upon the monstrous crimes in modern memory that this date also marks the anniversary of: Waco and Oklahoma City. Let us swear that neither be repeated as long as we draw breath. As Three Percenters, we cannot do otherwise.

Mike
III

19 April: The "Subversive" Oath

"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon. But, if they want to have a war, let it begin here." Capt. John Parker, Lexington Company of the Middlesex County Brigade, Massachusetts Militia, April 19, 1775.

I saw Buckman's Tavern in Lexington for the first time in my life yesterday. Today I will be at the Oath Keepers ceremony.

We stand at the brink, understanding that the world we have known cannot stand unchanged in the face of the ominous forces of societal, economic and moral collapse, expanding government appetites and natural push-back on the part of people who always thought they were free and have awakened to the prospect that other people are doing their dead-level best to enslave them and their children.

If history has taught us anything, it is that there is no negotiating with collectivist slave-masters. Like the Borg, collectivism in all its forms demands your assimilation or your death.

As my good friend Pete of Western Rifle shooter's Association says: "We're screwed. We'll have to fight. Let's win."

By retaking the Oath today, soldiers past and present of the American constitutional republic pledge once more their faithful service to the eternal principles of the Declaration and the Constitution and opposition to tyrants foreign and domestic.

In proportion to the task that faces them, they are pitifully few in number at the point of contact, much like Captain Parker's company 234 years ago.

Men and women representing all of our country's service branches will be here. And what they will do is incredibly simple, fantastically powerful, and a direct threat to the collectivist tyrant-wannabes of who seek to bend us to their purpose.

By reaffirming the Oath, and reminding everyone who ever took it that it is for life, that it never expires until the death of the man or woman who swore it, they are well within the law as even our would-be oppressors define it. Yet it is absolutely subversive to THEIR intentions. Yet anything they do to retaliate against the Oath Keepers will only remind the rest of the people that it is THEY who are the subversives, THEY who are the seditionists, THEY who are the "extremists," THEY who are the law-breakers, and they who are illegitimate in their exercise of power far beyond anything the Founders would have tolerated.

It is this question of legitimacy that strikes fear into their hearts. If the people finally perceive them as illegitimate, they will be swept away. For if they cannot count on the military to wield the unconstitutional fist for them, they know they will lose.

I know not what today brings, whether the event will be viewed by others as successful or not. But I do know that somewhere, Captain Parker and the rest of the Founders will be smiling.

Mike Vanderboegh
III

Hysteria

Janet Napolitano, Director of the Department of Homeland Security in her natural habitat.

It is one thing when unreasoning panic strikes the popular imagination of a portion of the common people.

It is quite another and much more dangerous thing when it seizes the minds of national security government bureaucrats and law enforcement agents with guns.

When THEY react without thinking and falsely label the portion of the populace who in all other times are their most steadfast friends, they force upon us the worst of all worlds -- a landscape of frightened power without reason. And people die as a result. People most surely die.

History proves this beyond argument. The prospect of a politicized national security heirarchy leaping at shadows is for me the most ominous event in an administration which has thus far made a cottage industry of ominous events.

What will this country look like in three more months? Six more months? Another year?

The collective unreason embodied in the MIAC Report and the DHS screed on so-called "right wing extremists" would be hysterically funny were it not deadly dangerous.

Yet, what are we to do? How do we throw cold water in the faces of frightened anonymous bureaucrats and tell them to "get a grip"? The truth is, we cannot.

Thus these panicked partisans fulfill their own prophecy. They take law-abiding people who are already suspicious of the government's competence and motives and provide evidence that convinces the citizenry that their suspicions are fully justified.

Normally the people should be able to count on the adult supervision in the Congress to prevent a reckless executive branch from compounding its error. Nixon and Clinton come to mind.

But in the present circumstance the hysteria is fully embraced by the Democrat leadership in Congress and by the talking heads of the liberal media.

There ARE NO ADULTS on this playground and the frightened bully has a submachine gun.

