Archive for July, 2008
Navy Names Two Virginia Class Submarines
The Navy announced today that the next two Virginia-class attack submarines will be named the USS Minnesota and the USS North Dakota.
The selection of Minnesota, designated SSN 783, honors the state’s citizens and their continued support to our nation’s military. Minnesota has a long tradition of honoring its veterans of wars past and present. The state is proud to be home to 46 Medal of Honor recipients that span from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.
This will be the third ship to bear the state name. The first USS Minnesota, a sailing steam frigate, was commissioned in 1857 and served during the Civil War, remaining in service until her decommissioning in 1898. The second Minnesota was commissioned in 1907. On December 16, 1907 she departed Hampton Roads as one of the 16 battleships of the Great White Fleet sent by President Theodore Roosevelt on a voyage around the world. She continued her service through World War I, and was decommissioned in 1921.
The selection of the North Dakota, designated SSN 784, honors the state’s citizens and veterans and their strong military support and heritage from the Frontier Wars through the Cold War and currently the Global War on Terrorism. Seventeen North Dakotans have received the Medal of Honor for actions in combat,including Master Sgt. Woodrow W. Keeble who posthumously received the Medal of Honor during a White House ceremony on March 3, 2008. This is the second ship to bear the name North Dakota. The first ship, the Delaware-class battleship USS North Dakota , was in service from 1910 through 1923.
I grew up in Minnesota, and it always bothered me that there was no ship named for my state in WW2 or later.
Of course, the Montana residents that care must be about near tears at this point. Both of these states haven’t had ships for quite a while, so maybe a Montana is coming soon.
Chess boxers slug it out
Yes, that says “chess boxers.”
Call to submerge our naval force
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute argues for more subs down under.
Land Warrior wearable war-smartphone survives Iraq baptism
Who would have guessed that real soldiers in a real combat zone would drop the useless crap and use the good stuff?
Gorbachov: The Music Video – Bigger and Russianer
With a deep political subtext.
Friday Gunzookery
Linkzookery, gun blogger style.
US to Use Less Dangerous Cluster Bombs
Less dangerous to non-targets, they mean.
Christian Buttheads
Dean Esmay on the hostage Wafter. I didn’t realize that most Protestant denominations hold the same view about the Body of Christ that Catholics and Orthodox do. I did realize that all these big religious statements seem to be directed at Christianity and Judaism and not so much that other big religion…
DeWalt AR
Nail gun. High rate of fire.
GW arrival in Japan delayed again
George Washington still undergoing repairs from the fire.
The War In The Pacific
Drug subs getting more popular.
Drug Dealers Going Free Under San Francisco Sanctuary Law
The San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department has been shipping underage crack dealers to group homes in an effort to shield them from the feds under the city’s 1989 “City of Refuge” ordinance.
Carnival of Homeschooling #132: Let’s Go To The Ice Cream Parlor!
Always lots of interesting stuff.
LOL that’s the dumbest thing I heard
Lord of the Rings just started selling recently and the sequels were made because of the movies.
The Cassette Tape Skeleton
I actually (still) have many of those cassettes.
I must say that about the biggest mistake I’ve made running this site was the decision to upgrade from Movable Type 3.x to MT4. If you’re running MT 3.x and things are okay, I would strongly recommend against MT4.
I can’t say how much of my trouble is truly MT’s fault and how much is JaguarPC’s fault. MT4 (usually) ran okay at first. Only a few hiccups. Initially the biggest downside was that my antispam plugin wasn’t MT4 compatible, but beyond that I’d hit a few errors that I hadn’t seen before and that was about it. But it got progressively worse and in one day in May it all went to Hades.
Today I hit multiple errors every time I try to publish something. If you try to post comments, you’re also probably hitting errors. If you try to open a page on MO, you’re generating errors. The process I have to go through just to get a post online is quite a joy. And if I want it to show up on the front page there’s another process I have to go through.
An older MT3 installation on the same server runs just fine.
Stick with MT3.
I suspect that my host made some changes to something that don’t play well with MT4. Fortunately, everyone tells me that everything isn’t their fault.
Unfortunately, I’m swamped right now with some other (non-blog) projects and the error-ridden MO is going to have to limp on for the time being.
