D-Day 6th of June.

On this day 76 years ago, the Anglo American armies landed on the French coast of Normandy and stood off a fierce German counter attack.  Then the allies drove forward and crushed the German armies in France, liberated Paris, and pushed into Germany.  This was a turning point in WWII, which had been raging for 5 years and had another year to go.  The Germans kicked off WWII by attacking and defeating Poland.  Then they proceeded to conquer Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. They drove the British into the sea at Dunkirk.  Fortunately the Germans never had the sea power needed to move their army across the English Channel. 

   At Churchill’s insistence, the British and the Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa.  Churchill plainly saw that the British and American civilian populations would not put up with years of wartime privation without fighting the Germans.  Churchill sold his view to Roosevelt and Roosevelt ordered the American Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare and execute Operation Torch, an amphibious landing in North Africa going up against the Germans, under Rommel.  This meant a lot of heavy fighting until Eisenhower and Montgomery surrounded the Germans at the site of ancient Carthage and took them all prisoner.  The Anglo Americans took nearly as many German prisoners as the Russians had taken at Stalingrad, a few weeks before.

  But, the North African victory was something of a sideshow compared with Russians and the Germans who were going head to head with armies of several million men each.  Not until the successful Normandy landing did the Anglo Americans confront the Germans with as big an army as the Russians were doing.

   Fortunately D-Day was a success.  It could have been a terrible failure.  Things were so touchy that Eisenhower, the supreme commander, man with the best view of the operation, prepared a short speech to give in the event that he had to withdraw the troops and accept defeat.  On the day before D-Day the weather was so bad that the Allied nearly canceled the operation.  One brave and sincere weatherman convinced Eisenhower that the weather would lift that night making the landings possible.  As it worked out, the Normandy landings, except Omaha beach, were successful, the troops got ashore, got their armor and artillery ashore and emplaced before the German counter attack got rolling.  Even blood soaked Omaha beach was secured in the end.     

My furnace is still firing, in June.

 June is supposed to be summer.  Must be more of that Global Warming. 

Biden caused the gas price hike, now he says it will go on.

Biden is doing the bidding of the extreme greenies, the ones who want us to live without gasoline, furnace oil, electric power, and natural gas.  I would like to see just one of those greenies spend a winter up here north of Franconia Notch. 

 Biden moved against the oil companies his first day in office.  He canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.  He stopped issuing leases to explore for oil and gas on federal land.  He stopped oil exploration in ANWR, (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a stretch of tundra above the arctic circle) and he jawboned the banks and financial operations to stop financing oil and gas drilling.  These adverse actions cut US oil and gas production by a million barrels a day.  And that is why gasoline prices have been skyrocketing ever since Biden was inaugurated.

 Biden was on TV just this morning saying that high gasoline prices will continue.  He won’t do anything about it.  You Americans just suck it up.   The extreme greenies rule.

 Every American should vote a straight Republican ticket in November.

 

Joe Biden’s anti gun speech this evening.

    1. He wants an assault weapons ban.

There is no difference between an “assault weapon” and any other sort of rifle.  So an “assault weapons ban” will outlaw all rifles.  The anti gun folks are happy with this, the more guns they can ban the better.  Biden claimed that the “assault weapons ban” we had back in the 80’s and 90’s reduced mass shootings and that mass shooting went back up when the “assault weapons bas” was allowed to expire in the ‘00s.  Karl Rove, speaking right after Biden said this was false, the “assault weapons ban” did not reduce mass shooting and when it expired mass shooting did not go up.  Given a choice between Joe Biden and Karl Rove, I will believe Karl Rove.

2. He want “red flag” laws.  These laws permit anyone, parents, girl friends, teachers, doctors, ministers, Scout leaders, anyone to go to a judge and say “So-and-so is acting weird, I think he is a danger to himself or others, and we should confiscate all his guns.  The target/victim does not get a chance to defend himself.  If we think so-and-so is that messed up then we ought to involuntarily commit him to a mental hospital.
3. He wants longer and harder background checks to buy a gun.  I don’t know about this one.  Last time I bought a gun at an auction we all had to wait around for a couple of hours while a guy from Corey’s gun shop telephoned somewhere to get “instant” background checks done.  They allowed that the buyers of black powder guns didn’t have to do background checks
4. He wants to require all gun owners to buy gun safes.  I suppose.  But if this goes thru I have no good place in my house to take a gun safe.  They are BIG, and heavy.
5. He wants to raise the age to buy guns to 21 years old.  This is a judgment call.  My children were responsible enough to buy guns at 18 years old. How about yours?
6. He wants to outlaw “ghost guns”, home made guns with no serial numbers.  This seems like a paperwork thing, lots of paperwork must require the gun serial number.  On the other hand a Dremel will take the serial number off any gun in a few minutes.
7. He wants to outlaw all magazines that hold more than 5 rounds.  This is pretty much all magazines.  The magazine for my 1911 army automatic pistol holds 7 rounds; the magazine for my Ruger 10-22 holds 10 rounds.  My Hi-Standard 22 revolver holds 9 rounds in the cylinder.  My Marlin 30-30 lever action holds 7 rounds in the tubular magazine under the barrel.  I would have to do something about every gun I own.  
8. He wants to revoke the gun manufacturer anti lawyer protection law.  The lawyers were beginning to sue the maker of any gun involved in crime or accidents.  Like suing the car company every time a car was involved in an accident.  No manufacturer has the time or money to fend off all those law suits.  Revoking the gun manufacturer’s protection amounts to putting every gun manufacturer out of business. 

The Brits are having a fine time

It's the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II.  They have the  queen, dressed in light blue, including a hat, looking fine despite her 96 years, standing on the balcony at Buckingham palace.  Later joined by the entire royal family.  The have a parade, redcoats in tall bearskin hats, cavalry wearing fancy helmets and breast plates, marching bands, horse drawn artillery, all putting on a good show.  Yuge crowd of British citizens to see the show.  Everybody, including Her Majesty, having a fine time.  Enormous support for the royal family is demonstrated.   

Long live the queen.

Lying to the FBI should not be a crime

 The FBI are cops.  To find out what is really going down they need to get off their duffs, get out of the office and do some investigating.  They should not be relying on perps telling them the truth.  Right now "Lying to the FBI" gives the cops an easy charge when they don't have the evidence to charge the perp with something real. 

  So I am OK with that DC jury acquitting Sussman, the "lying to the FBI" charge because I don't think the "crime" is legitimate.  Sussman sounds like a no-good-nick but the FBI  has to come up with some real evidence of a real crime. 

AR15 is popular

The Army adopted the AR15 under the designation M16 back during the Viet Nam war.  That’s maybe 60 years ago.  Many men learn to shoot the M16 in the Army and find they like it.  Later, in civilian life, when they want a deer rifle, they tend to buy the AR15 because they have shot it a lot in the army, and liked it.  It’s an easy gun to like, it’s light, and recoil is very low.  The .223 round is powerful enough for deer and it is light, so carrying a good many rounds is easy. 

   What’s the difference between and AR15 and an army M16?  They are basically the same rifle, most parts interchange.  The AR15 is a semi automatic rifle, pulling the trigger gives you one shot.  The M16 used to be fully automatic.  Pull the trigger back and hold it and BRAP, the entire magazine was fired off. The Army decided that this used up too much ammunition, leaving patrols out of ammo after a single brush with the enemy.  So the new M16’s only fire a three round burst instead of the entire magazine.  I suppose we can call this fully automatic.

   Anyhow that is why there are a lot of AR15s and AR15 clones out there.   Guys learned them in the Army and liked them.