I know this because I have seen it before. The same kind of false facts and faulty logic were trumpeted in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Yet this is more dangerous because in Bill Clinton we had a president who was merely cynically using a golden opportunity to slander his opponents with a broad brush to boost his re-election chances.

These people actually BELIEVE this excrement and are preparing to act upon it.

Even our military is not immune from the virus. The Maryland National Guard warning about "threats" from the Tea Parties is, as most current-serving military personnel know, just so much "Force Protection" boiler plate.

But we must ask how it is that the threshhold for "threats" is so low as to incorporate traditional forms of American political speech? What's next? Advisories about roaming gangs of Girl Scouts selling cookies at extortionate prices?

And aren't these the same Democrats who chanted "Bush lied and people died" about faulty WMD intelligence?

At least the truth about WMDs was concealed beyond the borders of a far-off country run by a brutal dictatorship, thereby making verification difficult. These folks have no such excuse.

If the national security apparatus of the United States of America wants to know the philosophical and operational underpinnings of the constitutionalist movement, they need only read a book by the historian Robert Churchill, To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face and the extensive end notes in the documentation at the back of the work.

Yet why do they not take this simple step? Because they fear that what they will find is that the historical legitimacy of the constitutional militia paradigm of armed and active citizenship as the gaurantor of individual liberty would challenge every prejudice and pre-conception thay had and would shake them to the very core.

It is exactly this question of legitimacy that is at the heart of the issue here. It is why they lie. It is why they feign ignorance, why they slander and why they attack.

I submit to you that there is more legitimacy that the Founders would recognize in the simple oath of a soldier;in the practice of the armed citizenry; in the "leave us the hell alone" cry of the home schooler, the entrepreneur, the farmer entangled in redtape, the rancher plagued by BLM environmental nit-wittery and the feeble protest of a ten year old condemned to indentured servitude, chained to the national debt for the rest of his life than in ANY of these so-called "official experts" who take our money in order to lie about us for their own political power.

There is no doubt that in the space of two national election cycles the Democrats have achieved total political power. They believe that this and this alone provides them with the political legitimacy to do to us what they may.

They do not understand that this is supposed to be a constitutional republic and that when democracy turns to tyranny, we STILL get to vote.

When you boil it down, the wages of official lies is future death. The DHS right-wing extremist canard will, if unrebutted, get a whole lot of people very dead in the fullness of time.

These are not innocent lies. They are what is known in military parlance as intelligence preparation of the battlespace. The conflation in the public mind of veterans, political speechmakes and constitutional militia men with mad dog neoNazi terrorists is not just to make us ignorable or to discredit us in the court of public opinion but to kill all of us for what they perceive as a good cause.

They understand this. And so must we.

The lines of future conflict over what sort of nation this will be are being broadly spray-painted with an imprecise aim in day-glo colors for a reason.

Like the Bolsheviks and the the National Socialists before them, these collectivists have long lists of the enemies they intend to deal with. The only question is will the intended victims -- you and me -- sit still and allow them to do it.

On my way to Lexington Oath Keeper's event.

Any northeast Threepers can catch me there.

"Conflatus": Leftist canardists' heads continue to over-conflate, creating public health menace of tiny exploding brains.

WARNING! THIS POST DEALS WITH THE DANGERS OF COLLECTIVIST CONFLATION AND CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF SYSTEMIC RESPONSE TO MASSIVE LOGIC FAILURE!



Mainstream news reporter demonstrates how conflation begins.

Yesterday, I wrote of the public health menace of collectivist conflation as practiced by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Today, we have the latest example of conflation in action, by a sneaky little commie rat bastard at a tea party. You can find it at the wildly misnamed blog Common Dreams here.



Note that the little coward only showed the sign to his cell phone camera for an instant while everybody on the dais had their back turned. How'd he get that perch? News reporter perhaps? One thing is certain, if he continues to conflate at this rate, he will soon find that the internal logical pressure on his brain will build until this happens:

SPLC militia analyst over-conflates during interview on Alabama Public Television, 1999.

