Thursday, October 26. 2006
 Australia's top Imam explains why women are the cause of rape. LGF.
I will grant him one point: sexy women do elicit erotic thoughts, and they know it, and they do enjoy that magical witchcraft. But where is the Imam's expectation of civilized behavior on the part of Moslem gentlemen... or is that not part of modern Islam? Image presented for scientific purposes only. Middle Eastern scholars claim that this sort of devilish thing is what is hiding under all of those burkhas.
Going around. Mark Foley's plan for his future: To turn over a 
new page. The media's plan for the remainder of the election season, from ABC: Betsy. It isn't funny. France's support of genocide in Rwanda. What a screwed-up country. RTLC. Meanwhile, at home in France, the Intifada continues with 50,000 police (an army?) preparing for violence. More on these disgruntled "youth" at Gateway/ Updated events at No Pasaran. Latest from Jib Jab: The Great Sketch Experiment. Steyn sees western Europe wasting away. (h/t, Daily Pundit) Hostility and paranoia in American Moslems. Moonbattery Why Dems are dangerous with defence: IBD (h/t, Dinocrat) Mitt Romney smacks down obnoxious, arrogant reporter. Good stuff. Sister T Crime pays at the UN. Simon
 The ACORN scandal, and the Foley: the hand of the evil one seems to be behind them all! Wizbang.
More details on the Real Foley story at Gay Patriot. We looked at Soros here.
Steyn at the White House, with some stellar colleagues. Report via Powerline. The NYT is insane not to hire him - but they are insane.
This came in over the transom, but I see it referenced here: FROM A RETIRED SDPD Officer now living in Pennsylvania:
I respectfully submit the following commentary on illegal immigration for
your benefit and consideration. I was not only born and raised in
California, but was a San Diego police officer from the late 60's through
the early 90's. More specifically, I was a police supervisor from 1976 on,
and was head of the police department's anti-gang unit during the latter
70's. There is a saying, "As California goes, so goes the rest of the
country." In the matter of illegal immigration, Pennsylvania's leaders
would better serve its citizens by not following California's lead. It
would be my pleasure to discuss any of these issues with you or answer any questions you may have.
In the mid-70's the City of San Diego ordered all its police officers, me
included, to stop detaining - or even questioning - the illegal aliens we
frequently encountered in the course of our duties. Ignore the issue of
illegal immigration altogether, the directive said. The reason for this new
order? The city had come under ferocious attack for its long-standing,
reasoned policy towards illegal aliens. Along with the threat of lawsuits,
such words as "racism", "xenophobia", "bigotry" and "discrimination" were
being bandied about by shadowy, strangely-aligned illegal alien advocacy
groups from both sides of the border. The common denominator linking these leftists was their alliance with the American Civil Liberties Union. And they all kept to the same script, as they do even today; they would never acknowledge that the only issue on the table was illegal Mexican
immigration. None of the city's leaders at that time - or since then, for
that matter - had the stomach for the vitriolic, in-your-face gutter fight
these belligerents were looking for. Against all common sense, the city put
its head in the sand and capitulated to the inflammatory rhetoric of a few,
loud militants....to the detriment of its own citizens' best interests.
By the late 70's, the unabated flow of illegal aliens into San Diego
resulted in the melt down of its criminal justice system. The jails were
filled beyond capacity, and - because of an ACLU lawsuit - under a court
order to start releasing criminals, including illegal aliens, into the
streets. Prosecutors and the courts were overwhelmed, unable to keep up
with the load. Mexican street gangs comprised of illegal aliens were on the
rise in all parts of the city. The police department responded to this
crisis, in part, by instituting a policy wherein only violent offenders and
felony suspects actually went to jail. Those arrested for misdemeanor
crimes, including illegal aliens with no local address or identification,
were issued "citations" on the spot and told to appear in court at a later
time. That policy, of course, only served to exacerbate the already
sky-rocketing crime rate. And though there was indisputable proof that the root cause of the crisis was illegal immigration, none of the city's
leaders had the personal courage to actually do anything about it for fear
of being tagged "racist" or "bigot". It was around that time San Diegans
were beginning to hear those slurs from a new quarter - the Mexican
Consulate's office.
