“To our friends on the ‘Net, what’s up!” Michael Steele is waving at a tiny video camera at the National Republican Club on Capitol Hill. It’s the Republican Party’s first-ever Tech Summit—a gathering of party leaders, wonks, and tech gurus—and the idea of a simulcast must feel rather exciting.
[…]John Friesch of Madison, Wis., proposes a video game like the Nintendo classic Paper Boy, only now it’s Obama on a bike tossing wads of money. “It’s not inherently political,” he says, but it makes a point. Steele describes an “intranet” that links state parties to the national party. “I want to invite them to dinner,” he says. “I want there to be something on the plate, not that they’ll get indigestion from but [something they will] gobble up and have more of.”
[…]During lunch break, Saul Anuzis is holding court near the entrance. “Why do revolutionaries use Kalashnikovs?” he asks. “Because they won’t jam. It’s not the best gun, but you can throw it in the mud, pick it up, and it still works. This is a revolution.”
Can’t these fuckers get through a single day without comparing themselves to the Taliban or other machine-gun carrying insurgents?
gbear
War is hell, DougJ.
Dave
The idiot is talking about Kalashnikovs when the GOP is using pop-guns, complete with the "BANG!" flag.
gbear
Can I go OT?
Can we start a betting pool as to whether Bush gets arrested as a war criminal and carted off to The Hague when he lands in Canada? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
If I was him, I’d keep any trips out of the country as secret as his trips to Iraq. Rumsfeld just barely made it out of France before the got him a few years ago.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
Is it really a revolution if you were the government not so very long ago, lost that position through your own incompetence, and seek to gain it back by doing exactly the same shit only now you’re using the ‘net to talk about it instead of mimeograph machines?
DougJ
@gbear
Yeah, I liked that too.
DougJ
I can’t be the only one who thinks that Republicans are having a much better time in the minority than they ever had as the majority. What’s in it for them to actually win elections? Nothing — it just ruins the fun!
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@DougJ: What’s in it for them to actually win elections? Nothing—it just ruins the fun!
That, and the pocketsful of money they stuff aside with no fear of consequences, and all the killing they get to do.
TenguPhule
We are all South Africa now.
TenguPhule
No. SATSQ.
It’s time to round up these treasonous assholes and shove them up against a wall.
gbear
Here’s a link to that Bush story. Sorry about that last sentence. I was racing the edit funcion, and edit won. Damn.
Glocksman
I dunno.
Every time I read a new story about Bernie Madoff’s shit causing better people than him to commit suicide and Wall Street shitheels complaining about ‘brain drain’ caused by limiting the pay of TARP accepting company execs, I feel like loading up my Mosin Nagant and ‘reaching out and touching someone’ myself.
That said, as Claire Wolfe once observed, we’re at that awkward stage where you can’t work within the system, yet its too early to just shoot the bastards.
Though if the Wall Streeters have their way, we’ll get past it soon enough.
John Cole
Anyone watching SNL? The Jonas Brothers make me wish I was deaf.
Baldwin is funny, though.
Stuck
This is my rifle
This is my Gun
One is for Fighting
The other for
Godly Reproduction
Except when having
Some Diaper fun
Warren Terra
That’ll bring in the young voters! They’re all wild about video games, and Paperboy is totally State Of The Art! Obviously, where McCain went wrong with his "Pork Invaders" game was that it was adapted from a Space Invaders game dating back to 1978!
I know these people live in a fantasy world where Ronny Reagan is President For Ever, but you’d think they might realize that for the rest of us it hasn’t been 1984 for a while now …
DougJ
@TP
I’m in a very different place than some of you guys. I’m going to be sad when these guys become so irrelevant that I can’t follow their whacky hi-jinks easily anymore.
Yes, I know we’ll all be better off then, but the world will be a more boring place for me.
Wini
@John Cole: Yes, agree, and agree.
Glocksman
@Stuck:
Heh..
