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Stolen from Horses and Bayonets Tumblr.
Sometimes I love the internets.
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
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Stolen from Horses and Bayonets Tumblr.
Sometimes I love the internets.
Comments are closed.
[…] Balloon Juice. October 23, 2012 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: First Looks | Bookmark this post Trek […]
Yutsano
That is just win.
Although if they had thought about it they could have Photoshopped the horses white. For moar prophecy.
Hill Dweller
The Horses and Bayonets tumblr is tremendous.
As an aside, the NYT has a brutal editorial on Willard’s performance in the debate.
Charlie Pierce seems simultaneously furious over Willard’s ridiculous act during the debate and disillusioned he’s this close to the Presidency.
I’m thinking Willard’s horrible debate might just hurt him. He was utterly clueless during a foreign policy debate, which should scare some people.
Revanch
I love how Romney thought it would be a good idea to measure the modern navy against that of a fucking century ago and that this would resonate somehow. It’s the kind of stupid factoid that keyboard kommandos think is a killer line, even though it has little to do with actual military realities.
It fails politically on two levels because nobody remembers the composition of the navy in 1916, let alone believes that Obama singlehandedly decommission half the fleet in four years.
Good debate prep on team Obama’s part to have a strong response to that ready to go. Romney got some righteous condescension.
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano: BTW, I looked & there were many unicorns but not any ‘Friendship Is Magic’ pics there. Somebody should be taking care of that, yes?
Comrade Mary
The CBC’s report: Obama scored points, but Romney demonstrated that he would be a calm and competent Commander in Chief, not a reckless one. I despair.
piratedan
just as matter of perspective I guess… on our side…. we see Romney as a person who is so driven to be President, he’ll say anything to get the job. We see a man of privilege who’s led a storybook life. his business consists of making a profit without producing anything by taking advantage of financial bookkeeping tricks that allow him to leverage cash out of existing businesses and leaving husks in their place while enriching himself and robbing people who invested in that company with very little to show for it. he’s a personal coward who has no convictions other than to be president and if that means revoking past beliefs, so be it and disavowing himself of his past. He has an understanding of the world that mimics an episode of Robyn Leach’s world of the rich and famous and a cliff notes version of the Reagan history section over in wiki. on the whole, we loathe him. we see him as a strawman who will bend on the whim of whoever speaks last to him.
The other side sees Obama as someone who’s never held a real job. The have no concept of what a community organizer does, they believe that its nothing more than someone who submits paperwork to grift cash from the government to support welfare moms and their drug addict kids. As such, he doesn’t speak to their experience because they have no connection to him other than seeing a man who is not like them, doesn’t understand them and therefore doesn’t understand America because America is only small towns filled with hard working white people who all own a business or work for a benevolent employer who sponsors the local sports teams. The think America primarily consists of people who get family portraits at your local Owings Mills photographers. There is no way that they can ever trust him because they never knew anyone like him, until their collective teams got beat at State level when they came up against athletic, hungry poor kids that wanted it more and beat them.
They’re not fond of Mitt either, but he’s the only guy in town still selling cars and they don’t want to listen to a black guy telling them that they should take the bus because its in everyone’s best interest
amk
@Comrade Mary: nyt editorial.. Pretty brutal on mittbot.
spellinge
I just finished watching it (Tivo’d because of the Giants game). My main question is: did Glenn Greenwald’s head explode? Not that I’d blame him in this particular circumstance….
James E. Powell
@piratedan:
That’s pretty good, piratedan, but you are leaving out the fire-breathing “get that [insert racial epithet] out of our White House!” voting bloc that not only sustains the Romney campaign, but allows him to take just about any position at any time because that voting bloc only cares about one thing.
This group isn’t cold to Obama because he is “the other.” They hate him with the heat of a thousand suns because his existence, and the fact that he is president, guts the white supremacist worldview that is their most cherished belief.