In the early 80's, San Diego taxpayers learned that Mexican children were
entering the United States daily to attend local public schools. At the end
of the school day, these children would walk across the border and return
to their homes in Mexico. Outrage over the fact California taxpayers were
paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the public education of
foreigners was lost to those now familiar screams of "racism", "bigotry"
and...because they were children..."mean-spiritedness". The local school
boards said it wasn't their problem to address, that laws prevented them
from asking such intrusive questions as, "Who are you and where do you
live?" when enrolling students. And, they added, what harm was there really in educating those poor Mexican kids. They also said they needed a lot more tax money to hire new Spanish-speaking teachers because, inexplicably, more and more of their students didn't speak a word of English.
Continue reading "Illegal Immigration"
The department store is the ancestor of the mall, and of WalMart . From a piece in Washington Monthly: Department stores emerged as the Wal-Marts of their time, known for low prices, convenience, and controversy. When the first stores opened in the 1870s and ’80s, they were cavernous, no-frills storerooms that stocked a hodgepodge of items once available only from specialty merchants. The different merchandise lines were known as “departments.” At these one-stop Victorian shopping destinations, the sales staff might not have known silk from twill, or how to trim a jacquard vest, but the prices were low, and one could pay in cash—an innovation at a time when most retailers required annual credit lines that were extended only to wealthy regular patrons.
Not everyone was a happy customer. Established venders feared being driven out of business, and indeed many Main Street tea merchants, booksellers, crockery stores, and glassware dealers did lose patrons and close shop. Other early critiques were less about cents than sensibility. In 1897, Scribner’s lamented the big stores’ tawdry sales events; banal and homogenous goods; and appeals to customers as crowds, rather than as selective individuals. Mark Twain found maddening the stores’ practice of heaping goods of no practical relation on adjacent tables for customers to simply rummage through. Of particular offense was the sight of an autobiography of President Ulysses S. Grant strewn alongside the rugs and teapots at John Wanamaker’s store in Philadelphia. Clemens, who had co-published the book, blasted Wanamaker as “that unco-pious butter-mouthed Sunday school-slobbering sneak-thief.”
Wednesday, October 25. 2006
Due to my work time schedule change, I will be posting at random times during the day for a while. Sorry, if you counted on my early AM posts. Who needs government? The Czechs seem quite fine without one. Libertarians must love this story at TCS. MSM uninterested in lefty vote fraud. Am. Thinker. Caucasophobia - The Accepted Racism. Gates of Vienna In my opinion, the Dem strategy is to distract from our booming economy, with anything they can think if: Michael Fox, Foley, Iraq - ANYTHING! It could work. Politpundit Not nice. Even if you're very nice to Mr. Putin, he still insists on his interests. What a meanie. Am. Thinker. And what sort of idiot would expect otherwise? Newsweek recants on the global cooling emergency. Remember? It was only a few years ago. The cause was air pollution. The Krugman touch never fails. The Conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid The appealing Mary Carey finds trivial cause to quit CA gubernatorial race. Why? Her Mom jumped off a building. A blog we have somehow missed. NewsBusters. And a new blog from Zimbabwe. h/t, norm Re veils, at Mr. Free market. A quote: When the true believers start rioting because someone has ‘dissed’ their increasingly absurd religion I just wonder what the police response will be? Will they stand idly by, “not wanting to inflame racial tensions further” or will they smash people’s skulls in as the thuggish Metropolitan Police did to old whitie when we went to Parliament Square to protest against the Hunting Bill?
The worst digital cameras, here. (h/t Protein) The new camera gift guide - it's all 10 megapixels now, even for point-and-shoot. Isn't capitalism amazing? And, speaking of capitalism, what is the best way to protect an industry? To permit competition - of course. Look at the City of London: The Economist . (h/t, BusinessPundit)
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet Communist oppression. Gateway has a good remembrance, with a letter.