Do you think Diaper Dave secretly wants Stormy to change his nappy? :)
Stuck
@Glocksman:
Diaper Dave is on a short leash
The wifey has her cutlery squared away
Scott
Spoken like a guy who’d shoot himself in the leg the first time he picked up a gun.
When can we start calling the Republicans the "Mall Ninja Party"?
Glocksman
Ah..one of the Lorena specials, I see…. :)
clussman
The iSurgent? They must be using Apples. They really are modernizing! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Fern
@gbear:
Not going to happen in Canada. But he may want to think very carefully before traveling in Europe.
Warren Terra
All kidding aside, and I enjoy poking fun at the R’s as much as about anyone, I don’t really agree with this "they’re going to be totally irrelevant!" line. I’ve been a partisan Democrat, and even more strongly a Liberal, forever, but I think it’s really important that we have (at least) two sane, reasonable, responsible parties. At some point the Republicans will be back in the driver’s seat – they could in theory resume total power in just four years – and at present it would appear that their entire party has next to no people I could possibly respect or trust in charge. I’m no saying that I’d disagree with them, because even though I would that’s not my point: they just don’t seem remotely serious about the country. It’s a very scary situation.
Glocksman
@Scott:
I’ve owned both Colt AR’s and Egyptian and Romanian AK’s.
At ranges beyond 100 or so yards, the AR’s are more accurate than almost any AK ever made.
That said, if I were equipping guerrilla fighters with minimal training and education, the AK series wins hands down.
Ease of maintenance, reliability (the AK gas piston system is more reliable than the AR direct gas impingement system), ammo availability, and magazine reliability (aluminum AR mags aren’t as reliable as steel AK mags when used by irregulars), leads this gun nut to throw ‘rah rah USA’ aside and equip my irregulars with AK’s instead of M16A2’s or M4 carbines.
I’m not a big fan of the commies, but the Soviets did know how to manufacture simplified weapons that even the stupidest raw recruit could learn to maintain and use effectively.
DougJ
Weirdly, my spell-check did seem to recognize iSurgent. It reminds me a bit of the Scrutator classic “iTap plus terrorists”.
bago
Mall ninja party FTW!
DougJ
True.
But it’s also funny.
Scott
Glocksman, I ain’t saying they’re bad weapons. I just mean I suspect your average Republican tough-talker would be more likely to shoot himself or his buddies long before they’d have a chance of hitting anyone else.
Carlo
Actually, funny/stupid quotes aside, I think the article DougJ linked to bodes quite well for the GOP. They’re attempting to be open-minded, creative, and inclusive, which can only be a good thing for winning elections. Plus, they actually seem to be aware of the limitations of a purely technology-driven approach ("You need people to build a house. You can’t just brag about how good your tools are.") Whether this is good for the country or not is another matter entirely.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
The Twitter Revolution is a revolution the same way "the War of Ideas at Home" was a war.
Glocksman
@Scott:
True.
I can see Erick Erickson staring down an AR barrel saying ‘what?’ as he pulls the trigger by accident.
Then again I suspect the only person EE with any gun poses a threat to is himself.
DougJ
I tend to think that they’re really bad at being open-minded, creative, and inclusive. What they really need is to put someone smart in charge of the party. They’re all order-takers, anyway. We all know what happens when they go rogue.
DougJ
@Glocksman
I am fascinated by the Soviets’ ability to make good weapons. They were so bad at almost everything else. Why so good at making guns?
Stuck
Sort of like this?
Brick Oven Bill
Re: “It’s not the best gun.”
I agree with glocksman and am not sure what Saul has against AKs. The Military Channel, owned by the New York Times, says they are #1. Accuracy does not require volume. Volume does not require accuracy. 1” at 25 yards is plenty good (Yugo version).
Glocksman
The Soviets weren’t all that good at making precision weapons that required a lot of TLC.
