Trump Doesn't Know Shit About Pizza

He doesn't know shit about where to eat pizza or how to eat it. Jon Stewart administers the smackdown:

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Vintage Sniper Match

This sounds like fun:

The Vintage Sniper Rifle Match will feature a two-man team format, with each alternating as shooter and spotter, and firing 10 rounds at both 300 and 600 yards. Match rifles will be original or replica sniper rifles issued through the Korean War. Allowable optics will be original scopes or replicas, along with a few commercial scopes giving essentially the same optical performance.

I'm a long way from being able to compete at that level, but it still would be fun to shoot at those ranges. That Hornady is making match ammunition for all of those calibers is pretty cool, as well.

Starting a War

Those who start wars or who think that a war is a good idea, should really pay attention to history.

Probably the best example is Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

You should click on it to see the full-size. It should be on the walls of all war planners. Napoleon's army invaded Russia on June 24, 1812. Less than two years later, Czar Alexander I and the Russian Army, part of the Sixth Coalition, marched through the streets of Paris.

History is replete with examples of nations which began what they thought would be splendid little wars, only to end out with their nations being bled out and often shattered. Little interventions can turn into wars that will sap one or both sides.

But I don't see the chickenhawk mentality ending anytime soon. And with the increasing robotization of combat, I suspect that things will only get worse.

Rules for Being in a Relationship

What LabRat said. Go read them. If you are in a job that involves counseling people, or if you or a friend are in a kind of sketchy relationship, they are a must read.

(I usually read that blog, but I missed that one, so I have MattG to thank.)

NJ-Delusions of Grandeur

Gov. Christie commandeered a state police helicopter so that he could make an an appearance at his kid's baseball game. And then, because the hike from the landing spot to the game was such a strenuous distance (100 yards), he was driven to the game.

Christie has been slashing state jobs (and taxes for rich people) because of the state's budget woes, but that didn't stop him from whistling up a state helicopter with all of the effort of calling a cab. (You should read the last paragraph of this editorial.)

In other news, Sarah "I'm a real person, just like you" Palin and the Donald dined on pizza, but they must have thought they were in Europe, for they used a knife and fork to eat their slices. Guess nobody briefed them that real Americans use their hands to eat pizza.

Shootie Goodness

Tam shoots the KRISS carbine and submachine gun.



I sort of agree with her that pistol-caliber SMGs are largely obsolete in these days of shorty carbines.

Aghanistan: Call the Bluff and End the Game

It is time to end this game.

In one of his sternest warnings yet concerning civilian casualties, President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that NATO must stop air attacks on Afghan homes immediately, or face “unilateral action” from the Afghan government. ... “If they continue their attacks on our houses, then their presence will change from a force that is fighting against terrorism to a force that is fighting against the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

Fine. Let Karzai fight the war his way. He can take his army and go up against the Taliban. The Afghan Air Force has a handful of Hinds and some transport helos. I've read some press releases about the establishment of Afghan Army artillery schools, but nothing about them using the tubes in a fight.

But if he thinks that he, his army and his government are ready to go it alone, fine. Take him at his word. Let's end this and bring our troops home.

Nuking Pyongyang? Or Helsinki??

This strikes me as a strategy that is not even a quarter-baked:

The Pentagon, trying to create a formal strategy to deter cyberattacks on the United States, plans to issue a new strategy soon declaring that a computer attack from a foreign nation can be considered an act of war that may result in a military response.

Several administration officials, in comments over the past two years, have suggested publicly that any American president could consider a variety of responses — economic sanctions, retaliatory cyberattacks or a military strike — if critical American computer systems were ever attacked.

As the article touches on, how do you know that a government is behind it? Would we really go to war because a bunch of hackers at Qingdao Tech decide that it would be fun to mess with American computer systems? And considering that an attack would probably be routed through a great many computer systems, determining the source of the attack might be difficult.

This strategy is a Potemkin village or, to rip off Gertrude Stein: There is no there, there.

Forget About The Fourth Amendment

It reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Supremes just gutted it some more. They held, in essence, that if a prosecutor is able to persuade a judge to sign a material witness warrant, even if the affidavit from the prosecutors is riddled with lies and half-truths, then the Feds can hold someone even if there was never any real plan to use the arrested person as a witness. A couple of the concurring justices tut-tutted about the brutal treatment that the so-called material witness received at the hands of the FBI and the prison guards, but that, of course, didn't matter a whit to the majority.

Bottom line: If they can find a sufficiently addlepated judge to sign off on a material witness warrant based on a bogus affidavit, they will throw you into a constitutionally-blackened hole.

Movie Review- PC4

Or "Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides".

I saw PC1 and 2. I didn't see PC3, as the consensus from everyone I know who saw it was about the same as ST6 and -10: "This really sucked."

But I digress.

Really, the only reason I can think of to go and see PC4 is to watch Johnny Depp make another pass at the role of Captain Jack Sparrow. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly are not in this one and they are not at all missed. There is a hint of a storyline that sort of is the glue for a series of action sequences. The musical score is overpoweringly loud; whoever set the audio levels in post-production had to be 3/4ths deaf.

In checking the times, PC4 is the shortest of all of the series. I felt that it was still too long. The best comment I overheard on that was when everyone was leaving; some girl said: "How long was that movie, a month?"

Unless you feel a need to see it on the big screen, this one is a rental.

In the previews, there was a trailer for a movie called "Real Steel", which appears to be a movie based on the game "Rock`em, Sock`em Robots". If that sounds incredibly far-fetched, remember that they've gotten four full-length movies out of an anamatronic ride at Disneyland.