Lincoln shifts to put air power to Afghanistan
Defense officials said Tuesday that the carrier Abraham Lincoln was moved out of the Persian Gulf and to the Gulf of Oman, shortening the time that the carrier’s strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
One official said the decision reflects both the worsened state of the fight in Afghanistan and improvements in Iraq. Since violence is down in Iraq, U.S. defense leadership believes it is possible to focus some air capabilities away from Iraq and more on Afghanistan.
Also get the carrier out of the constrains of the Arabian Gulf. Though everyone loves to get all alarmed when we send a carrier or two into the Arabian Gulf, it seems unlikely that we’d plan to have one there if we thought the shooting was going to start.
Big Government Plunges Deeper into The Abyss
According to Rasmussen Reports, the Big Government Democrat Congress has charted the lowest approval ratings ever in U.S. history. Only 9 percent–that’s right, just 9 people out of every 100 Americans–approve of the job that the House of Representatives and the Senate are doing.
Which, of course, is not surprising. Congress has proven itself completely inadequate to address the massive problems Americans are facing everyday at the gas pump, at the grocery store, and in their own homes. In fact, Congress’ only “solution” seems to be to find a way to make things worse.
Down from 11% “good” or “excellent” last month. No wonder the Democrats are expected to increase their lead in Congress this fall.
Murdoc is working on another article.
Now I’m looking for a couple gun shops that are either exclusively tactical or at least have a large percentage of their sales in the recreational tactical segment of the market.
I’m interested in talking with them about what they do, how they do it, and what results they’ve had with it. I’m more interested in recreational/sport shooting than in LE/military in this case.
If you own such a shop, know someone who works at one, or have a favorite, please email me with some contact info.
Richmond County Daily Journal editorial on the story about Blackwater USA breaking automatic weapons regulations:
From The Daily Advance of Elizabeth City, July 2:
The federal investigation into a firearms deal involving the Camden County Sheriff’s Office and security contractor Blackwater Worldwide may ultimately bear out what the county’s attorney and a spokeswoman for the company have already claimed about the transaction: that it was legal and neither party did anything criminally wrong.
Yeah, but they still don’t like it.
Iraqi officials insist on withdrawal timetable
Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the U.S. unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.
The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. It came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the U.S. to have some type of timetable for withdrawal.
First, it appears that Iraq is getting more and more confident that their military and police forces will be able to maintain security. They’re probably not too far off base on that, though there’s still quite a ways to go.
Secondly, the “withdrawal” being discussed here is not a withdrawal from Iraq, just from the major urban areas:
The Iraqi proposal stipulates that, once Iraqi forces have resumed security responsibility in all 18 of Iraq’s provinces, U.S.-led forces would then withdraw from all cities in the country.
After that, the country’s security situation would be reviewed every six months, for three to five years, to decide when U.S.-led troops would pull out entirely, al-Adeeb said.
There is nothing earth-shaking about this. In fact, our troops were already beginning to withdraw a bit from day-to-day city life in 2006. That, of course, is when things began going south in a hurry.
Our long-term plan almost certainly involves our troops from pulling back and providing reaction forces and a deterrent to outside forces. Though we would certainly like to lower the troop level, it’s not going to get too low too soon. Nothing I’m seeing about this latest announcement seems to alter that at all.
Last week I posted some pics of Canadian armor in Afghanistan and noted that the tanks had slat armor but the LAVs did not. Got this message from a reader:
The tanks in Afstan are German Army tanks, borrowed to cover the period until the refurbished tanks purchased from the Dutch are delivered. The 2A6s we’ve borrowed have the new anti-mine mods and are otherwise known as the 2A6EM. In effect, the Canadian Army is field-testing the Leo2′s latest mods for the German Army/KMW in return for a low rental fee. In the process, we can confirm which mods we wish for our soon to be delivered Leo2s from the Dutch. And there are probable maintenance benefits we are receiving from KMW. Thus the slat armour on the Leos but not the LAVs.
I read about the deal to buy some Dutch tanks, but I was unaware that the Canadians were using German tanks temporarily. It actually seems to be a reasonable plan.