Debbie(Aussie)
I don’t know how to explain my feelings regarding the current political winds as they blow in th US. Am not a fan of either, but , it should go without saying that Rmoney would be an unMITigated disaster, especially for you, but also the rest of us worldly citizens. Why is it necessary for anyone to state that that the US is the one indispensable nation. Why can your fellow country persons not Grow Up?
mdblanche
Call me a hopeless optimist, but I think this debate could hit Mitt where it hurts. Like the first debate the Rombot was running Moderate Mitt 2.0.1, but this time the President fought back. The base can go along with Moderate Mitt if he’s combative, but he looked like he had a staph infection and was just giving in to the more assertive near usurper when he “agreed” with him. If any debate performance can demoralize the conservative base, that was it.
amk
BBC poll: Rest of world favours Obama
An average of 50% favoured Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries.
Only Pakistan’s respondents said they would prefer to see Mr Romney win November’s election.
France was the most strongly pro-Obama (72%). Mr Obama’s ancestral homeland of Kenya (18%) was the most pro-Romney. {!!}
Hill Dweller
@Comrade Mary: Willard was utterly clueless about foreign policy. He literally has no economic nor foreign policy plans. How the f**k can a news organization deny that?
Again, I think this debate will hurt Willard. He is a confidence man, but in that debate he looked beaten and haggard. Beaten and haggard are devastating for a charlatan like Willard.
hamletta
I have a friend who is active-duty cavalry. We pinned him against the wall at his wedding when he was in full regalia and asked all kinda questions.
He is not unfamiliar with horses, but no, it’s not part of their thing.
Another Halocene Human
@amk: Mr Obama’s ancestral homeland of Kenya (18%) was the most pro-Romney. {!!}
He’s worse than Romney/Bush, he sold us out!
Jinchi
Did anyone else notice that Mitt Romney apparently thinks Iran is a landlocked country?
Michael
I think the horses and bayonettes line was obviously planned, for an attack Miitster and the Right have televised was coming for weeks. May have even snagged it from LGM.
But I think the line about how we have boats that go under water, they’re called submarines may have been off the cuff. Right after he says it, Obama looks down and just for a split second the faintest hint of a smile comes across his face before he regains his composure. It’s a fantastic moment
trnc
The thing that surprised me the most is that I would have expected Mitt to announce BEFORE the debate that he had joined the Obama campaign.
R-Jud
I like how we have potential meme convergence here: Bring on the dancing horses and bayonets!
Warren Terra
@Jinchi: The funny thing about the “Syria is Iran’s Route To The Sea” line is that, not only is it bad geography, the only way it could conceivably make sense is that Iran’s oil industry could benefit from a pipeline to the Mediterranean, making sales to Europe easier and more profitable. And yet – not only would such a pipeline have to cross Iraq (or Turkey), in doing so it would weaken Iran strategically. At present, Iran dominates the straits of Hormuz and can block oil exports from the Persian Gulf. If there were such a pipeline, Iran would lose this ability, because it would inevitably carry Iraqi oil, possibly oil from other gulf states.
hells littlest angel
But we need to build some ironclads to give those cavalrymen some naval support.
Dream On
This is the election in a nutshell: As Big Bird faced binders of horses and bayonets, he bullied the moderator to let him finish.
That is all that happened, and all we will ever need to know.
sm*t cl*de
But I think the line about how we have boats that go under water, they’re called submarines may have been off the cuff.
Can you open the windows if there’s a fire?
Dream On
@Jinchi: Wow – the ‘route to the sea’ pitch is one Romney has been tipping since the primaries. Syria was landlocked then, and remains so now. With Iran’s hundreds of miles of coastline – they have no trouble finding a “route to the sea.” The geography has not changed. And I am surprised Romney hasn’t noticed.
Warren Terra
@Dream On:
Syria is not landlocked, and never has been. But Iran has 1400 miles of coastline, and has no border with Syria.
Jay C
@Jinchi:
And if Syria is indeed “Iran’s only ally in the Arab world”, then they’re pretty well f*ck*d there: since their “ally” is a failing state devolving into a bloody civil war, and whose government is daily losing whatever shreds of international legitimacy it possesses. And whose successor may or may not give a crap about Iran’s interests in any case.
Mitt Romney’s notions of international relations seem to be about shaky as his grasp of geography: mainly huffy, self-righteous jingo about “strength”, “leadership” and “evil” aimed at the GOP base: hence, I think, the heavy emphasis on demonizing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – but with few/no real policy ideas. A lack, which, for whatever weird reason, Mitt decided to leaven last night with a big dose of “me-too”-ism vis-a-vis what Obama is doing already.
hells littlest angel
@Jay C: Yes, Iran is surrounded by enemies. I wonder why they’d be interested in acquiring nuclear capability?
Raven
There is a thread title from right after the debate that still needs to be changed.
Jay C
@Dream On:
Umm, dude: Unless you’ve been taking Prof. Romney’s Geography 001 course: no, the geography hasn’t changed. And Syria still does have a coastline on the Mediterranean: THIS PLACE is its main seaport (and, IIRC, a big Russian naval base back in Soviet times)
Dream On
@Jay C:
You and your facts, sir, are interfering with my right to get well and truly hammered on the West Coast- a luxury that Mitt can never enjoy, as his religion forbids it.
And yes, I had forgotten that Syria is connected to the sea – but let me make up my own facts in my own mind – it’s the 2012 GOP way.
Narcissus
We need to invade Iraq to prevent the Iranians from getting to their ports in Syria.
TheMightyTrowel
@Dream On: Oh the West Coast. You can see Russia from there, you know.
rlrr
@Jay C:
And if Syria is indeed “Iran’s only ally in the Arab world”,
Iraq is Iran’s ally, thanks to George W. Bush & co.
Dream On
@TheMightyTrowel: @TheMightyTrowel:
The West Coast is Iran’s route to the Panama Canal – the one Carter gave away in the ’70s!
And get off my lawn!
PreservedKillick
@Jay C:
It looked pretty clear to me. Romney lost his narrative, realized he was simply way over his head and went with the only two strategies he had left (1) Change the subject…and (2) Agree with the smartest guy in the room.
I’m not sure he actually intended to flip flop, I think that was his defense mechanism kicking in.
Absolutely chilling, either way. Either he’s a liar or a spineless buffoon.
prufrock
One of the things I find most funny about the “horses and bayonets” meme is just how clueless the right wing is about how useless the bayonet is (and that includes ex-military wingers who should know better). Not only is it useless, it became useless a lot earlier than most people realize. To paraphrase Lebron James, “not 50, not 75, not 100 years ago”. More like almost 160, with the invention of the minnie ball.
Want proof? There were over 750,000 deaths in the civil war (according to modern calculations). Only 16,000 of them were from bayonet wounds. Half of those were inflicted on a retreating enemy, who obviously would have had trouble reloading a musket on the run. Even in WWI, the preferred weapon for fighting hand to hand in a trench wasn’t a bayonet, but either a combat knife, or a sharpened e-tool, both of which could be handled much more easily in close quarters.
FlipYrWhig
I thought it was amusing to see the extent to which Romney had been coached to talk about “peace,” lest he create the impression that Republicans are eager for more war.
Raven
@prufrock: You mean all those hours on the bayonet assault course were worthless? “What is the Spirit of the Bayonet”? I was even in the damn Bayonet Division!
Jay C
@PreservedKillick:
Hey! Why sell Mitt Romney short like that? I’m sure he’s capable of being both! At the same time!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@prufrock:
And lest we forget the driving force behind what bayonet charges we have seen since the introduction of the Minie ball: Lack of ammunition kinda forces one to play the poor hand.
prufrock
@Raven: Bayonet training: great for teaching aggression. Useless on a modern battlefield.
prufrock
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
That, and all of those Civil War generals who worshiped Jomini and thought it was still 1806. Lot’s of charges into fortified positions, lots of dead soldiers. Very few bayonet injuries.
Randy P
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, that was painfully obvious in the opening minutes. Kept repeating that “we don’t want war” position.
Till he got to the Gish Gallop moment late in the debate and threw out the “diplomacy is a sign of weakness” lines along with the rest of the squid cloud of talking points.
TheMightyTrowel
ot just met my first white tailed spider. shudder.
ed_finnerty
a noun, a verb and Iran
Lojasmo
@Revanch:
it must be a Fox News talking point. Political Observer dumped that clump of dung here a couple of weeks ago, and was roundly panned for it. She must not have reported to romney central with our reaction, or Obama wouldn’t have been able to get the horses and bayonetts quip in.
dmsilev
@Lojasmo: Romney has been using it as an attack line for a while. Which means that it was stupid to use it in the debate, since it left him wide open for a scripted counterattack.
Raven
@prufrock: I don’t know how old you are or what your experience is but the anti-bayonet “hand parry” training we got in basic was REALLY useless.
The Ancient Randonneur
Shorter Mitt: I will continue the Kenyan Usurper’s foreign policy in a more leadery way!
ETA: And with the “horses and bayonets” quip Obama probably lost the unicorn (horses with bayonets on their foreheads) vote.
Narcissus
“What he said, but I’m white.”
1badbaba3
Okay folks, who is cooler, Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney? The future of the Republican Party depends on your answer.
MikeJ
The smallest navy since WWI. In the interim, the nazis shut down the Atlantic with u-boats and Japan owned the entire Pacific., and we beat both of them at the same time *after* having most of our biggest ships destroyed.
And all that happened before we even had jets. Or over-the-horizon missiles.
arguingwithsignposts
“I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy …” ouch!
debbie
Polo ponies would have been better.
max
@1badbaba3: Okay folks, who is cooler, Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney?
Palin: if you’re going to be an ignorant tool, you might as well have nice tits.
Anne: Sometimes I love the internets.
The best one is “I don’t always go to war….”
(“I don’t always invade foreign countries, but when I do, those countries have names starting with an I.’)
(‘I don’t always know what I’m talking about, but when I do, it’s because I’m stealing from Obama.’)
max
[‘Romney: contains a mix of 50% bullshit, 25% vegemite and 25% DEAD MEAT.’]
MikeJ
Are those Union troops[1] in the picture? I can think of two things Romney supporters would dislike about that. First, the very name, “union”. Secondly, Romney supporters are much more likely to favour the forces of treason over the United States.
[1] Yes, yes, reënactors, but representing Union troops.
Randy P
@Raven: I know i’d be completely useless in an actual fight, but had I actually gotten to black belt level it seems the “step out of the way” I learned in Aikido would be the right opening move in that situation. Then since he’s still moving forward you have lots of options.
Ash Can
Going into this debate, I doubted that Romney had the ability to paper over his lack of foreign policy experience. But even I thought he’d do better than this. The guy is just stunningly incompetent, especially in a side-by-side comparison with Obama. It really does gas me that the polls are as close as they are.
Raven
@Randy P: You don’t need a sensei to say which way the wind blows.
Applejinx
@Anne Laurie:
NO. No ponies supporting Romney. Not even Applejack. Don’t be fooled by the country accent, y’all. I will be real cranky if folks gin up a Confederate Applejack Supporting Romney meme, it’s insulting and just plain wrong.
Trust me, I have been to a pony convention (srsly). John DeLancie spoke (voice of Discord) and snarked about Fox News, seemed to encourage ponies to get out there and support their communities and be members of society, engage with the world including its political side, follow their hearts.
Obama HAS the unicorn vote locked. And there’s a bunch of unicorns politely insulted that you likened their horns to bayonets ;)
hehehe… this fucking blog, man…
MikeJ
@Randy P:
I learned “step out of the way” going to a bad high school, but it generally didn’t stop for at least a quarter mile.
WWStBreitbartD
Ships are the same thing as Horses and Bayonets
The funny thing is Obama wants fewer Nuclear subs and Aircraft carriers in addition to horses and bayonets.
jibeaux
@Comrade Mary: Well, there are probably precious few American swing voters getting their information from the CBC, so there’s that.
Applejinx
And like I said before-
Please, oh please, oh PLEASE let the rightwingers respond by dressing up in their Confederate Re-Enactor uniforms and memeing “We still have enough bayonets to take care of YOU!”
I think it would be… motivating.
Narcissus
@MikeJ: You can only be a Real American these days if you come from a state that tried to overthrow the Union.
Soonergrunt
@Raven: So was I. The Bayonet Division–7th Infantry Division.
For those that don’t know, it’s named that for a bayonet charge it undertook as an entire division in WWI.
Bayonets are sometimes issued today, but most troops buy their own fighting knives.
I carried a 7-inch tanto blade and a tomahawk, both of which are FAR more useful than a bayonet attached to an M-4 carbine.
EDIT-hours and hours of the Drill Sergeants yelling “What is the spirit of the bayonet?” and us replying at the top of our lungs while running the course, yelling till we were hoarse “to kill! to kill without mercy!”
But yeah–that bare handed bayonet defense was some bullshit. Even the DS’s who were teaching it were like “pick up a fucking stick or a rock or even the dismembered leg of your buddy or something, troop, cause this shit won’t work.”
Soonergrunt
@WWStBreitbartD: You aren’t very bright, as you keep showing us over and over again, but please provide a link to where the Administration has advocated shrinking either the Carrier force or the Submarine force. And it should be a link from official sources, not some fucked up conservative like yourself claiming it without evidence.
We’re not your dumbass conservative friends. Facts matter here.
jibeaux
I think Romney maybe didn’t see the horses and bayonets hammer of awesomeness coming, but he should have. Any jab premised on the idea that our military is weaker than it was 100 years ago has a one-way ticket to failure. And kudos to Obama, for whom I doubt that was a “zinger” that he practiced on his staff all summer.
Raven
@Soonergrunt: You were a “Light Fighter” huh? We were still full bore in Korea in 67 but, through some stroke of military genius, my 105 Bn was located just south of Musani, miles from Camp Casey and more a part of the Indian Head than the crushed beer can.
hep kitty
Well, I tried to watch some of taped debate this morning and Mitt just starts going off on the Middle East and my brain just shut down, blah blah blah, no substance, no plan, just some rather desparate sounding ramblings I’ve heard one too many times. But of course, I find out via the interwebs this morning that the President kicked butt.
That is all I really need to know. Thank you.
arguingwithsignposts
Did he really say Syria was Iran’s route to the sea? WTF?
ETA: “Democrat Senators.” argh.
Ash Can
@jibeaux: Hey yeah — whatever happened to all those zingers we were promised? I’m disappointed.
Tom65
I just want to strangle Chuck Todd right now. Despite CNN’s own GOP-weighted poll showing a 48-40 Obama win last night, Todd is making the rounds on morning talk shows calling it a “tie”.
Fucking moron.
dmsilev
Well, apparently John McCain is upset!. Why, back in *his* day, warriors charged into battle clad only in loin cloths and painted faces!
Kay
@Ash Can:
I was pleased Obama addressed military spending directly. Someone has to make the argument before we’ll know if there’s public agreement on an approach that isn’t endless, endless massive increases in military spending.
Mitt Romney plans to gut Medicaid and increase military spending. Millions of people will lose health care, not health insurance, basic medical care but we’ll have an ever-bigger military! It’s ridiculous. Someone has to say “enough.”
jefft452
@prufrock: “There were over 750,000 deaths in the civil war (according to modern calculations). Only 16,000 of them were from bayonet wounds”
Yeah, but bayonet wounds weren’t even common in Frederick the Great’s day
A bayonet charge was supposed to make the enemy run away, not to inflict causalities
(not that I disagree with your overall point in any way)
Soonergrunt
@Raven: Yep. 7th ID (L). Only light to the Air Force who didn’t have as many trucks to fly somewhere. We carried fucking houses on our backs. When I was an M-60 gunner, my combat load was 131 lbs.
“Travel light, freeze at night,” cause they didn’t get the gore-tex sleeping bags until 93, and we were still using the Korean War era down filled canvas bags that took up 2/3rds of your ruck so you didn’t carry it. We used two poncho liners sewn into a poncho for a sleeping bag. I had a body bag turned inside out, myself.
Soonergrunt
@Tom65: His job depends upon the idea that it’s a tie so you better tune in a LOT to see what’s going on.
Raven
My down bag is right here with me as are my mickey mouse boots and my parka. I guess I thought when it became “light” that meant no arty?
Schlemizel
@Soonergrunt:
Is there a less effective weapon than the M-4, with or without a pointy stick on the end?
There is a not so famous story about a bayonet charge on Corregadore. A team of ships cooks (which means black men which probably explains why the story does not get much play) drove an entire company of Japanese Marines off the beach with a bayonet charge!
The 282 remaining members of the 1st Minnesota drove 1500 Alabama regulars off the field at Gettysburg on day 2 saving the Union middle and the day.
Those sorts of things can happen but rifled weapons and high energy powder makes pointy sticks pretty useless. Just like subs and carriers make battleships a whole lot less valuable
Robert Sneddon
@MikeJ: There’s a Japanese manga and anime series called “Zipang”. Think of it as “The Final Countdown” but in reverse, where a single modern Japanese Aegis cruiser gets flipped back in time to WWII, just after the Battle of Midway. It handily defeats an American carrier air wing and then proceeds to sink the carrier with a couple of Tomahawk missiles, and they’re actually trying not to shoot at anyone, really (this is the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force after all).
Another real-world comparison is the ex-WWII American cruiser, the Belgrano that was sunk by a Royal Navy nuclear submarine in the Falklands war. It was by all accounts an easy kill even with the cruiser having a modern destroyer ASW screen around it.
dmsilev
Annals of WAAAAAHHHH, Joe Walsh edition:
Poor poor baby. He can throw bombs all day long, but can’t take a punch worth a damn.
Raven
@Soonergrunt: You’ll appreciate this shot, 17 years old and ready to go!
Kay
@Tom65:
We sort of created this monster, sadly. All Chuck Todd did to get his awesome reputation was read the rules for Democratic delegates and do addition correctly. Since no one else in political media was interested in doing that, he became “the expert.” It was clever. Good career move.
Raven
@Schlemizel: Corregidor. My old man was part of the Assault on the Rock so I’ve studied it quite a bit. What you are talking about was most likely as the Rock fell.
jwb
@Comrade Mary: Since Romney spent the night saying he’d follow Obama’s foreign policy only more recklessly, that’s actually very funny. Not sure why CBC would be in on the game, but it was very clear from the comments of various talking heads that the memo went out well before the debate that the narrative coming out of it would be that Romney showed himself to be Presidential. That he did nothing of the sort is beside the point. Who are you going to believe? The lying MSM or your own eyes?
Schlemizel
@Raven:
Yes it was against the Japanese invasion.
One hell of a thing those men did win or lose. I can’t imagine myself in a situation where that looked like a good idea – probably was their only one.
It should also be noted that the troops there were on short to no rations & dysentery was rampant so those were men weak and sick. A hell of a thing.
Raven
@Schlemizel: And a picnic compared to what they faced if they survived that. Here’s a site with lot’s of great info on Corregidor.
Ash Can
@dmsilev: I’m cautiously optimistic about Duckworth having this election salted away, but I’m resigned to the likely fact that this schmuck will never completely go away. I just hope his wingnut welfare gets him the hell out of Illinois, and pays him enough that his ex and the kids get a nice sum out of it (that the courts watch him like hawks to make him pay).
debbie
@jefft452:
Bayonets became useless the moment the Germans unpacked their first machine gun in WWI. And now we’ve come full circle, with an endless armada of American might (symbolized by an endless stream of Navy ships) neutralized by a couple of nutjobs with box cutters.
It’s really a very sad world we live in. Can we please stop fighting past wars?
Schlemizel
@Raven:
As a kid I had a neighbor who had survived Bataan. He looked to be about 100 though he was probably mid – 40s (this would have been around ’65.
He said his trumpet saved his life – the Korean guards like to hear him play so they didn’t beat him as badly as some others.
Raven
@Schlemizel: There is a POW museum at Andersonville that I visit when I am in that area and it has quite a display about Battan. When people start whining about dropping the bomb I suggest they swing by there.
Snarki, child of Loki
So now we know:
The Romney campaign is really “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
Here’s hoping for history to repeat itself.
Kay
That, right there, is a precise measure of the value of Republican surrogate spin. There’s a reason they do it. It works.
Snarki, child of Loki
@dmsilev: “Well, apparently John McCain is upset!. Why, back in his day, warriors charged into battle clad only in loin cloths and painted faces!”
Loin cloths? They had loin cloths?!?
Clearly McCain is a johnny-come-lately that had it soft and easy!
No loin cloth. Just a thick layer of WOAD. Fight like a MAN.
Schlemizel
@Raven:
This guy really hated Koreans, apparently all his guards were Korean not Japanese.
War is hell & nobody questions the winner.
Robert Sneddon
@Snarki, child of Loki: and sing a song as you charge into battle…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woad_Ode
Raven
@Schlemizel: We had Korean troops. KATUSA’s, infused in our unit. Pretty tough characters and most of them were connected or they wouldn’t have been there in the first place. The ROK’s in Vietnam we legendary for their brutality.
cosima
Monty Python horses + coconut halves. Where is that one on tumblr? I’m not arty or photo-shoppy, but someone here has to be, and they can make it so.
Where are the My Little Ponies with bayonets?
If I wasn’t finding this election so stressful already I would hope for another debate so that I could “watch” via BJ coveritlive (or whatever it’s called) because you guys are entertaining to the 10th power.
Looking for great books on the Civil War (or many other things)? Check out gutenberg.org where they have an amazing amount of books — FREE — for download whose copyrights have expired. General Sherman’s reflections. The speeches of Lincoln. There is some amazing stuff there. I found it via research on a different issue and pointed it out to a friend in Scotland who is fascinated (for now) with our Civil War.
Thanks as always for the entertainment BJuicers.
prufrock
@Raven:
Marine Corps. Combat Engineers ’90-’94. Never was shot at or had to shoot in anger, fortunately.
I was always philosophical about hand to hand combat (I had to be, because I wasn’t good at it). I was issued 210 rounds of ammunition and I was an expert shot. I figured if I got involved in a hand to hand situation it was my fault, and I deserved to die anyway.
Schlemizel
@Raven:
Yeah, the boy was pretty impressed with the ones attached to his unit. Tough as nails.
Soonergrunt
@Raven: Oh, no. 7th ID (L) had a DIVARTY of two fire battalions, three batteries each of 6x towed 105mm howitzers. Attached to the DIVARTY from I CORPS was a battalion of two batteries of 155mm and one battery of 8-in (nuclear capable). The 8-in. battery went away in 1990 to be replaced by another 155 battery when George H. W. Bush revoked the Army’s command and control over tactical nuclear weapons at the Corps level.
Soonergrunt
@Schlemizel: “Is there a less effective weapon than the M-4, with or without a pointy stick on the end?”
It’s called the M-9 pistol, 9mm.
EDIT–with the exception of an Arab/Afghan cultural quirk that makes a pistol an EXCELLENT crowd control weapon, it’s pretty useless. You’ll probably hurt the enemy more with the M-9 if you throw it at him instead of shoot him.
Schlemizel
@Soonergrunt:
Good catch – I had forgotten that. In the case of 9mm a pointy stick is probably superior firepower
edit: excellent addition 8-{D
Soonergrunt
@Raven: That is one STRAC young man, right there.
Raven
@Soonergrunt: Appearances can fool.
Raven
@Soonergrunt: Shows what I know!
patrick
to me last night, Romney either looked like he was about to have explosive diarrhea or he had a really bad case of acid reflux….
As far as the size of the navy, it was probably at it’s peak during vietnam, when we were using a ton of swift boats and other small craft in river warfare (IIRC John Kerry last night said the number was over 600)…yeah, we really need that capability right now.
Obama played it very safe and conventional. Instead of terrorism, if he wanted to be more accurate, he should have said our greatest nat’l security threat is Global Warming, and the possibility of civil unrest as weather patterns change causing food shortages
trollhattan
@TheMightyTrowel:
Spiders have tails nao? Another memo I missed. What’s next, bayonets?
Spiders With White Tails and Bayonets–Bowie’s reunion tour band.
redshirt
We’re also dangerously low on boiled leather and lobstered steel.
Soonergrunt
@Raven: 7th ID was just reactivated (again) at Fort Lewis, WA. It’s now a HQ unit with no maneuver elements. It will exercise local command and control with UCMJ authority over three brigades of 2nd ID (which is HQ’d at Fort Carson, CO), the 17th Fires Brigade and the 16th Aviation Brigade.
I’ll bet that within a year all of those units will be re-designated as 7th ID assets.
Soonergrunt
@patrick: While that is true (the Army has thought that very thing for about 25 years) that’s one hell of a pivot for the vast majority of people out there who are only now just beginning to accept that AGW is real and is bad. Especially in a debate with a guy who lies at the drop of a hat.
Mouse Tolliver
Somebody needs to make a “LOLcat” Merle (from Walkng Dead) because he replaced his severed hand with a bayonet stump.
Jay in Oregon
Speaking of naval power:
http://gcaptain.com/worlds-aircraft-carriers-visualized/
We have 20 aircraft carriers in service; the rest of the world, put together, has 12.
patrick
@Soonergrunt: I agree, that’s why I totall understand why he copped out on “terror cells”