Weapons Man

We’ve heard a bit about our criticism of Tarek Hassani, the cowardly cop who, by his own admission, was so pissing-himself terrified of a barking black lab that he had to shoot the dog to get control of himself.

Aimo Lahti with a Suomi KP/31.

A Maine State Prison inmate (r) tries to argue his way out of a segregation unit with the warden (l). PBS.

Ah, wastin’ away again in Margaritaville. In the Florida Keys, a bunch of wastrels got into a machete fight, but apparently were too wasted to connect with the machete.

The SEALs are being driven out, in part, by Navy leaders’ relentless social-issue focus. Not just SEALs either, although the original message, posted to US Naval Institute discussion board by a serving officer, noted that the SEALs have just had their worst retention year ever, with most of the naval special operations element’s junior officers saying no to staying in service. (Officer and enlisted first-term retention tend to show similar trends). Across the Navy’s warfare communities, two-thirds or more of qualified officers are exiting at the six-to-ten-year point, so unhappy with naval service that they leave one third to one half of a pension on the table (military pensions do not vest; there is no benefit for an officer or enlisted service member who leaves before 20 years).

The USA was one of the first nations to adopt a light machine gun, the Benet-Mercie Machine Rifle of 1909. It was a Hotchkiss man-portable, gas-operated, strip-fed gun and was never very reliable, but the sheer novelty of a machine gun that one man could carry and and a crew of two put into action in ordinary military operations carried it into the inventory. (Cycle cavalry picture below from ForgottenWeapons.com).

That’s what’s going on around here today.

OK: here’s the thing. This is supposedly an English-language, high-budget remake of a French anti-American propaganda film, which explains a great deal. The producers? America-hating Frenchmen and Hollywood denizens (same thing, practically).

Cats have a reason to relax in Vermont now. Immigrant communities that resist culinary assimilation as much as they resist other American mores like working for a living, maintaining personal hygiene or respecting others’ personal property, now have access to low-cost goat, the other other white meat.

Marx’s headstone, in Highgate Cemetery, London, where he’s buried with his wife, mistress, and assorted family members.

On our return to Stately Hog Manor, after a day behind enemy lines in the halls of academe, we found a package awaiting us. Among other things it contained two volumes by Maj. Julian S. Hatcher, a trained engineer (an honor graduate of the Naval Academy) and one time head of Army small arms development. While Hatcher’s heyday was long ago (he lived from 1888 to 1963, and served from his transfer from the Navy to the Army in 1910 to medical retirement from the Army in 1946), he wrote works of a kind and quality not much produced today.

Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, has long been focused on taking care of the people he sees as his most important constituents — New Hampshire’s violent criminals.

Chevrolet Silverado, the murder weapon (file photo).

When we were in Afghanistan, If you could sum up the attitude of most Afghans to our presence, it would be gratitude. Sure, the Taliban and Al Qaeda were not especially thrilled to have us running around the countryside, chasing and cuffing and PUC’ing and killing them. But they were a tiny minority of the Afghan population, and a very unpopular minority at that. In 2002, almost every Afghan had a true horror story about Taliban oppression. At first, we did not believe the stories. Sure some militia commander had murdered 300 people. Yeah, right.

We’re guessing the date from the 1955 Chevy we see in one of the role-playing scenes, where Officer Friendly nails a couple of deserving burglars with his .38.

ITEM: Like they protected four women in Southern California from a couple of career criminals and pervs that were not only paroled, but wearing ankle GPS monitors for previously violating their parole.

Just when you think that human depravity has dived to depths unsurpassable, down with the whale droppings on the bottom of the Marianas Trench, some low-life blows and sounds for the unlighted deep in a newly horrifying way.

2LT Sage Santangelo (she’s the one with the baby fat)

The Sokolovsky Automaster was promoted, shortly before its entry into production, as the “Rolls Royce of .45 Auto Pistols.” The pistol was starkly beautiful in an angular, Modernist way. Indeed, the design might be called Brutalist, although we don’t think the Brutalists ever escaped from architecture into industrial design, did they? And frankly, the Sokolovsky was very attractive with its smooth stainless finish. It was a child of the 1980s, when angular industrial design (think DeLorean and Countach) was all the rage. The gun was completely devoid of any external hint of the knobs, buttons, levers, pins  and screws that collectively comprise the human interface, and mechanical axles and pivots, of its contemporaries.

While 20-year-old Tiara Groves was missing in Chicago, friends and family circulated these pictures. When her body was found, bound to a chair, gagged, and partly eaten by vermin, senior Chicago Police officials erased her case. The murderer walks free and no one is looking for him today.