Thursday, December 26, 2013

Reflexive Fire: Free Kindle

Via NC Renegade

 


Jack Murphy is an eight year Army Special Operations veteran who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group.

Growing up in New York, Jack Murphy enlisted in the US Army at age nineteen. Completing Infantry Basic Training, Airborne School, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program, he was assigned to 3rd Ranger Battalion. As a Ranger, he served as an Anti-Tank gunner, Sniper, and Team Leader, and also graduated from Ranger School and Sniper School.

After several deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, he attended the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course and was selected as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant. Over a year was spent training in the Special Forces Qualification Course, including further weapons training, SERE School, language training, and more.

Assigned as the Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group, Murphy was again sent to numerous schools and training courses before being deployed to Iraq. Acting as the senior trainer and adviser to an Iraqi SWAT team, his Special Forces team conducted Direct Action and other missions across Northern Iraq.

Having left the military in 2010, he is now working towards a degree in Political Science at Columbia University. Murphy is the author of Reflexive Fire, Target Deck, the PROMIS series, and numerous non-fiction articles about Weapons, Tactics, Special Operations, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism. He has appeared in documentaries, national television, and syndicated radio.

The Christmas Truce of 1914

Via Angry Mike


Privations, Suffering and Deliberate Cruelties

 http://willisgene.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/rebel-attack2.jpg
 Confederate Attack on Ft. Stedman, March 25, 1865

The official figures given by Secretary Stanton record nearly 26,500 Southern men who died in Northern prisons, and 22,576 Northern men died in Southern prisons.  The former died amid an abundance of food and shelter; the latter died surrounded by wretched poverty and starvation -- many expired due to Grant’s suspension of prisoner exchanges.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

Privations, Suffering and Deliberate Cruelties

“Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee’s men from insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood-poison, gangrene, and death.
Yet the spirits of these brave men seemed to rise as their condition grew more desperate........ 


........it was a harrowing but not uncommon sight to see those hungry men gather the wasted corn from under the feet of half-fed horses, and wash and parch and eat it to satisfy in some measure their craving for food.”  
 --General John B. Gordon, “Reminiscences of the Civil War.”

“Winter poured down its snows and its sleets upon Lee’s shelterless men in the trenches. Some of them burrowed into the earth.  Most of them shivered over the feeble fires kept burning along the lines. Scanty and thin were the garments of these heroes.  Most of them were clad in mere rags.
 
Gaunt famine oppressed them every hour. One quarter of a pound of rancid bacon and a little meal was the daily portion assigned to each man by the rules of the War Department. But even this allowance failed when the railroads broke down and left the bacon and the flour and the mean piled up beside the track in Georgia and the Carolinas.  One-sixth of the daily ration was the allotment for a considerable time, and very often the supply of bacon failed entirely.

At the close of the year, Grant had one hundred and ten thousand men. Lee had sixty-six thousand on his rolls, but this included men on detached duty, leaving him barely forty thousand soldiers to defend the trenches that were then stretched out forty miles in length from the Chickahominy to Hatcher’s Run.” 
 --Henry Alexander White, “Life of Robert E. Lee.”

“When their own soldiers were suffering such hardships as these in the field, the Confederate leaders made every effort to exchange men so that helpless prisoners of war would not suffer in anything like equal measure, offering even to send back prisoners without requiring an equivalent.  Hence, the charges brought against the Confederate government of intentional ill-treatment of prisoners of war are not supported by the facts.

[In the South] the same quantity and quality of rations were given to prisoners and guards; but that variety in food could not be had or transported on the broken-down railway system of a non-manufacturing country, which system could not or did not provide sufficient clothes and food even for the Confederate soldiers in the field.

[The] control of the prisons in the North was turned over by Secretary Stanton and the vindictive and partisan men (who were later responsible also for the crimes of Reconstruction) to the lowest element of an alien population and to Negro guards of a criminal type, and such men as President Lincoln, Seward, McClellan, and the best people in the North were intentionally kept in ignorance of conditions in Northern prisons while officially furnished with stories as to “the deliberate cruelties” practiced in the South.”