Or, if he's a smoker, this:

Photo courtesy of surveillance camera, men's bathroom, Southern Poverty Law Center headquarters, Montgomery, Alabama, illustrating the dangers of over-conflating and smoking at the same time.

In fact, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta today issued a confidential public health advisory to the Secret Service to be on the look-out for this woman:


Janet Napolitano, Director of Homeland Security.

Reuters reports:

The CDC explained that since Napolitano's embracing of her department's report on "Right Wing Extremists," her conflation index has risen to the point where her exploding head might pose a danger to President Obama were she allowed to be in the same room. Future contact between the President and his DHS director will be by phone, according to the President's doctors. Said one on the condition of anonymity: "We want to err on the side of caution. You know the President has a moderate case of this disease himself and we don't want to aggravate it. It does seem to be communicable and Napolitano may have a more virulent strain."

According to a Journal of the American Medical Association article in 1995, "Patient Zero" in the Conflation Pandemic was identified as Morris Dees, of Montgomery, Alabama.

Rumor down in Montgomery County has it that ole Morris' head ain't exploded yet because he never had a real brain to begin with. Just a theory. But the good old boys down there have coined a new word for running your mouth and conflating at the same time: conflatus.

"President Obama Backs Inter-American Arms Treaty" (But since the NRA signed off on it, I'm SURE we have nothing to worry about.)

Note: It is appropriate to roll your eyes and groan at this point.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041602694.html?hpid=topnews

President Obama Backs Inter-American Arms TreatyBy Scott WilsonWashington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 16, 2009; 1:52 PM

MEXICO CITY, April 16--President Obama will announce in a visit here today that he will push the U.S. Senate to ratify an inter-American arms trafficking treaty designed to curb the flow of guns and ammunition to drug cartels and other armed groups in the hemisphere.

Senior administration officials confirmed that he will make the announcement after meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon this afternoon. The meeting is the centerpiece of Obama's first visit to Mexico, whose government is engaged in a broad war against heavily armed drug cartels now threatening the integrity of the state.

"The Obama administration's commitment to seek ratification [of the treaty] is important because stemming the number of illegal firearms which flow into Latin America and the Caribbean is a high priority for the region and addresses a key hemispheric concern relating to people's personal security and well-being," said a senior Obama administration official.

Obama's visit here, the first by a U.S. president to the capital in 13 years, represents a show of support for Calderon, who two years ago became the first Mexican president to so fully deploy the army against drug cartels supplying a enormously lucrative American market.

Since then, more than 10,000 people have died in drug-related violence that is most intense along the U.S.-Mexican border. The Bush administration won approval for a three-year, $1.4 billion counter-narcotics package for Mexico and some Central American countries in June 2008, but the military hardware has been slow in arriving.

Many of the guns used by the drug cartels travel south from the United States. Some assault rifles recovered by Mexican authorities have been traced back to U.S. military bases.

In the days leading up to the president's visit here, senior Obama administration officials said the government was focused on enforcing existing U.S. laws to stop arms smuggling, although Mexican officials have called for more help.

Obama's announcement on the treaty -- formally known as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and other Related Items -- will mark an additional step.

The Clinton administration signed the treaty, better known by its Spanish acronym CIFTA, after the Organization of American States adopted it in 1997. In all, 33 countries in the hemisphere have signed the treaty. The United States is one of four nations that have yet to ratify the convention, although Obama administration officials say the U.S. government has sought to abide by the spirit of the treaty for years.

The treaty requires countries to take a number of steps to reduce the illegal manufacture and trade in guns, ammunition and explosives.

In addition to making illegal the unauthorized manufacture and exporting of firearms, the treaty calls for countries to adopt strict licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to make them easier to trace, and establish a cooperative process for sharing information between national law-enforcement agencies investigating arms smuggling.