These three dudes are the modern masters of farce, absurdist and semi-black humor. They all have no trouble making fun of earnest silliness, and all of their humor is dead serious. A friend turned me on to the Brit Tom Sharpe, who has never been afraid of political correctness. But I never knew about his Wilt series, which is on the way to me from Amazon at this moment. I had only read his two which were set in South Africa. The mental hospital staging a Zulu War as a therapeutic theater piece with the patients taking sides with real weapons is just unbelievable. But so are the people with the rubber suit fetishes. Peter de Vries, a long-time editor at The New Yorker and Editor of Poetry magazine, and long-time resident of Westport, CT now, alas, dead, wrote a number of droll, warmly satirical novels, most of them about life in Fairfield County. He is the most religious atheist writer I can think of. Adultery, social climbing, book clubs, alcohol abuse, horny adolescents, existential crises, wonderful misfits, nouveau riches, do-gooders, old-time eccentric grouchy Yankees, wacky preachers, and hearty golfers are the grist for his mill. Favorite De Vries quotes: "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be," and "It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." One more: "I was baptised, but it didn't take." Can you label this genre "comic seriousness"? Carl Hiaasen - bio here - prize-winning Florida journalist and co-songwriter with the late lamented Warren Zevon, has a feel for the dark side of South Florida culture (is there a bright side?) which he illuminates with such characters as Skink, the one-eyed ex-Florida governor who lives in the swamp, eats only road kill, and trusts only vets for medical help. My favorites are Skin Tight, Double Whammy, and Tourist Season.
When asked by Parliament members why be believed so much in America, Tony Blair said: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in, and how many want out."
Tuesday, October 24. 2006
 The results of Australia's gun confiscation and oppressive gun laws: NOTHING... except people can no longer defend themselves.
Some truth about the stem-cell issue. Yes, of course it is being demagogued. What isn't? Here's the science. Shrinkwrapped Hamilton College, post-Churchill, is seeking some sanity. Inside Higher Ed Voter ID in Missouri. Quote from a piece in Opinion Journal: People in the good state of Missouri need photo identification to cash a check, board a plane or apply for food stamps. But the state Supreme Court has ruled that a photo ID requirement to vote is too great a burden on the elderly and the poor. Go figure.
Moose are taking over Yankee-land. A conservation success, but a serious driving hazard. Hunting them is a bit like shooting a Holstein cow in a field. You make sure to kill them near a road: they are heavy. Are you scared yet? Quoted via Junk Science: Obligatory eye-roller: "Global warming and your health" - "Global warming could do more to hurt your health than simply threaten summertime heat stroke, says a public health physician. Although heat related illnesses and deaths will increase with the temperatures, climate change is expected to also attack human health with dirtier air and water, more flood-related accidents and injuries, threats to food supplies, hundreds of millions of environmental refugees, and stress on and possible collapse of many ecosystems that now purify our air and water." (Geological Society of America)
 The challenge of being politically conservative is that one seeks political power to reduce, or devolve, power to the people and to their localities.
In the famous words of Bill Buckley, "The job of conservatives was to stand athwart history, yelling, stop." It seems to be almost impossible to do, practically. And in democratic systems, everything is about the politically practical. It's accidentally built into the DNA of the system, (although giant American federal bureaucracies handing out money and rules never was intended - or even envisioned -by our founders who detested the giant European bureacracies and centralized state systems, as in France). Not everyone respects that heritage of ours. This week, I heard a voter quoted on the radio "Bush is focused on Iraq, but what is he doing to take care of me?" We have all heard such statements, because that attitude is pervasive, and, I believe, enormously destructive. So how do conservatives hold on to power when the population has been trained for two or three generations of Left-tinged rule to reflexively expect "government to fix it" - whatever it may be? There is only one way: to fill the nation with vigorous, optimistic, freedom-oriented, inspiring, courageous talk about the American way of life and the opportunities available to everyone to go out there and try to build whatever life they envision. Reagan knew how to do that. Bush has not the talent, nor the taste, for dramatic rhetoric - and neither did his dad. The subject comes up because of two blog pieces over the past week addressing the "totalitarian" impulses of the Left. We have often written on that topic at Maggie's Farm. Sisu from a piece titled "Simply an affirmation of naked power": The totalitarian impulse runs deep and dark in our species. Curious how often it seems to ooze up through the cracks on the left side of the aisle. We've always distrusted the motives - beyond maintenance of raw power - of our own entrenched "progressive" Massachusetts Senator Edward Ted Kennedy.
Dr. Sanity, from a piece entitled "The Political Left and their Totalitarian Dreams": What interests me is the transformation of the Democratic Party into a tool that every major enemy of this country--from the North Vietnamese, to the Soviets, to the Syrians all the way up to the present day-- has been able to use to advance their objectives at the expense of America. As Feldman notes, this does indeed give new meaning to the term "opposition party".
It also give new clarity to one of the issues that I have talked about on this blog repeatedly, and that is the complete betrayal by the political left in this country of the values and freedoms upon which the U.S. was founded.
I do believe that the Left has totalitarian dreams - a morally lost person can decide that the ends can justify the means if he cares about the "common good," and is certain that he's right. That is referring to the Left: I do not believe that all Dems have similar dreams, but I do think that they almost always favor policies which expand the federal state and its power - always for the "common good", mind you. C.S Lewis, as quoted by Samizdata: Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Power, unlike money, is a zero-sum game. Every incremental increase in federal governmment power and authority over our lives is at the price of a bit of individual and local power and autonomy. And with that price goes a bit of the human spirit and a bit of what makes America unique in the world.
The appropriate age for marriage is eighteen for girls and thirty seven for men. Aristotle
Monday, October 23. 2006
 Why do champagne bubbles follow little chains of bubbles upwards, instead of randomly bubbling? That question has finally been answered, just in time for holiday season. They follow little fibers of dirt and dust. Live Science. Yes, Veuve Clicquot is the official champagne of Maggie's Farm: time to stock up for Halloween.
Men imagine that women are flirting with them, when they aren't. Damn, no wonder I always screw it up. Villainous Company Are we ready for a Mormon leader of the Senate? Of course. Why not? But did you know that Harry Reid is a Mormon? Socially-responsible warfare? Only the Brits could come up with that notion. Jawa. I like the idea of recyclable, lead-free bullets. Obedient German drivers: Blair Religious bias in the law? Must Catholic organizations provide abortion services on their medical plans? NY Sun Welfare reform hasn't preserved the family. That makes it a failure? LA Times. It got people to become independent and proud of themselves. That is success. No govt program will get people to marry. Grammar back in educational fashion? Let's hope so. Althouse. Not that we write complete sentences here - we use telegram style. The truth about activism, from a piece at Classical Values: ...I think it is so important for non-activists to understand that when they are dealing with activists, the apparent issue at hand is never the issue, but is only part of an agenda, and nearly always temporarily expendable. If you are willing to waste a huge amount of time going to the mat over one of these issues, thus forcing the activists to "lose," the issue will be set aside but another one will spring up in its place. Likewise, if you decide to let them have their way on a particular issue in the hope that they'll go away, rest assured that they will not. (Thus, the removal of Robert E. Lee's name from a particular street or building only clears the way for a new campaign to demand the removal of some other dead white slaveholder's name from something, and the process will continue ad infinitum, even after George Washington has long vanished from the dollar bill.)
There are two phrases which drive me nuts. One is "root causes," and the other is "The common good." Expensive consultants have advised the Dems that "the common good" might be a good theme for them. They even imagine that wrapping themselves in a virtuous, John Stuart Mill-sounding cloak could help bring Christians on board. After all, who is against "the common good"? But there are many ways of looking at the common good. I know what the Dems mean by it: they want to increase dependency on the Federal govt, and therefore on them. In fact, our Bird Dog wrote on this subject one week ago: Is a nation a family? We can expect more of this "It takes a village" stuff over the next two years, I believe. As Hillary Clinton now-famously said in 2004: "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that (tax relief) short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." From a piece by Zoll in The Christian Post (h/t, News for Christians): Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America — then repeated the phrase 29 times.
Ned Lamont uses it in his Connecticut Senate race. President Clinton is scheduled to speak on the idea in Washington this week. Bob Casey Jr., Pennsylvania candidate for Senate, put it in the title of his talk at The Catholic University of America — then repeated the phrase 29 times.
The whole thing here.
Nancy Pelosi said this, re the chance she will end up as Speaker (h/t, Driscoll): "The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children."
More insanity from Britain: criminal charges for an error in voluntary recycling. Tangled Web. Good grief. This in a country where cops cannot chase a thief, because the thief might fall down and hurt himself, but dropping an envelope into the container of plastics - that's a Crime Against Humanity! Doubling the width of the Panama Canal. Publius A Soros connection behind the Foley outing? Jawa Riot Season in France to begin with a parade. Gateway The terrorism-welfare connection, in Europe. Instapundit. Makes sense: if you have a job, you don't have time to burn cars. Jeff's excellent temper tantrum: Yes, we know the feeling. More bones found at ground zero. Bare Knuckle. Not to be insensitive, but you have to wonder - did Rove put them there? Captain Ed on the Calame "apology" for publishing the NSA secrets: Instead of acting as Chief Apologist, Calame should take his job a little more seriously in the future. The Times blew an important national-security program just to pump up its anti-Bush credentials, regardless of the fact that the program operated within the law and never abused the information it gathered. Calame dislikes the administration as much as the rest of the people at the New York Times, and in the guise of detached analysis endorsed the publication of a non-story in his zeal to undermine the White House using any means at their disposal. Everyone else knew that this story had no merit; it took the Times and its public editor four months to figure it out. That should tell you everything you need to know about the New York Times.
Michelle extracts these morals from that whole story: Lesson No. 1: Never trust the Times' headlines.
Lesson No. 2: Never trust what's printed under the Times' headlines.
Lesson No. 3: Never trust what comes out of the mouths of the Times' editors and reporters.
Avoid the newspaper of wreckage, and help keep American safe.
Can facts have any impact on the tragedy of Chronic BDS? (Bush Derangement Syndrome). Doubtful. Willisms notes: When the elections in November come and go, and Bush hasn't invoked martial law, suspended the Second Amendment, or had himself crowned king, what are the chances that Vidal and Lear, et al., will have their Emily Litella moment in public and admit they were less-than-correct? No one ever seems to call them on it - and when they do, the Vidals of the world have already lurched on to their next paranoid fixation or faux political outrage. They blog and they comment because this is a cry for help - they know deep inside that there is something wrong with their worldview, and this is why they will never take up arms to save the state from itself. There is still some small functioning part of their brain, that quietly tells them 'it is an odd fascism indeed that lets you blog, comment, own guns, assemble in peace and travel. Er, maybe it isn't fascism, after all?'
The truth shall set ye free, but first it shall make ye miserable. Soren Kirkegaard (h/t, Stumbling)
Sunday, October 22. 2006
Que balas! The campaign against Chavez. Canadians try burning weed in Afghanistan. Soldiers feel effects. Sandmonkey Re the BEEB, Sunday Mail quoted by Powerline: It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism. A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror. It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air. At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians. Scrap The Constitution! It makes it too hard to turn us into France. Am Spectator. Good grief. They never quit. Cindy Sheehan paid by the Kerry campaign? Would not surprise me. Driscoll Quote from David Brooks, via Althouse: ... Oakeshottian conservatism can never prevail in America because the United States was not founded on the basis of custom, but by the assertion of a universal truth — that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain rights. The United States is a creedal nation, and almost every significant movement in American history has been led by people calling upon us to live up to our creed. In many cases, the people making those calls were religious leaders. From Jonathan Edwards to the abolitionists to the civil rights leaders to the people fighting AIDS and genocide in Africa today, religiously motivated people have been active in public life. They have been, in their certainty and their willingness to apply divine truths, fundamentalists — if we want to use Sullivan’s categories. You take those people out of American politics and you don’t have a country left....
Conservatives need to relearn the lessons of Burke and Hayek — that the world is complex, and efforts to transform it will have unintended consequences, most of them bad. But if American conservatives give up their optimism and their universal creed, they will once again be a small sect at the fringes of political life.
 The news piece here.
The YouTube here.
That chair is smart, but is it comfortable?
 Is this contrived, or is it a good idea? A list of the 100 things I want to do before I get too old or die (without impossible fantasies like conducting the New York Symphony, or having some beers with Bob Dylan, or hunting grouse with PJ O'Rourke, or owning a pied a terre in Manhattan, or owning my own G IV, or spending the night with Sharon Stone).
I do have a list of the 7 places I wish to visit or re-visit, next: Scotland for grouse shooting and whiskey tasting, Turkey, Alaska for ptarmigan hunting and to see the tundra, Wales, Sicily, Tuscany, Patagonia for fishing. But a life-time To-Do list? Probably a good idea for someone like me. If it's not on my list, I never get to it. So I will add this to my To-Do list: "Make a lifetime To-Do list." I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. Image: Yes, that is Sharon. Meant to do an image of a Red Grouse, but liked this better.
Editor's Note: This is one of a series of occasional reports from our friend Nathan, who is "making aliyah" this year. For more info about this, and for past postings, click the Aliyah Diary category. I have to say that I am both amused and pleased to see Nathan getting comfortable with firearms. Most Jewish, urban psychoanalysts are not - and that is fact, not stereotype. Aliyah, October 21
Stopping power is a matter of physics: mass times velocity. A .45 caliber has greater stopping power but is slower because of its greater mass. The Berretta, using a .22, is faster, perhaps more accurate, but has less stopping power. The 9 millimeter FN (Fabrique Nationale of Belgium), which I also trained with Friday, is in-between in stopping power.
All this learned within about three hours of my first fire arms training Friday. In fact, the first time I have every shot. Training for the citizen police force I am doing before leaving Ra'anana for Jerusalem next Tuesday. Went with Russell, who, I learn afterwards, was a firearms instructor for the Jewish community police force in South Africa. In a multi-gated, guarded community, his house surrounded by fencing and electronic alarms, his mother was tortured with a blow-torch while his wife and two children were visiting. Thieves got through the back patio, as the maid opened the doors. The torture was gratuitous, just for the helluva it, as they had already robbed the house. After this, Russell and his family moved to Israel.
Back to the .30 caliber shell on my desk.
We train first on the carbine. Brief history for those of us who had never before fired nor held a carbine. Developed in WWII to be a one-handed rifle for paratroopers and such, the carbine can be held one-handed by its fore-shortened stock, or by its barrel. I sense that the whole matter here is stabilizing the weapon so you shoot where you intend. To do so, as in a bicycle, you work at becoming one with the weapon, so that it feels an extension of yourself; you put yourself around the weapon (don't accommodate it to your body's idiosyncracies). Reuven -- a bit potty around midsection, shaved head, sound-proof ear muffs with a whistle hanging from them -- shows five steps to shoot straight. After cocking the first bullet into the chamber: stock to shoulder; right hand on stock, index finger points down the barrel, towards target; left hand cradles the stock; then shifts back to snug the magazine; right cheek firmly nuzzles stock. Then, finger trigger; squeeze.
(Now, I picture most vividly Reuven in profile, whipping the handgun from holster, right elbow 90 degrees gun at eye level, left hand cocks as in-one-motion rotates gun upright, elbow to side, fore finger points to target, then shoots in bursts. He demonstrates repeatedly, lightening moves, pivots 180 degrees to us from side to side. Moves precisely, focused, as if nothing exists but his imaginary fatal target. I want to be at his side, on his side. Always.)
 But, Reuven starts with the Carbine. He is crisp, speaks in bursts, declarative statements. 80% of terrorist attacks in the past year are in this Sharon/Dan region. He will teach us to stop a terrorist, shoot him. This is not target practice, it is not sport, nor we will not qualify for Madgam, the SWAT team. He will teach us to load aim, shoot from standing, kneeling and concealed positions. Russell later tells me that Reuven covers in 3 hours what is generally taught in three days.
The Carbine. Designed by convicted murderer, David M. "Carbine" Williams, for Winchester arms, it was first delivered to the US army in 1942; about six million made and is now on its third generation, the second moving from fixed wooden stock, to foldable. A semi-automatic, it works off a clip, is much lighter than the previous M1 rifle. Effective to 300 yards. Image is of an M4.
Continue reading "Aliyah Diary: Stopping Power"
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