Despite my opening post, if I did decide to go ‘Rambo’ a 91-30 sniper would be the last weapon I chose because other rifles are more accurate.
The M-N 91-30PU is inexpensive when compared to a modern Remington 700 or FN patrol rifle, not necessarily more accurate.
What the Soviets did excel at was weapons design that met minimal standards for a purpose and mass producing that weapon.
Look at the cutaway diagrams and field stripping instructions for the AK and AR weapons for an illustration of this.
The AK is simple to strip and doesn’t have a gas system that requires constant maintenance in adverse environments to keep operational.
The tradeoff for the Soviets was that any individual AK was less accurate due to the sloppier tolerances used in manufacturing compared to a US M16.
Given the design purpose of the AK (massed full auto fire in the assault), this isn’t so much a defect as acceptance that precise fire on the battlefield was the province of dedicated snipers.
OTOH, if I were equipping an elite force of highly trained personnel, I’d probably choose the AR over the AK.
AhabTRuler
Find a good design, make a billion of ’em, then hand them to enough cannon fodder that the John Coles-of-the-Left are required to use tactical nuclear weapons to repulse the first wave over the border.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: “It’s not the best gun.”
I agree with glocksman and am not sure what Saul has against AKs. The Military Channel, owned by the New York Times, says they are #1. Accuracy does not require volume. Volume does not require accuracy. 1” in 25 yards is plenty good (Yugo).
The Other Steve
This is what Republicans dream of being.
Oh wait, that’s me. God I love that scene.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: “It’s not the best gun.”
I agree with glocksman and am not sure what Saul has against AKs. The Military Channel, owned by the New York Times, says they are #1. Accuracy does not require volume. Volume does not require accuracy. 1” in 25 yards is plenty good (Yugo).
Brick Oven Bill
This is odd, I have tried to post a defense of the tank sergeant K’s technical acumen three times and my thought was not posted. Let’s try this.
Brick Oven Bill
Testing AK Yugo.
Glocksman
@Brick Oven Bill:
I have both a M59 and an M59-66 SKS rifle (bought using my 03 FFL).
That said, the only real difference between the Yugo weapons and other ComBloc variants is the integrated GL on the 59-66 and the lack of chromed barrels on both weapons.
Brick Oven Bill
So who knows. DougJ asks:
"I am fascinated by the Soviets’ ability to make good weapons. They were so bad at almost everything else. Why so good at making guns?"
I offer this.
gbear
I offer this.
NutellaonToast
See, this is the Democrats problems. They’re always bringing legislation to a gun fight.
ChrisB
It says a lot that Steele said "What’s up" instead of "Whattup."
Not surprising, though.
b-psycho
@Brick Oven Bill:
LOL…dude might as well have came right out an’ said "she just needs a good deep dicking".
J. Michael Neal
Oh, christ. The whole best conservative movie list is now up at NRO. Quite aside from multiple complete whiffs as to what constitutes a "conservative" movie, they have quality issues. Forrest Gump at #4? 300 at #5? Although, I’ll concede that both are better than Red Dawn.
TenguPhule
When you change governments as often as they do, you soon learn what works.
Kanamit
@J. Michael Neal:
Gotta love #1. Apparently conservatives think that the surveillance state is bad thing. Could have fooled me with their vehement support of wireless wiretaps and the Orwellian PATRIOT Act.
Also, how could a non-Amurkin language film possibly be the best conservative film of all time? Well, besides Triumph of the Will, of course.
Chuck Butcher
@DougJ:
As glocksman noted their military weapons aren’t really anything special other than quite appropriate for abuse, by both elements and users. To understand that you have to look to WWII to get a good understanding of the philosophy behind the engineering. Russia had a lot of issues with producing armaments, start with a broken infrastructure that was inadequate before being broken, horrid weather, horrid conditions in general, horrible battlefield losses meaning lots of inexperienced undertrained soldiers. Accuracy is not an issue when the ordinary citizen has had no prior access to weapons and little training. Accuracy is not an issue when overwhelming advantage in manpower is your only advantage. What is of huge importance is ease of manufacture and near invulnerability to poor care and use.