Advocates for the treaty have argued that the United States, even if it is trying to follow many of the convention's requirements, is undermining its credibility by failing to ratify it. The treaty was sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1998, but no action has been taken since then.

U.S. gun-rights groups participated as observers in drafting the treaty, which experts say includes language stating that it does not impinge on the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. But U.S. advocates of the treaty say its passage bogged down in the waning days of the Clinton administration, and never emerged as a priority for the Bush administration.

Jorge Chabat, a professor of international studies at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City, said Obama's advocacy for the treaty marks "an important step toward ending the permissiveness in the United States" toward arms trafficking on its border.

"Obviously there is a part of this that is symbolic," Chabat said. "But President Obama has moved to do more against this arms trafficking from the U.S., and this is part of that. There is a great deal of fear behind this that the border violence will enter the United States."

Johanna Mendelson Forman, senior associate of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said "this goes beyond symbolism."

"It sends not only a positive message to Mexico, but also to the region that the United States wants to be a reliable partner in improving security," she said.

The SPLCization of Law Enforcement in the 21st Century: Conflation, moral panic and the "Narrative of 1995."

Southern "Poverty" Law Center headquarters, Montgomery, Alabama. The wages of deliberate conflation ain't penny ante.

"Conflation occurs when the identities of two or more individuals, concepts, or places, sharing some characteristics of one another, become confused until there seems to be only a single identity — the differences appear to become lost. In logic, the practice of treating two distinct concepts as if they were one does often produce error or misunderstanding — but not always — as a fusion of distinct subjects tends to obscure analysis of relationships which are emphasized by contrasts. The result of conflating concepts may give rise to fallacies of ambiguity . . . For example, the word "bat" has at least two meanings: a flying animal, and a piece of sporting equipment (such as a baseball bat or a cricket bat). If these two meanings are not distinguished, the result may be . . .:

All bats are animals.

Some wooden objects are bats.

Therefore, some wooden objects are animals." -- Wikipedia

The professional liars at the Southern Poverty Law Center are experts at conflation. You might say they've made quite a tidy pile of money at it. As you can see from the picture above of their shiny headquarters, there ain't much "poverty" about them. They have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in their bank accounts selling conflation over the years.

Now this, on the face of it, is not uncommon, nor the way the law school-educated flacks at SPLC practice it, is it particularly illegal. That does not mean that it is not dangerous to the Republic or to the individuals and organizations that SPLC chooses to slander. For what we are witnessing today is the institutionalization of their conflation narrative from the highest levels of U.S. law enforcement all the way down to the cop on the beat. SPLC's deliberate twisting of facts and prejudice are now accepted as gospel and are ready, for one example, to be executed at the point of a Missouri highway patrolman's gun (the retraction of the grosser lies of the MIAC report notwithstanding).

If politics is the competition of narratives, then SPLC (and their sister canardists at the ADL) have, with the accession to power of the Obamanoids, swept the field.

The latest proof of this is in the nine page document that the Department of Homeland Security sent to police and sheriff's departments across the country on 7 April, entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." This latest distillation of SPLC conflation from on high is being dissected and loudly protested by others, so I will not duplicate their efforts here.

What I would rather do is show you where this came from, in the words of a scholar who has studied the issue at length.



Meet Professor Robert H. Churchill, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. Professor Churchill is a historian of early America and specializes in the history of the American Revolution, early national political culture, and American political violence. Professor Churchill approached me a few years ago as part of research he was doing on a book, this book:



To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face has just been released by University of Michigan Press. You may find it on-line here. I received my copy only yesterday.

When Churchill approached me about his interest in the philosophical bases of the constitutional militia movement of the Nineties, I was wary. He was, after all, an academic, a species of human known to be not entirely without prejudices when it comes to militias. When I learned that he had been one of the debunkers of Michael Bellesiles' anti-firearm twisting of history with manufactured footnotes entitled "Arming America," I figured maybe he was intellectually honest enough for me to take a chance on.

Certainly the history of our movement had not yet been written. And even after skimming To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face, I must conclude that the comprehensive history I wish for has yet to be penned. Still, Churchill's work is as rigorous, honest and accurate a portrayal as anything I have seen. When I am quoted, I am quoted accurately and in context. There is not one error I have yet spotted, either in particular to me or in general. Churchill accurately identifies the various groups in and around the militia movement, pointing out the fundamental differences between the constitutionalists and the millennialists and certainly gets right our constant struggle against the racist collectivists who sought to turn the movement to their own purposes.

But in addition to the accuracy of his work, his is the first scholarly critique of the SPLC's conflationism and what Churchill calls the "moral panic" of the "Narrative of 1995." A longish, but pertinent, excerpt:

The militia movement has been the subject of at least a dozen books and hundreds of articles, yet it remains one of the most poorly understood political movements of the twentieth century. In the months after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by Timothy McVeigh, civil rights organizations issued at least a dozen published reports on the militia movement, and civil rights activists offered "expert" commentary in hundreds of news stories. Within a year, books by leading figures associated with civil rights organizations, including Morris Dees, Kenneth Stern, and Richard Abanes, offered a coherent narrative of the origin of the movement.

What America learned in these months was that the militia movement was an outgrowth of the racist Right. Civil rights activists portrayed the militias as the armed wing of a much larger "Christian Patriot" movement. They warned that Christian Patriots numbered in the millions and that Christian Patriotism called for restoration of white, Christian, patriarchal domination. The Christian Patriot movement as a whole, and the militias in particular, were antidemocratic, paranoid, virulently anti-semitic, genocidally racist, and brutally violent. Much of this literature suggested that Timothy McVeigh was the movement's highest expression. In this narrative, the militias and the Patriot movement took on the guise of the perfect racist "other," and the threat they posed was best articulated by Morris Dees' apocalyptic vision of a "gathering storm."

This "narrative of 1995" produced by civil rights organizations, coupled with the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing, triggered what Steven Chernak has referred to as a moral panic. Through published reports, their influence over the news coverage of the movement, and testimony at prominent public hearings, leading militia "experts" injected their portrait of the movement into public consciousness and popular culture. In news coverage, popular novels, episodes of Law and Order, and movies such as Arlington Road, the public became well-acquainted with the archetypal militiaman, usually protrayed as warped by racial hatred, obsessed with bizarre conspiracy theories, and hungry for violent retribution.

The moral panic over the "militia menace" strongly resembled previous moral panics over the "communist menace" that had swept the nation in the aftermath of World War I and again in the early 1950s. Less well known than these two Red scares is America's "Brown Scare." In the late 1930s, political activists on the left warned that an array of far right opponents of President Roosevelt and the New Deal . . . constituted a fifth column composed of fascist brownshirts . . . (T)he ensuing moral panic facilitated a campaign of repression waged by the U.S. governemnt against the Far Right during World War II. In 1995-6, the moral panic over the militia movement blossomed into a second American Brown Scare.

The literature produced by the second American Brown Scare has had significant impact on academic analysis of the movement, and this poses a problem for continuing scholarship. The civil rights organizations that produced the narrative of 1995 conceived of themselves as political opponents of the militia movement, and these organizations made the legal suppression of the movement one of their central political objectives. That political objective has systematically shaped their reporting on the movement. Their analyses might serve as a primary source base for an interesting analyis of how the activist Left perceived the Far Right at the turn of the millennium. To use this literature as a primary source base in an analysis of the character of the militia movement itself is to allow the movement's opponents to define it.

Unfortunately, much of the scholarship on the militia movement produced in the last ten years has not broken free from the influence of the narrative of 1995. Too many scholars have relied on the reports and books generated by the Brown Scare as primary evidence of the character of the movement. Others who have avoided this first error have nevertheless allowed the narrative of 1995 to unduly influence their research agendas. Finally, even the best scholarship on militias tends to inappropriately conflate the militia movement with other movements on the far right of American politics and to overstate the influence of millennial thought on militia ideology. . .

