By Little Bear

Way up in the cold, cold North, a fox standing in snow that sparkles like crystals
The fox is as still and quiet as the snowy ground
The fur in the fox is like fine silk
His fangs and claws are as sharp as blades
He’s furious and brave like a wolf as he strikes his prey for the day
For once he’s caught his own food
He’s proud as he feels superior
MUNCH! CRUNCH! as he eats his meal
But suddenly out of nowhere he hears something
The fox turns around
He sees a big brown bear
The fox is as scared as a black cat on Halloween
The fox runs as fast as a cheetah
The fox gets in his den and in surprise he sees five other foxes playing and joins them
After a while they all get hungry so they dedided to eat their food that they caught earlier
While they ate, they chatted with the fox
He was so happy he had other foxes to have fun with
After they were all done they were all getting pretty tired
So they all huddled up close together and went happily to sleep and dreamed the happiest, sweetest, and kindest dreams.

This bright spot brought to you by Little Bear.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled grumpiness.

1. A difference of opinion does not constitute an expression of hostility.
2. Just because I don’t care for the Irish vegetable soup that is made with the recipe your Great-Grandmother smuggled out of the old country in her nether regions does not mean I don’t love you.
3. No, seriously, it doesn’t.
4. If you want it done exactly the way you would have done it, then please feel free to do it yourself.
5. When you tell the 12 year old that she’s done enough for one night while she’s putting out the yard waste, you forfeit the right to get snarky with me because the yard waste didn’t get put out on time.
6. My love for you is totally separated from the rest of your family.  It is not an attack on you when I start drinking prior to our visits with them because “I’m not doing this sober”.
7. I’m a big boy.  I can dress myself.  It is neither necessary or desired for you to buy me clothes because I “can’t seem to wear anything that’s not earth tones”.
8. Getting up 5 minutes before the alarm goes off is not being ‘pro-active’, it’s psychotic.
9. I’m not crazy, I’ve just been in a bad mood since 1977.
10. Yes, it’s fall.  Yes, that means football and hunting.  No, I will not be around to help you pick out lace curtain patterns for the house we don’t even own.   Look at it this way, you can decorate our existing house any way you want until February.
11. No, I do not have enough guns.  Do you have enough camera lenses, filters, and tripods?
12. Why is it that when we were dating I was “youthful” and now I’m just “immature”?
13. No, it is not cute when the two year old head butts me in the junk.
14. No, he is not going to die a horrible death because he has a runny nose.
15. No, waking up from a bad dream does not constitute grounds for an emergency room visit for said toddler.
16. You make me ‘lizard happy’.

They’ve gone from kicking the Europeans squarely in the testicles, to wishing they were European.

And how did people like JayG and WeerdBeerd end up in that civil rights wasteland?

I have a couple of cliches for my Republican brethren:

Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched

The election ain’t over until all the ballots are counted, all the challenges are adjudicated, and all the court fights are over.  Yes, the GOP will probably pick up a lot of seats, but don’t start making plans for who gets what committee and who’s going to investigate what until after the election is decided.  Keep your eye on the prize, as I’ve heard someone say, and concentrate on each and every precinct that’s in contention.

Pride goeth before the fall

Remember the Republican Revolution back in ’94?   Yeah, we took the congress, and made Clinton’s remaining time in office a living hell for him, but we still had our heads handed to us in ’96.  That year we ran an ABC (Anybody but Clinton) strategy, and we lost badly.  In 2000 and 2004, we won by the slimmest of margins, mainly because the Democrats couldn’t find a candidate with a pulse.  If we’re looking beyond the mid-terms to 2012, we need to start laying the groundwork now to show that not only are we not Obama, but we have something better for the country than what he’s proposing.  If we make the election about him and his cronies, then all he has to do is improve in the short term to undermine us. If we make it about our policies and our beliefs, then no matter what he does, the voters will know why they should vote for us.

