On June 22, 1941, 68 years ago today, Adolf Hitler and his mob of sociopaths demonstrated why you should never believe your own PR and began the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Hitler believed after taking 2 countries without firing a shot and several more using innovative blitzkrieg tactics, his armies were invincible and he had “only to kick in the door” and the Soviet Union would crumble. He forgot that the thing that has protected Russia for millenia is how vast the country is and how harsh it is to invaders once the first snows fall.

By the time his little gambit was done, tens of millions of people would be dead, Germany would be partitioned for an entire generation, and Eastern Europe would take a body blow of oppression that still lingers.

I’ve been in Russia, and every little village has some sort of memorial to the civilian and military cost of the war. Germany is littered with mournful reminders of not only the German dead, but the innocent victims of German nationalism run amuck. France, Poland, Hungary, Austria, and all of the other countries in Europe have similar scars on their history and collective psyches.

For those of you who listen to podcasts, Dan Carlin over at Hardcore History is doing a multi-episode discussion of fighting at the Russian Front. Go, listen. He puts things into a very human perspective.

Went out to Knob Creek and got a couple of hours of range time before it got ungodly hot. One of my friends from work and his son joined me. He was trying out his new AR-15 and his son was tearing it up with a mini-14.

I pretty much just plinked with the mosin and practiced with the pistols. I’m getting better with the .45. My friend shoots a fun fun competition at Open Range and if I can get away I might check it out.

I like going to Knob Creek early in the morning. It doesn’t get crowded for the first couple of hours and you can shoot a while then relax and shoot the bull for a while. Since you pay for the whole day, you don’t worry about the cost of every minute.

I’m going to try to get out shooting a couple of times a month. I also need to do more dry fire and draw practice.

I was sort of invited to go to a rendezvous with some of the black powder crowd and I think I’ll check that out if the opportunity arises.

For some reason, blogger won’t add the text I added to the bottom of the previous post.

I found the graphic at Atomic Nerds.

Hat Tip to Atomic Nerds.

Gave me a much needed chuckle.

Girlie Bear woke up this morning with body aches and a fever. Irish Woman had the same symptoms, and the doctor told her it was a virus going around. All that could be done was Tylenol, fluids, and sleep.

So I gave her some Tylenol, and put her back to bed. She’s feeling a bit better now, so it’ll be back to her routine tomorrow.

My boss let me work from home to take care of her, and I spent the day doing small work on my systems and some planning for next weekend.

My iPhone got updated to 3.0 this afternoon. Meh. It’s nice that I can do a couple of things that I couldn’t do before, but it’s not that big a difference. Guess you have to buy the new phone to get the full effect.

I’m going to skip this version of the iPhone hardware. My contract runs out next summer, and I’ll consider upgrading then. But if my phone still works well, it’ll be hard to part with a few hundred dollars unless there’s a really compelling reason to do so.

Took Girlie Bear to get hunter safety training this weekend. She has been asking to go for a couple of years.

She insisted on taking the test with the adults.

When she went to shoot the air gun she was a bit intimidated. But with a little help from one of the instructors she did all right.

After we got home we got Little Bears air rifle out and practiced. After a few shots she began to consistently hit the target. Today her groupings began to tighten up.

One of the instructors is an NRA youth instructor. We’re going to hook up in July for a day of training on .22s.

Girlie Bear wants to go with me when I go hunting this fall. She’ll watch this year and actvely hunt need supervision after that.

It’ll be nice to have her as a hunting buddy.

find out what it means to me.

All joking aside, I got pointed to the RESPECT Act, which seems to basically make it easier for unions to get people who up to this point have not been eligible for union membership into the unions. Sometimes it would be done through an election to see if the workers want to join the union. Sometimes the union will get its nose under the tentflap in one area, and then demand that it represent another area that does similar work within the same company. No election or choice there.

This would impact me because the company classifies me as a supervisor, even though I don’t actually manage anyone. It’s done mostly to allow the company to pay me a salary that’s comparable with what I would get if I worked in IT at another company.

I work in a heavily union company, and I’m very happy not being in the Union, thank you very much. Union employees have to punch the clock, literally. I have a lot of flexibility in my work schedule, which makes it a lot easier to schedule doctor’s appointments and the like and make up the time in the evening or weekend. Union employees have to schedule sick time or vacation hours to do these kinds of things.

I also like knowing the size of my paycheck every month. Salary is the way to go if you want a stable income to raise a family with. Sometimes hourly pays better, but usually it pays worse. Also, I don’t like the idea of having to pay union dues to get the same benefits I’m getting now, and having “fines”, read extortion money, levied against me by the union if I do something to piss them off.

Also, I like the fact that if my manager thinks I’m doing an outstanding job, then he can reward me with a larger than normal pay raise when that time of year comes around. With a union, everyone gets paid the same, whether they’re a stud or a dirtbag.

So I’m reaching out to my congresscritters and asking them to oppose this legislation. I encourage all of you to do the same.

Why is the Supreme Court of the United States getting mixed up in the Chrysler/Fiat deal? Apparently some dealers and other people effected by Chrysler’s meltdown are not happy about the deal, and are fighting it in court.

That’s all well and good. That’s what the courts are for.

But I thought the Supreme Court was only supposed to get involved in cases with some constitutional bearing. Noone has been able to tell me what constitutional controversy is contained in the sale of Chrysler to Fiat.

If anyone out there can explain it, please get back to me in the comments. If there’s no constitutional issue, then the lower courts should hash it out and leave the Supreme Court to something more important than “I invested in a company and it’s going belly up and I don’t think I’m getting enough money out of the recovery deal”.