(The Women of the South in War Times, Matthew Page Andrews, Norman, Remington Company, 1920, pp. 399-406)

Hallelujah


Good Cops?

Via WRSA

police state lead

All cops are bad – by definition.


Harsh statement? Certainly. It does not make it less true – like an accurate terminal cancer diagnosis. Pretending otherwise doesn’t alter the reality.

Whether the cops themselves are conscious of their badness is immaterial.

No doubt, many cops (as distinct from peace officers) believe in their hearts (and perhaps even their minds) that they are “good men” doing righteous work.

It does not make it so.

The average Nazi functionary was not a frothing fanatic, either. He was a good German with a wife and kids he doted on, who – in his own mind – believed he was doing the right thing.

2005 Ford GT 5.4/550 HP, 6-Speed, 3,439 Miles

 F227 2005 Ford GT  5.4/550 HP, 6-Speed, 3,439 Miles Photo 1

Outwardly similar to the renowned Ford GT40 race cars of the 1960s, the 2005-2006 Ford GT is larger, wider and 3 inches higher than the GT40 for increased passenger comfort, but the similarities are really only as deep as the GT’s voluptuous aluminum skin. Built on an aluminum space-frame chassis, the GT was designed by Camilo Pardo, the head of Ford's "Living Legends" studio, with performance development in the prototype stage by Carroll Shelby, the man who was crucial in making the GT40 the legend it is today.

Power is by a mid-engined supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 rated at 550 horsepower and 500 lb-ft of torque. A Ricardo 6-speed manual transaxle translates that power into exhilarating zero-to-60 times of 3.7 seconds and a top speed near 200 MPH, while Brembo Anti-Lock vented disc brakes provide substantial stopping power. This 2005 Ford GT presents in classic fashion with Midnight Blue Metallic paint and boasts all four options available on the GT: contrasting Le Mans stripes, forged alloy wheels, painted disc brake calipers and a McIntosh sound system.

More @ MECUM

Hospital Bans Christmas Carolers From Singing Religious Songs

Via WiscoDave

christmas

An Augusta hospital has adopted a new policy banning Christmas carolers from singing religious songs in public patient areas.

The Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center announced the new policy Monday according to the Athens-Banner Herald.

Military service veterans, male and female, represent people of all faiths,” hospital spokesman Brian Rothwell said in a statement according to Athens-Banner Herald. “It is out of respect for every faith that The Veterans Administration gives clear guidance on what ‘spiritual care’ is to be given and who is to give it.”

A group of high school students from Augusta’s Alleluia Community School were prevented from singing traditional holiday songs that honor and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ to veterans by the medical center last week.

More @ CBS

Hundreds of black 'young folks' battle cops: Mob runs wild for 90 minutes in mall parking lot

 

Five people are in police custody after hundreds of black rioters went on a rampage in a shopping mall parking lot on Christmas night.

According to police, several “young folks” tried to force their way into the Hollywood River City 14 movie theater in Jacksonville, Fla.

They rushed an off-duty police officer working as a security guard while trying to gain entry without buying tickets.

More with video @ Newsmax

Gov. Haley: Santa Gave Me A Beretta for Christmas

Our family had a wonderful Christmas together! I must have been good Santa gave me a Beretta PX4 Storm.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley got just what she wanted for Christmas — a nice, new handgun.

The Republican governor, who is a fierce advocate of the Second Amendment, revealed on her Facebook page that one of the gifts under her tree was a Beretta, according to South Carolina's The State. 

More @ Newsmax

Illinois law makes flicking cigarette butts a felony, punishable with jail time

Via WiscoDave

http://a2.typepad.com/6a00e54ee06170883401901f0b397a970b-75wi

Dated

Starting next year, Illinois law enforcement will not only be ticketing you for failure to wear a seatbelt or illegal use of a cell phone while driving, they'll also be stopping motorists who flick cigarette butts out their windows.

With former Democrat State Rep. Deb Mell's bill HB 3243 now law, flicking butts will cost you. A first time conviction is a class B misdemeanor with a fine not exceeding $1,500. A second conviction is a class A misdemeanor with a fine not exceeding $1,500.

Third or subsequent convictions will be a class 4 felony, punishable by a fine of $25,000 and imprisonment not less than one year and not more than three years.

SUB 2000 carbine

2013 - The Year of the Lie

 http://sandrarose.com/images19/obama-lord-of-the-lies-550x310.jpg?42e305

According to the Chinese calendar, 2013 was the Year of the Snake. For Americans, however, the year just drawing to a close will be known as the Year of the Lie. Not since the Nixon Administration -- which ended with Richard Nixon resigning in order to avoid being impeached -- has the credibility of a President been held in such low esteem.

Mired in more scandals than fingers and toes on which to count, it seems President Barack Obama and his defenders spent more time this year fibbing to the American people than actually running the executive branch. From the scandals that rocked the IRS, to the disaster that is ObamaCare, the lies emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have indeed come – to coin a phrase – “Fast and Furious.” Herewith, the Top Ten Lies of 2013.

Lie Number 10: “[The debt ceiling] is not something that is a negotiating tool. It’s not leverage.” - President Barack Obama, 12/20/13.

More @ Townhall

Stop pretending Obama is our president: Erik Rush warns that havoc wreaked on America has been deliberate

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When are we going to stop pretending that the individual representing himself as Barack Hussein Obama and currently holding the office of president of the United States is anything other than a foreign-backed, Marxist operative and Islamist whose objectives include the effective destruction of America as we know it?

As I advised my streaming show audience this week, I – or anyone else, for that matter – could crack the façade concerning our president’s motives in seconds on any one of the national television news shows on which I’ve appeared by asking one simple question:

“Why is it that everything – everything – Obama has done has had a detrimental effect on America?” Enumerating them and clarifying said motives would, of course, be child’s play.

Nobody is that stupid, save for those shuffling around in institutions or under lock and key in the care of loved ones.

More @ WND

Christmas in the Bakken Formation: North Dakota city sees growth from fracking industry

 http://wpmedia.business.financialpost.com/2012/07/bakken.jpg?w=620

It’s Christmas in Boomtown.

Williston, N.D., is ground zero in America's energy renaissance, with six-figure salaries the norm and stunning prosperity that extends from the oil and gas derricks to the construction, sales and service industries. But for much of the burgeoning population that has converged on Williston and other towns on the Bakken Formation, Christmas will be spent where the jobs, not the loved ones, are.

Not so for Sherri Knapp and Elijah Moyo, who are reunited this year as Moyo settles in to his lucrative new life as a crane operator. Knapp has traveled north from Florida to join her husband as they make their new home in prosperous Williston.

More @ Fox

Police arrest 72-year-old dementia patient for a five-year-old unpaid SEAT BELT ticket

Via WiscoDave

East Moline Police Chief Victor Moreno defended the actions of his officers

Par for the course.

The family of a 72-year-old dementia patient are furious after police arrested her for a five-year-old unpaid seat belt ticket. 

Police in East Moline, Illinois, went to Carol Fulscher's home to check on her well being Saturday night after a friend called them worried when she didn't hear from the elderly woman. 

They left with Mrs Fulscher in handcuffs and carted her off the jail when they discovered she had an outstanding arrest warrant that was issued because she hadn't paid a 2008 seat belt ticket. 

More with video @ Daily Mail

Federal authorities charge white ‘knockout’ suspect with hate crime

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Federal authorities said Thursday they have arrested and charged a Texas man in connection with the “knockout game,” accusing him of a hate crime for targeting a black man for a vicious street attack.

Most knockout victims that have appeared in news reports have been white, but the Justice Department said in this instance the victim was a 79-year-old black man, and stepped in with federal charges.