The fact of Communism did not mean that there were not some very good to genius engineers who could design within some very obvious constraints. It is important to note that designs derived from hard constraints tend to be very good at operating within those constraints. Wishful thinking gets you very bad results and designing with a goal not useful in conditions also does.
The US had the luxury of being able to build something like the M1 Garand and train soldiers to use it. We’ve had the luxury to build some intial failures as well…
This isn’t to say that the Russian can’t build a lovely gun, I own a Russian Built Remington Side by Side Coach Gun that is quite nice. My Norinco SKS is actually pretty accurate at 200yds off hand, it is also quite unimpressive as far as quality of construction and finish goes, but it shoots with the only malfunction being one slam fire due to a projecting primer – my fault. My National Match M1 Garand is vastly superior in fit, finish, accuracy, and firepower. It is also designed with different ideas in mind. As a semi-auto it is capable of getting lead in the air, but it is also intended to fill a role as an aimed fire weapon and eight rounds is a mass fire limitation. The M1, M1A, and the AR15 can be tuned to be awesome aimed fire weapons, forget that with the AK & SKS.
burnspbesq
I find it interesting that Crimson Tide, a film that celebrates the ingenuity and devotion to duty of our military under adverse conditions (as well as being a great piece of mainstream Hollywood action film-making), isn’t on that silly list. Couldn’t be because the hero is of the brown persuasion, could it?
JasonF
Oh, come on. They weren’t that bad. The first set was mediocre; the second one was stronger. Still not great, mind you, but a decent performance. Certainly, SNL has had worse. I don’t think I’d heard more than 30 seconds of Jonas Brothers before tonight; after hearing their performance tonight, I think they’ve got potential to grow into worthwhile artists, and they are already a lot closer than most pop music.
That said, I’d love to see SNL book a band like the Hold Steady or Gaslight Anthem, which is about as big a chance as I can see SNL taking with a musical guest these days.
Robert Sneddon
Re the Avtomat Kalashnikov 1947 — Soldiers in a modern first-world army almost never engage opposition forces with aimed rifle fire over distances greater than fifty metres any more. Facing someone further away than that, they get their heads down and call in fire from a crew-served weapon (heavy MG, mortar, artillery, helo or aircraft bomb-trucks). Anything closer in range is usually engaged reflexively, such as at a checkpoint or during a house clearance where deliberate aimed shots at range are not necessary.
The British Army spent longer than most first-world forces committed to fighting the Battle of the Somme over and over, issuing their squaddies with the heavy but accurate 800 metre-capable FN FAL battle rifle and its overpowered 7.62×51 round when everybody else with some brains had moved to a much lighter 5.56mm 300 metre-capable weapon system.
HeartlandLiberal
Were they able to get through the day without making reference to anal intercourse?
If you follow the right-wing, nut-wing blogs, you will find that is a consistent and constant thread, normally accompanied with accomplishing said intercourse with an act of violence or in a violent manner.
I have always felt it was a most revealing tell about the psychological bent to these warped, sick representatives of humanity.
Like all things Reputhuglican, usually what they are accusing their opponents of us is what they are themselves doing, the sicker the act, the truer the relationship.
It is called projection in the psych lingo.
Chuck Butcher
@Robert Sneddon:
It is quite true that aimed fire is of considerably lower importance in a weapon today than in WWII when it was already shrinking in importance. The M1 was marginally less accurate than the 98 Mauser, but its ability to put high volume aimed fire down at 200-300yds was considerable and a huge advantage over the bolt M98. The power of light machine guns was well demonstrated by the end of the war.