The final academic legacy of the Brown Scare is an emphasis on the allegedly close association of militia groups with other far right organizations, such as white supremacist groups, Christian Identity ministries, common-law courts, and tax protest societies. The narrative of 1995 lumped all of these disparate far right groups together in the "Christian Patriot movement," a misguided simplification that has led a number of senior scholars to blur the lines between different groups with quite different worldviews . . .

Since the turn of the millennium, three scholars have begun the task of freeing scholarship of the militia movement from the narrative of 1995. . . As an historian, I hope to contribute to this field an insight gained in the study of other partisan political crises in Ameerican history: in evaluating the ideology of an insurgent movement, one must not allow the movement's partisan allies, much less its partisan enemies, to speak for it. (pp. 7-11)

Indeed. And as important as this principle is in historical scholarship, it is even more vitally important, even deadly important, that such bias not enter into the decision making loop of law enforcement. Yet this is exactly where we are today.

But, you may ask, how do you know that SPLC is writing these MIAC and DHS reports? Why because they have told us. From the Washington Times story yesterday by Audrey Hudson and Eli Lake, "Federal agency warns of radicals on right":

Mark Potok, director of the (SPLC's) intelligence project, said the Homeland Security report, "confirms that white supremacists are interested in the military. There is some concern, and there should be, about returning veterans, one need only think of the example of Timothy McVeigh, who was in the first Iraq war."

Mr. Potok added that he was generally pleased with the report. "Basically, the report tracks fairly closely with what we have been saying for some time now. They mention us a couple of times, though not by name," he said.

Yes, well, isn't that special? The moral panic whipped up by the Narrative of 1995 has now been embraced by the federal government and by many state law enforcement organizations and will guide their decisions in the coming months and years. People can, and have been, killed needlessly over such lies and stupidities.

My suggestion? Arm yourselves with the truth. Buy a copy of Prof. Churchill's book. And after you are done reading it, donate it to your local sheriff or state "fusion center." If left unchallenged, the "Narrative of 1995" could get us all killed.

Mike Vanderboegh
Pinson, AL

It's raining automatic weapons in Alabama!

Folks,

When I first wrote of the Winston County legend of "The Boxcar," people took me to task for making up, in one fellow's words, "an impossible fairy tale." Really? Here is more evidence, if any were needed, of my real world opinion that there are far more weapons (and far more destructive weapons) in the hands of the people than anybody (especially the government) estimates.

Read this story and weep. Why is it that nobody dumps automatic weapons in MY creek?

Mike
III
David Hyche, right, of the ATF and Bibb County Sheriff Keith Hannah show a cache of WWII era weapons found in a creek in Bibb county last Thursday. The ATF is asking the public's for help in finding out the source of the guns.


Alabama road crews discovered World War II era weapons recovered in Bibb County
by Carol Robinson
Birmingham News
April 13, 2009

A cache of World War II-era weapons discovered last week in a Bibb County, Alabama, creek had probably been there less than 24 hours, authorities said today.

David Hyche, resident agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Birmingham office, said he has never encountered anything like this in his 21 years of work.

The firepower, discovered by a state road crew conducting a bridge inspection just north of Centreville late last week, is il­legal to own, still in working condition and probably worth in the hundreds of thousands of dollars

"It's a significant arsenal if it got into the wrong hands," Hyche said.

Bibb County Sheriff Keith Hannah said state road work­ers called his office on Thurs­day after spotting the weap­ons.

Hannah sent a sheriff's dive team into the water, where they found four Japanese ma­chine guns, a Japanese antitank cannon, an Italian ma­chine gun, a Japanese 50mm mortar and a Thompson ma­chine gun, also known as the Tommy Gun, a popular Prohi­bition-era submachine gun.

Praxis: Killflash ARD

Latest Praxis from "The Trainer":

For those who haven't heard of the "Killflash" or "ARD" (Anti-Reflection Device) for their binoculars or riflescopes, this is something you may want to consider when putting the 'finishing touches' on your field gear. They're comprised of a honeycombed lense cover that allows almost 100% light transmission but kills any glare or relfection from the objecive lense that may compromise the position of the person using the scope or binoculars. It won't keep water or dirt out of the lense area, but it will do what it advertises, and that's cut out any reflection. They're also made to be easily removed so you can clean your glass easily. And, should they get anything stuck in the honeycomb, it can be cleaned easily, too. And wonder of wonders, you can even lightly paint the Killflash to match your rifle, though I've not seen the need to do so. I've used the rifle scope version on more than one scope for years now, and have never had an observation impairment or wished I had more light transmission. They're very, very good!

10 years ago you could get Killflash lenses for various rifle scope objective sizes as well as binoculars. The demand wasn't high enough, apparently, because the available sizes almost disappeared. Well, now you can get both.

This is a quality piece of equipment, so they're not cheap. They start at around $40 for a rifle scope and are just under $60 per lense for binoculars. But they're worth it. Especially when you consider what remaining undetected will do for your life expectancy!

Here are two links that provide these weapons and observation device enhancements for your convenience, should you decide they (and your life expectancy) are worth the investment:

http://www.swfa.com/c-819-super-sniper-kill-flashes.aspx

http://quakeinc.com/optic4.html

With "friends" like this, who needs enemas?

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., center, flanked by the committee's ranking Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., left, and Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., looks up at the clock on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 24, 2009, during a hearing. AP Wirephoto.

Meet my congressman, Spencer Bachus. Having trouble telling the difference between Spencer and Barney Frank & Co.? Don't worry, so are all of his constituents.

Spencer recently made headlines when he proclaimed that 17 members of Congress are "socialists." What he neglected to tell you was that he is one of them. Though it was the "socialist" remark which got the headlines, this is the money quote from that story which drew MY attention.

Bachus discussed a number of topics in his speech Thursday morning. He did not give the response some small city officials were hoping for when they asked if he would oppose all gun bans.

Instead, he said, it may be necessary to ban some assault weapons to keep hunting rifles and guns from being outlawed.

He said he is discouraging those who ask him whether they should arm themselves in preparation for economic or government trouble ahead. "I think peaceful, nonviolent protest is the way to go," he said.

He said he also believes it is a threat that the criminals will begin out-gunning the police officers. He said everyone should also be aware of the role weapons are playing in the recent multiple shooting tragedies around the country.

-- "Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama says 17 members of the Congress are socialists," Katherine Bouma, Birmingham News, 10 April 2009.

Now when Spencer said he was willing to give up semi-automatic rifles of military utility (so-called "assault weapons") he already knew that 65 House Democrats had written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder denouncing such a new AWB, saying in part:

"Many of our constituents lawfully own and use these firearms and ammunition magazines that would be affected by a new ban. Indeed, these are commonly owned firearms throughout the country. Law-abiding Americans use these guns for all the same reasons they use any other kind of gun -- competitive shooting, hunting, and defending their homes and families. . .We would actively oppose any effort to reinstate the 1994 ban, or to pass any similar law. We urge you to abandon this initiative and to focus instead on effective law enforcement strategies to enforce our current laws against violent criminals and drug traffickers." -- Letter to Eric Holder, 17 March 2009.

And these are DEMOCRATS. Yet Spencer can't even summon the spine to stand beside Democrats who would defend firearm rights against an administration of their own party.

So you see, Spencer Bachus is a perfect example of why the GOP is today a minority party and should remain a minority party. Personally, I'd prefer if they went the way of the Whigs.

Anybody want to guess what this limp-dick weasel's NRA rating is? With "friends" like this, who needs enemas?

Mike
III