Presto Agitato

AK47 vs. M16

That's pretty much the  argument for the 5.56X45 NATO vs. the 7.62X39 Russky: The recoil is much ‘lighter’, allowing for more ammo on target in a given time.  But the M-16 is NOT a machine-gun and shouldn't be used that way for more than a couple seconds.  (Ditto for the AK.)  That's what a SAW (etc.) is for.  Aimed fire (or semi-aimed, in a pinch) is what you want from an assault weapon, and effective ammo is vital.  The 5.56x45 ain't it.  Not all 7.62X39 is, either, due to poor terminal ballistics, but the larger-diameter round still has the advantage.

That said, even with aimed, slow fire, the M-16 is a much more accurate weapon than the AK-47.  The Kalashnikov (that's with an ‘a’, Gunny!) barrel is cheap steel and thus, as you can see in the slow-speed video, flexes horribly when fired.  You need bigger bullets from an AK because they strike wide.

Given a choice, I'd take a modern M-14 (NOT M-16) variant in 6mm caliber or larger.  The standard for that platform is 7.62x51 NATO (equivalent to a .308 Winchester and thus more effective than the 7.62ComBloc), but 6.5mm (e.g., the Creedmoor or the Lapua) is plenty — and plenty accurate, too.  As for price, well, no one beats former commies for bulk, surplus ammo with highly corrosive powder and dubious terminal ballistics.  You do get what you pay for!

Get a Clue

I'm Sorry

At a detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the US military discovered terrorist messages scrawled into the pages of Korans and thus ordered them destroyed.  Someone who is apparently slow of learning decided that this meant the Korans should be burned with garbage.  This was, um, not helpful and has led, once again, to deadly public demonstrations, but it's not as if Muslims don't regularly burn Korans in the course of blowing each other up, so it's not entirely clear what their beef is.  (Entirely halal beef, of course.)  One also wonders why the protesters aren't at least as outraged that the detainees were defacing those Korans, nor that they were sullying the name of Islam with their perverted and unrepresentative interpretations of the holy word.

Kira Davis is, nonetheless, Very Sorry:

I think I'm in love!

Update: ‘Blackiswhite’ offers an alternative approach, which looks good to me.

Proof of Death

Via e-mail, I am informed that there is finally conclusive evidence that Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi are dead.  Yesterday, they both registered as Democrats to vote in Chicago.

Of Leaks and Misdirection

John Kiriakou, a press-whoring ex-CIA ‘agent’ (bureaucrat, actually) has been busted for leaking classified information to the press, exposing actual field agents, lying to the CIA, etc.

John Kiriakou, 47, was charged with four counts that ranged from disclosing classified details about counter-terrorism operations to the press, to lying to the CIA about the origin of sensitive information he published in a book about his career.

Kiriakou, whose CIA career spanned from 1990 to 2004, was depicted in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria as a significant source for articles including a detailed account in the New York Times of the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

What a slime ball.  But this was apparent to everyone except, apparently, the fawning reporters.

Joe Wilson was last seen hiding under his bed.

Quote of the Day: It Looks Tasty, but the Foreign Policy Is Fishy

Ron Paul is a candidate with strong but limited appeal, sort of like anchovies on pizza. — John Hinderaker

 

Quote of the Day: Piss on the Taliban

If they were real Taliban, if they were people who burn down girls’ schools, you know, and do honor rapes, threw acid in people’s faces, [then] I’m not that upset about [Marines] pissing on them, dead or alive. — Bill Maher

Exactly.

Got Time to Bleed Now?

When Jesse Ventura ran for governor of Minnesota, I warned people that, given the evidence of his radio shows and his term as mayor of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, he could be counted on to be a wildly unreliable, fact-averse, say-one-thing-do-another jackass.  I also suggested that his campaign slogan ought to be ‘I ain't got time to read.’

I had no idea.  After the election, he immediately reneged on his campaign promise to ‘return it all’ — that is, to return to the taxpayers all of an existing budget surplus which, as he suddently ‘discovered’ after the election, had already been spent (we got a much smaller rebate) — and then proceeded to build a billion-dollar boondoggle light-rail system, to make splashy libertarian-sounding statements but govern as a nanny-state ‘liberal’, to renege on his promise to push for a concealed-handgun bill (he got his permit and dropped the issue), and to become a petulant, whining, daily embarrassment.  ‘Give him time’, I was told, time and time again.

And then he went off the Truther deep end.  As noted above, Ventura's aversity to any fact contrary to his personal whim is epic; once he's settled on a notion, no matter how stupid and contrary to reality, there's no setting him straight.  The farther from reality he strays and the clearer the facts contra his opinion, the louder he gets. 

Ok, fine, he's a ‘personality’ who requires periodic press attention, and he's made a fairly lucrative career of shooting off his mouth (with or without engaging his brain), but he finally made the mistake of taking his big mouth into a SEAL bar while they were mourning the death of fellow SEAL and CMOH awardee Michael Mansoor:

Oops.

From Abbotabad to Worse

From Christopher Hitchens, this past summer:

I find, however, that I can’t quite share in the sense of jubilation.  I never believed that bin Laden was living in some hideaway ‘in the tribal areas’.  But to learn that he was living in [the military training garrison city] Abbottabad, after Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was discovered in Rawalpindi, is really too much for me.  I don’t feel jubilation.  I feel a personal, ineradicable sense of betrayal.  For ten years, I’ve watched members of my own family taking to the streets, protesting the US military presence in northern Pakistan and the drone strikes etc.  They stood there and prattled on and on about ‘Pakistan’s sovereignty’, and the supposed invasion of it by US forces.

Well, what fucking sovereignty?  What fucking sovereignty were these people ‘protecting’?  It’s bad enough that the Pakistani army lacks sovereignty over the tribal area and can’t control it when the country’s own life depends upon it.  But that bin Laden was living in the Pakistani equivalent of Annapolis, MD…

Ron the Nut, Part II

So let me get this straight:

1. The WikiLeaks releases showed actual governmental malfeasance
2. Nobody really got hurt
3. Bradley Manning is a patriotic hero
4. These brave ‘whistleblowers’ are willing to accept the consequences of their civil disobedience, but those consequences shouldn't include, you know, actual consequences.

I apologize to the dedicated followers of the Reverend Paul, but is this guy all there?  I'd suspect (slightly) premature senility if it weren't for the 1988 video I posted a couple days ago, but the guy simply has no regard for either fact or reason — this in addition to his not-quite-all-there nuttiness.