All that said, and acknowledging the usage of crew operated gunnery, aimed fire capability at 300yds for an infantryman is still important and a costly deficit to ignore. A stock M16 is a nasty piece to be on the business end of at 300yds with a capable shooter. Putting a lot of lead in the air is pretty useful, but one aimed round trumps hundreds of unaimed misses. The mistake the British made (and the Germans) was severe and had real costs, but making the same kind of mistake on the other end of the argument is no more sensible. Annecdotally, aimed fire has seen frequent successful use in Iraq and Afghanistan outside sniping. But then, people do brag.
But hell, On Topic – Revolutionary
This is pretty much the "New and Improved" strategy where what is new is the label "new and improved" and improved is the box it comes in. But as I’ve asked before, if you were the GOP what would you do?
Ash Can
I’m starting to wonder how far said fuckers are going to go with their "Resistance! Guns! Revolution!" theme before the guys in black suits and sunglasses start showing up at their play dates.
That’s because you’re not a 12-year-old girl.
bob h
Can’t these fuckers get through a single day without comparing themselves to the Taliban or other machine-gun carrying insurgents?
Because, like the Taliban, they are nihilist fundamentalists who seek to gain power by sowing disarray and collapse. They are birds of a feather.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Because the Russians will sell them to anyone who presents the right amount of cash, hooray, capitalism!
magisterludi
I was watching the PBS Lincoln program… Abe refused to refer to the South as the Confederate States; he called them "insurgents" and "rebels". He refused to give them credibility as a worthy opponent.
With Jeff Sessions of Texas inexplicably lumping the Taliban and the GOP together (I bet he’s on suicide watch) and Rush repeating his desire for the Obama stimulus to fail, it’s like history repeating itself.
Lay you dollars to doughnuts rumblings of secession will rise again as the economy continues to weaken.
headpan
Re-post:
Will you please cover CPAC 2009? pleeeezz?
Reverend Dennis
Usually when a party takes a big electoral beating its members do some introspection and some questioning of their ideas and practices to determine what may have gone wrong. The Republicans skipped this step and are now exulting in their discoveries of Twitter, Facebook and nihilism. It would be sad to witness if they were anything other than a pack of destructive vermin.
headpan
Very odd, the CPAC 2009 link doesn’t work – perhaps a glitch
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=page&page-id=120
SGEW
re: Soviet weapon engineering.
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon, p. 539
Michael D.
We need an Open Thread. A Jewish woman is being denied the right to compete in a tennis tournament in the United Arab Emirates.
Write to Sony Ericsson to tell them to withdraw their sponsorship!
Raenelle
We’re Athens. They’re Sparta. We admire Aristotle; they admire the 300. Of course they love violence, muscles, heavy weaponry, forceful hard bold firm potent men-things. And, of course, they think moderation, compassion, gentleness, thoughtfulness, humility, respect, fair-mindedness, bipartisanship, compromise, open-mindedness are all just synonyms for weakness.
thrashbluegrass
@Michael D.:
Excuse me if I can’t get all hot’n’bothered by an assertion without backing (as in, hyperlinking the damned story, which you just proved you can do).
Seriously, you’re trying to leverage the power of the Internet without using the internet correctly.
DougJ
I think you’re selling Sparta short.
bago
@bob h: Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
ComradeDread
One of many ironies is that despite their Red Dawn fantasies, these folks would probably be the first ones in line to abondon their ideology and apply for the Smithers position if the government ever did turn against them.
Jaffro
Repubs are organizing on Twitter. Check out #hashtags, which aggregates and organizes Twitter tags. The #tcot, Top Conservatives on Twitter, tag is consistently on top of the most popular tags list.
We can’t count on blowing the Repubs out of the water when it comes to new media. While the old guard Repubs are laughably out of touch with the intertubes, the upcoming generation is just as savvy as any group of young-ish people.
Calouste
@J. Michael Neal:
Just had a look at the list. Apparently conservative cinematography didn’t start until 4 A.R. (Annum Ronnium).
DougJ
Wonkette had a surprisingly apt paraphrase of that in the context of PUMAs and Paultards: