What a .40 S&W Hollow Point bullet does to a block of ballistic gelatin gives a fairly accurate picture of what the same bullet would do when fired into the human body.
Maj. Gen. Jerry Curry USA (ret.) argues that Congress ought to be looking for a serious explanation for such massive ammunition purchases.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S. No one has yet said what the purpose of these purchases is, though we are led to believe that they will be used only in an emergency to counteract and control civil unrest. Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.
What would be the target of these 174, 000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can’t simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows.
Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest? …
If this were only a one time order of ammunition, it could easily be dismissed. But there is a pattern here. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has ordered 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition. Notice that all of these purchases are for the lethal hollow nose bullets. These bullets are not being purchased and stored for squirrel or coyote hunting. This is serious ammunition manufactured to be used for serious purposes.
In the war in Iraq, our military forces expended approximately 70 million rounds per year. In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen. Is this something we and the Congress should be concerned about? What’s the plan that requires so many dead Americans, even during times of civil unrest? …
Shouldn’t Congress hold hearings on why the Administration is stockpiling this ammunition all across the nation? How will it be used; what are the Administration’s plans?
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Anthony Martin points out that the Federal agencies’ explanation that they are buying all these rounds for practicing has a problem.
On Friday the government stated that the hollow point bullets it has procured are “standard issue” and that they are used to train security agents used by each of the various federal agencies. …
When this reporter first heard the government’s explanation for the hollow point bullets, the warning bells immediately rang indicating a cover up. As every gun owner knows if they are serious about developing and maintaining their shooting skills, the type of bullets used for practice at the firing range are normally different from the ammunition one would use when getting the firearm set to be used in the event of a home invasion or other situations in which one’s life is in mortal danger.
Firing range bullets are much less expensive and are not designed for the day to day use of the gun for maximum self protection. One uses the more expensive variety, such as hollow point bullets, for real-life danger.
Thus, immediately this reporter knew that when the government claimed that its agencies had purchased multimillions of rounds of hollow point bullets for “practice and training” at the firing range, something was amiss. Most citizens are likely unaware that such ammo is not used for practice and will accept the government’s explanation at face value. This is in all likelihood what the Feds are counting on.
Of course, it may be that, if you are a federal agency, and you have tax payers paying for your practice ammunition, you aren’t concerned about economizing with cheaper practice ammo.
Even taking practice shooting into account, the ammunition purchases on such a tremendous scale by agencies like Social Security and the Weather Bureau, which don’t even really have a law enforcement function, is still bizarre enough to produce a need for serious questions. Saying that agency security guards needs enough hollow point rounds to shoot every living American five times is just a bit far-fetched.
In this political ad, a variety of retired military and intelligence officers and special forces operatives go after Barack Obama and the Obama Administration for leaking sensitive national security information for political gain.
John O. Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President
Michael A. Walsh, in the New York Post, spills the beans on the damaging leak which has seriously compromised relations between British and American intelligence services.
So that “CIA coup†in Yemen against another al Qaeda underwear bomber turns out to actually have been a joint Saudi-British intelligence operation — which apparently was prematurely terminated thanks to flapping lips on this side of the Atlantic.
So the leak didn’t just blow our chances to nail the notorious bomb designer behind the plot, Ibrahim al-Asiri, and put the life of the double agent in mortal danger for no reason.
It also seriously damaged Langley’s relationship with its foreign counterparts, who now understand that operational security and the lives of their operatives mean nothing to us (not in an election year, anyway).
Which makes it even more important to find out: Who leaked?
The betting starts with former CIA official John Brennan, the White House’s deputy nationalsecurity adviser for counterterrorism. Shortly after details about the operation leaked to the Associated Press via unnamed “officials,†Brennan took to the airwaves to crow publicly about how the wedgie bomber was “no longer a threat to the American people.â€
And the AP admitted it cleared its story with the feds in advance.
The uncharitable immediately saw this naked self-aggrandizement as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to take political credit for something it had almost nothing to do with.
Obama’s EPA riding over the bodies of energy producing companies
Why is the US economy a wreck? Why are we paying sky-high prices at the gasoline pump? We have an administration in Washington that is philosophically bent on treating the productive free market economy the same way a conquering Roman general or invading barbarian horde would treat a foreign territory. The democrat party left views the private sector economy as a victim it is entitled to conquer, rule over, and loot at will.
You couldn’t have a clearer demonstration of the total incomprehension on the part of the left of the role of freedom and the rule of law in making possible economic growth, innovation, and prosperity. When this country elected Barack Obama, it really in essence turned over control of the government to someone with the same economic perspective as Attila the Hun.
The Washington Post recently reported that the federal government in the Age of Obama is planning to extend into the realm of Nature the same kind of policies it pursues in the American economy.
If an avian species succeeds; if it extends its range; if it successfully competes, outbreeds, and even manages to hybridize itself with a rival species, the federal government will intervene on behalf of the loser.
To save the imperiled spotted owl, the Obama administration is moving forward with a controversial plan to shoot barred owls, a rival bird that has shoved its smaller cousin aside.
The plan is the latest federal attempt to protect the northern spotted owl, the passive, one-pound bird that sparked an epic battle over logging in the Pacific Northwest two decades ago.
The government set aside millions of acres of forest to protect the owl, but the bird’s population continues to decline — a 40 percent slide in 25 years.
A plan announced Tuesday would designate habitat considered critical for the bird’s survival, while allowing logging to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and to create jobs. Habitat loss and competition from barred owls are the biggest threats to the spotted owl.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the draft plan “a science-based approach to forestry that restores the health of our lands and wildlife and supports jobs and revenue for local communities.
Barred owls are a well-known and generally admired species of owl, renowned for their distinctive “Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks For You All?” call.
The Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is clearly a typical pampered and decadent left coast inhabitant, too stoned on pot to prosper and too sexually ambiguous to reproduce effectively. The mystery is how they managed to become major democrat party donors.
Americans For Limited Government has launched a Save the Barred Owl! petition site in response to the proposed federal strigicide.
From the Hill: “President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly referring to the Congress as Republican even though their party controls one-half of the unpopular institution.â€
[Emphasis added] Wait till next year when they start calling it a Republican White House.
Occupy Wall Street food servers get sick of the “professional homeless people.”
“They know what they’re doing.”
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
[Emphasis added] What if everyone suddenly got sick of freeloaders?
The Washington Times’ editorial titled: Obama plays hide the Somali, which argues that the Obama administration hid captured Somali Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame on a US warship for two months before presenting him for indictment in Federal Court in New York in an end run around a Congressional ban on the transfer of terrorist detainees to US soil.
Sure didn’t take long for Obama to squander the goodwill from killing bin Laden. I mean, you got the most wanted man in the world, so how do you take that and start to make yourself look like an idiot? Well, let’s have Obama show us how.
So there’s debate about releasing the photos of Osama. I don’t even really care about it. Obama administration could have just said, “We’re not going to release the photos because we don’t feel like it.†and I would have been fine with that. Instead it’s the usual, “If we release the photos, it will make Muslims in the Middle East mad.†Really? There are Muslims in the Middle East who just give us hugs all the time, but if they see a photo of dead Osama they’re suddenly going to become murderous? But they were okay with us killing him — just don’t want to see the photo? I’m sorry, but anyone who would be stirred up to commit murder by an Osama photo are people we should be already hunting down and trying to kill — so stirring them up will just make them easier to find. But it’s hard to believe it will stir them up since so many in the Middle East are just constantly angry all the time at the most moronic things imaginable. When do we just say, “These guys are angry idiots constantly getting enraged by everything, so let’s stop worrying about what will make them angrier lest we catch some of their psychosis trying to think like them.� If we want to end anger in the Middle East, let’s just send the message that being stupid angry is how you get dead. So everyone who is like, “Me see photo! Me want to murder now!†why don’t you learn to count to ten before you end up like Osama. And the Obama administration: Stop trying to coddle the feelings of people who celebrate a mass murder and instead concentrate on the feeling of your own people.