So we need to stop crowing about the ass whooping we are about to deliver upon the Democrats, and stop making American politics about Obama. He’ll mess up his career all on his own.  We need to concentrate on our near term goals of taking back the Congress and reversing the bad legislation of the past two years, and then work on our long term goals of finding a set of good candidates to choose from in 2012.  Don’t bring us the usual gang of idiots who are nominated because it’s their turn.  We want real leadership.  We want someone who can speak his mind and have it strike a chord with voters across the country.  We want someone who will not only be good at winning an election, but also be good at governing.

This is a bit late, but it’s been crazy.

Last Saturday, Girlie Bear accompanied me to Knob Creek for their fall machine gun shoot.  We met a couple of people I work with, including my shooting buddy and his two kids.  This was the first time out for the young ones, so we got there early before the big crowd gathered.

After a very well done rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, a quick safety speech, and a pretty good invocation, the fun began. 

There were automatic weapons of every stripe on the range, from WWI M1917’s to mini-guns.

One drawback this time was that there were no tracers, incendiaries, or explosives allowed.  With no rain for almost two months, they were worried about burning down half the county.  Not that it matter that much during the day shoot.  It was still AWESOME!

The highlight of the morning was the old cannon.  The kids loved to watch how it was loaded, then almost jumped out of their skins when it went off.

When Mr. Fuse is lit, Mr. Cannon is no longer our friend

After watching the first go-round, we wandered over to the gun show.  Like I said last time I went, if you can’t find it at Knob Creek, it’s probably not available.  My shooting buddy found the M1 Garand clips he’s been needing, and we both found good condition Garand slings.  I also found someone selling P-38 can openers, which will be going into our BOB’s and camping gear.  My other friend from work found the 25mm ammunition boxes he wanted.  If I had known he had found them, I probably would have snarfed up a couple myself

The kids bought a few doo-dads. Girlie Bear was a little put out when I told her that buying deactivated 20mm rounds to take to school to show her friends was not a good idea, and neither was the practice grenade, no matter how cool it looked.

She eventually got herself a tee shirt, and seemed happy with it.  Yes, she went all the way to Knob Creek, and all she got was a tee shirt.

Overall, it was a beautiful day.  By the time we left at about 11:30, the crowd was growing, but wasn’t outrageous.  Of course, Knob Creek had everything running like clock work, as usual. 

Girlie Bear says she wants to go back, so I’m going to check this as a success.

I’ve been able to get two new books under my belt lately, which is remarkable.  Reading for me is deliciously selfish, and I normally don’t get to read for more than 15 minutes at a stretch.

First, I read Beyond Exile:  Day by Day Armageddon, by J.L. Bourne.  This story continues the journal of the main character in Day by Day Armageddon as he continues to survive in a world where 99% of humanity has been turned into flesh eating zombies, there is no real government to speak of for the other 1%, and he has to work day in and day out to survive and help others he gathers along the way.  My only quibble is that it plods in places, but I think that’s an artifact of the main character’s day to day recollections of survival, rather than telling a story. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  The author made sure you felt the main character’s budding despair and fatigue of continually having to fight to survive. 

Next came Monster Hunter Vendetta, by Larry Correia.  This is another sequel, this time to Monster Hunter International.  The main character, Owen Pitt, finds himself being hunted down by followers of a cult centered around the Old Ones.  His family and friends are targeted in order to get to him, and Owen starts to become more aware of who he really is.

I’d definitely give this one an A.  Read it after everyone else has gone to bed, and expect to have a late night.  It’s a real page turner.

Both books are the second book in a series, although MHV is more of an independent story with connecting storyline to the pre- and sequels.  Either way, I look forward to reading the next installments in both story lines.

Last night at dinner, Girlie Bear related a couple of stories from school that disturbed us. 

First, her best friend was told to “Get out of line, white girl” at lunch.

Then, Girlie Bear was told to “Hurry it up, white bitch” on the stairs between classes.

She also told about a few kids who were ganged up on by some of the other kids and beaten up.

Irish Woman and I told her, again, about the need for knowing where she was and who was around her at all times (situational awareness), and her need to not take verbal bait and start a fight when someone insults or threatens her.

Then I told her that if someone hits her, she is to defend herself until either the other person stops resisting or a teacher pulls her off of the offender.  Little did I know how far apart my wife and I were on this point.

Irish Woman objected strenuously.  Her point was that if Girlie Bear fought with one of the melanin enhanced members of her school, she was likely to either be beaten up by a bunch of her attacker’s brethren, or will be jumped at a time and place of their choosing. This rocked me back a bit.  Irish Woman is a no-kidding, don’t mess with me, firebrand of a woman.  I’ve seen her face off with a man twice her size, and the bruiser backed down before her redheaded onslaught.

But for the past 30+ years, she’s had it pounded into her head that a Caucasian has no business fighting back against a minority assailant.  She grew up going to pretty segregated private Catholic schools.  The only time she had exposure to desegregated public schools was when her older cousins were bussed to a predominantly black high school and had a lot of problems.  She sincerely believes, due to those experiences and the multiple episodes in Louisville where a Caucasian has fought back and got in trouble for doing it, that Girlie Bear should just take the beating because the consequences of fighting back are worse.  In her opinion, Girlie Bear should take a pounding until she can escape, and then run to a teacher or other adult.

I also come from a pretty vanilla-ish background.  Let’s face it, there were no significant population of African Americans or Latinos in the Dakota’s in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  There were some, but they were usually Air Force transplants who came and went.  If you’d asked what minorities I knew prior to high school, I’d have said Finns and maybe a few Polish.
 
And then I moved to the edge of the Bay Area in California. 

I was the big, dumb hick who didn’t know the social queues.  Within days of me arriving, I had my first fight when I “disrespected” some dumb ass.  Since I learned to fight by having my head handed to me by my older country cousins, I beat him up pretty quickly and barely started breathing hard.  Within a few days, a few of his friends and cousins decided to square off with me and teach me my place.  I took a beating, but I gave as good as I got.  My shirt was bloody, but more than half of it wasn’t mine.  In the end, all of us basically agreed that the fight was over, with no-one laying on the ground bleeding.  Well, almost no-one.  One guy had to be helped away because I’d kicked him square in the kneecap while wearing  a pair of work boots, but he wasn’t outwardly bleeding.  I limped a little, but I could at least walk on my own.  After that, I wasn’t messed with too badly.  My reputation for fighting dirty seemed to keep all but the most aggressive away for the next two years until graduation, plus I became better at knowing which groups to stay away from and how to not inadvertently invite conflict by crossing the local social mores.

I eventually was able to talk to Girlie Bear and tell her my philosophy on fights. 

• Always have good situational awareness.  Know where you are, who’s around you, and what they’re doing as much as you can.
• There are no such things as “Fighting Words”.
• Don’t start fights.  Don’t be sucked in by someone’s trash talking into a situation that becomes a physical confrontation. 
• If confronted, walk away.  If you’re in a place where you can’t walk away, take the verbal abuse silently.
• If attacked, fight as dirty as possible.  Bite, kick, stomp, club, whatever.  No body part is off limits for injuring.  No handy implement is off limits for use as a club.
• Fight until they stop resisting, or until a teacher pulls you off.
• Don’t ever throw the first punch, but always try to throw the last punch.

I didn’t tell her this last one, and I hope I never have to.  Girlie Bear is still very much an innocent on a lot of the ugly things that life contains, and I hope to keep her that way as long as possible.

• Be a peaceful person, but if someone raises a hand to you, take their arm off.

Let’s do a couple of thought experiments:

1. You’re a military truck driver in one of the ‘Stans, hauling gas, beans, and bullets across mountain passes to our troops in Afghanistan. Most of the drivers in your convoy are contracted local drivers, who may or may not be unarmed.  You’re one of a few Americans in the convoy, and you’re carrying your M-4 carbine and basic load of 250 rounds of ammunition.  As you wend your way through the mountains, you’re ambushed, and the convoy is forced to stop and fight for its life.  You unass the truck, and return fire.  Rapidly, your load of ammunition dwindles as you try to drive off the ambushers while you wait for air support and rescue.  Eventually, you’re down to one magazine of ammunition, and you can hear the bad guys maneuvering to close with the convoy and either capture or kill you and the rest of your unit.
2. You’re an infantry soldier, serving along the DMZ in South Korea when Jim Jong Il goes to the Great Worker’s Paradise In The Sky.  In order to cement himself as the new national savior and dictator for life, his son picks a fight with South Korea and the United States, and brings along the Chinese just for kicks and grins.  Instead of spending a year watching the border and partying in the local bars, you get issued ammunition and become part of Pusan Perimeter the Sequel.  Supplies are low, and artillery and air support are hard to come by.  Welcome to an infantry war circa 1949, except it’s in 2010.  You never seem to have enough bullets, but the Chinese and North Koreans never seem to run out of bad guys.
3. You’re a Military Intelligence pogue at a rear area base in Kuwait.  Life sucks, but it’s not too bad.  You’re not issued ammunition, but your commander insists you carry around your M-4 all the time.  Suddenly, trucks at all of the gates to your compound explode, and screaming jihadis are running through the camp, shooting everything that moves.  You don’t have any bullets, but you have your LBE, your helmet, and your M-4, and all your gear-do battle rattle that you picked up at the PX.

In all of these situations, you’re in a world of shit.  American soldiers are trained to always have the best of everything, and plenty of it.  Everything from cold sports drinks and coffee at the AAFES mall to flat screen TV’s in the MWR tent are taken as a given in most units.  Only at the very sharp end of the stick do these luxuries start to disappear, but firepower and ammunition on tap are still considered essentials. 

But when the world falls in, and you can’t have hell rain from the heavens on demand and your ammo pouch feels a little light, what do you do when confronted with a situation that requires you to stand and fight?

If you ask a soldier today, you’ll probably be told it’s time to fix bayonets and fight.  American soldiers have been taught the rudiments of bayonet fighting since Baron von Steuben talked his way onto Washington’s staff.  Yes, it’s a tactic that was born centuries ago, and U.S. Army units haven’t done an organized bayonet charge since the early 1950’s.

But the bayonet is still there as the weapon of last resort for American soldiers.

Recently, the Army announced that due to time constraints bayonet training will be dropped from Army basic training.  I’m assuming it will be kept for Infantry training, but that leaves the majority of soldiers without this skill. 

As you can guess, I think this is a mistake.  Bayonet training not only gives soldiers a skill they can use during worst case scenarios, but it also takes away the fiction that fighting is a real-world analog to video games.  Let’s face it,shooting a rifle at the range is pretty impersonal, as is calling in artillery or setting mines.  When you practice butt strokes, thrusts, and blocks, you’re looking at another soldier that’s almost at nose picking distance from you.  Do it often enough, and you might start to take all that GI Joe stuff seriously. 

Also, it’s good physical exercise.  Think you’re in good shape?  Take a 20 pound dummy rifle with a sharp bayonet on the end of it, swing it around for an hour, then run a 2 mile bayonet course.  I was in what was probably the best shape of my life, and I was laying in a pool of sweat after doing that.

The Army needs to either find time in the training schedule to put bayonet training back in, extend the schedule to accommodate it and other basic combat skills, or take a lot of the feel-good sensitivity training that has crept in over the past couple of decades.

The other day, we were all pointed to a website that had a nice video discussing proper ways to discuss my employer on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.  We’re all supposed to be positive about the company, and not do anything that will bring discredit to the company.  Basically, the message was “Don’t blog about the company.  Let us control the message”.

Also, we were all warned that use of company time and/or  equipment to connect to social networks was a fireable offense.

So I’m blogging about it.  🙂

So a Polish Army bear walks into a bar…..

Wojtek, the smiling warrior bear, is getting a memorial in Edinburgh, Scotland.

During the Second World War, he was the mascot of a polish unit which saw hard fighting in Italy.  After the war, he came to Scotland, and eventually lived out his life in the Edinburgh zoo.  Imagine facing a unit in battle that cavorted with bears for fun!

I can just see the German scout reporting to his commander:

Mein Kommandant, the Polen have several gun emplacements along this ridge, and they appear to be well defended.


Well, that’s nothing to worry about.


Ja, mein Kommandant, but they have a frigging bear! 

 Gott in Himmel!  I’m not facing interlocking artillery pieces that are guarded by a verdammte bear!

It’s good to see a Polish cousin finally get his recognition!

H/T to BRM for the tipoff!