And then there is the changing story of how the assault went down. Now I, like pretty much every American, don’t really care how it went down as long as we got the end result of taking out Osama. The official report could have been, “Osama begged for mercy while we ripped off his leg and beat him to death with it,†and everyone would be like, “Great job, Obama!†But instead we keep getting this changing story about whether Osama was armed or not and whether he used a human shield — things we don’t even really care about — and now they’re like, “We’re done talking about this.†Hey, Obama, no one cares what the details of what happened in the raid, so just stop looking weasely about it.
So just, a couple days later, we go from Obama’s one flash of competency to looking like this probably all happened in spite of him, because, really, what an idiot.
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Jim Treacher says that President Obama is taking his victory lap in a clown car.
It’s been less than 72 hours since President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Special Forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. Since then, his administration has been hard at work screwing the whole thing up.
Let’s start with that speech Sunday night. It was originally announced for 10:30 but didn’t happen until 11:30. By that time, the news Obama was supposed to be breaking had broken already. Not the best start. Presumably he was delayed arguing with his speechwriters about keeping in all the “I,†“Me,†and “Mine.†Everything having to do with this raid was “Iâ€; anything that could be attributed to the Bush administration was “We.†“I gave the order, I did this, I did that.†The hallmark of any great leader is a willingness to bravely take credit for the hard work and sacrifice of others.
Then there’s the official narrative of the raid, which has already gone through more versions than the Star Wars movies. First Bin Laden had a gun; then he didn’t. He hid behind one of his wives, who was killed; wait, no, scratch that, she’s alive and wasn’t his wife. Maybe? Now Leon Panetta says he and President Obama didn’t actually see the whole thing go down, after the White House made a point of releasing that instantly iconic picture of the whole gang watching it go down.
Isn’t it kind of important to get all that stuff right the first time? Personally, I don’t care if Bin Laden was holding a tray of freshly baked cookies and asking our boys if they wanted any tea when they shot him. You’ve heard of suicide by cop? As far as I’m concerned, Osama Bin Laden committed suicide by 9/11. But now the White House just looks like a bunch of bumblers. If you’re not exactly sure what happened, why give details you might have to retract? How in the world do you screw up a win this big? (Amanda Carey has a wrap-up of the inconsistencies in the official story.)
And now the Obama administration is showing decisive leadership on the issue of dithering. “Gee, should we show the pictures of Bin Laden with his Navy SEAL makeover? Won’t that make people mad?†The Abu Ghraib pics were in the public interest; visual evidence of the death of the mastermind of 9/11 isn’t. Keeping us from seeing flag-draped coffins was bad; keeping us from seeing a blood-drenched mass-murderer is good. Now they’ve finally decided not to release the pictures, after Panetta already said they would. I’m sure that’s Obama’s final decision unless he changes his mind. Stay tuned for the latest round of polls.
Usually when governments use misinformation, they use it to make themselves look good. The Obama Administration gets points for originality, insofar as it’s been using disinformation and misinformation to make itself look arbitrary, unlawful, helpless and stupid.
Bookworm Room lists the contradictions in the narrative as it exists.
Stephen Green (better known as Vodkapundit) describes the current administration as “The Gang That Could Shoot Straight — But Not Much Else.”
The plan for killing Osama Bin Laden was perfectly conceived and as perfectly executed as any special forces operation since Israel’s raid on Entebbe. But the follow-through has been strange at best, sometimes bordering on incompetence.
First, there was that weird burial at sea “in accordance with Islamic tradition.†There, the White House managed to annoy most everyone. There are those like me, who thought Bin Laden’s corpse was treated with too much respect, to those in the Islamic world now inflamed because it wasn’t really done properly after all.
Then there was the president’s oddly bloodless speech Sunday night. For almost ten years we’d been trying to get the guy who murdered 3,000 Americans, attacked our military HQ, and ripped the heart out of the New York City skyline. The effort spanned two continents, four or five countries, a Caribbean Navy base, and the persistent efforts of two presidents, the American intelligence community, and the best of the best of our special forces. And yet President Obama sounded as if he were announcing a “worthwhile Canadian initiative.â€
Now the Administration can’t even decide whether or not to release a photo of the body.
