Ok, I try and avoid shamelessly plugging other blogs, but I'm rather fond of this one after just having found it today. If you're like me, the terms "Republican," "Democrat," "Liberal," and "Conservative" have no relevance in your political leanings. Calling us "Moderates" kind of feels like a slap in the face though, since most of us feel rather strongly about political issues. We just can't get pigeonholed into any simple category, and that frustrates the people that make studies. So when I find a blog that's very like minded, I'm rather elated. In fact, it makes my whole day.
So here's Classically Liberal to make you happy or mad, I don't give a rip, but I hope it makes you think.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
I'm Baaaaaaaaaaack!
After several months now with no internet (aside from what I could get with my phone) I'm finally back... and guess what? I've got another "fun" experience from here in Nigeria to get things started right.
So the other day, we were on standby for the rig, when I hear a really disturbing radio call of, "What do you mean they're shooting at you?" Well of course, being a sailor (we're all nosy by nature btw) I had to turn up the radio to hear this one. Apparently, a supply boat was refuelling a security boat (names withheld to protect both the innocent and guilty) and started bumping into it in the heavy seas. This "upset" the Nigerian Navy detachment on board and they shut down the operation. Then, the supply boat was halfway untied and "wasn't moving fast enough" so they decided to hurry them up by firing rounds off to get them moving. What happened next? Well, of course they all ran inside to get away from the hail of gunfire, leaving the boat tied up, at which point the Navy detachment sent a few rounds past the wheelhouse. Needless to say, the Navy guys had to toss off the lines themselves at that stage, and there's a lot of paperwork and reprimands going around now.
So on that note, anybody know a good supplier for bullet proof vests and strike plates to stop AK-47 rounds?
So the other day, we were on standby for the rig, when I hear a really disturbing radio call of, "What do you mean they're shooting at you?" Well of course, being a sailor (we're all nosy by nature btw) I had to turn up the radio to hear this one. Apparently, a supply boat was refuelling a security boat (names withheld to protect both the innocent and guilty) and started bumping into it in the heavy seas. This "upset" the Nigerian Navy detachment on board and they shut down the operation. Then, the supply boat was halfway untied and "wasn't moving fast enough" so they decided to hurry them up by firing rounds off to get them moving. What happened next? Well, of course they all ran inside to get away from the hail of gunfire, leaving the boat tied up, at which point the Navy detachment sent a few rounds past the wheelhouse. Needless to say, the Navy guys had to toss off the lines themselves at that stage, and there's a lot of paperwork and reprimands going around now.
So on that note, anybody know a good supplier for bullet proof vests and strike plates to stop AK-47 rounds?
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Wanted Dead or Alive? Really people?
Ok, I've really been trying to keep out of the whole Martin / Zimmerman thing, but this one... I've got to step up to the plate and say that there are going to be serious repercussions if this line of thought continues:
Wanted Dead or Alive Poster Issued for George Zimmerman by New Black Panther Party
That's from the caring and loving people of the New Black Panther Movement. I don't really have much to say on this, other than America as a whole needs to get their head out of their collective ass and deal with this case. One way or the other, get it settled, due process it, put it before the grand jury, let them throw it out or try it (which, with all the media attention, Zimmerman's going to have to get a trial outside of the US to manage to get an untainted jury now).
The more I hear about it, the less I'm sure of either side's story in it. Which, if I was Dictator... errr, President Obama, I'd do my best to pull the plug on the media in this case before we wind up with a full fledged race war here in America. But then... it's an election year. Nothing better to polarize voters than a little racial violence. [sarcasm intended] Far be it for me to pull a race card since I'm a true all American mutt (literally a bit of every race in my blood) but why has this been a black/white issue in the first place??? Frankly I'm rather amazed that the conservative press haven't tried to paint Zimmerman as an illegal alien or some other ridiculousness like that. And the liberal media... they're too busy with the "Guns are bad... m'kay?" line right now to get beyond that.
So here we are, left with a 17 y/o boy that may or may not have attacked Zimmerman, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is now dead. Let's take a moment and remember, the gun didn't kill him, the man behind the gun did, and whether it was self defense or not, remains to be determined by the courts. Let's just all take a deep breath and go from there...
Wanted Dead or Alive Poster Issued for George Zimmerman by New Black Panther Party
That's from the caring and loving people of the New Black Panther Movement. I don't really have much to say on this, other than America as a whole needs to get their head out of their collective ass and deal with this case. One way or the other, get it settled, due process it, put it before the grand jury, let them throw it out or try it (which, with all the media attention, Zimmerman's going to have to get a trial outside of the US to manage to get an untainted jury now).
The more I hear about it, the less I'm sure of either side's story in it. Which, if I was Dictator... errr, President Obama, I'd do my best to pull the plug on the media in this case before we wind up with a full fledged race war here in America. But then... it's an election year. Nothing better to polarize voters than a little racial violence. [sarcasm intended] Far be it for me to pull a race card since I'm a true all American mutt (literally a bit of every race in my blood) but why has this been a black/white issue in the first place??? Frankly I'm rather amazed that the conservative press haven't tried to paint Zimmerman as an illegal alien or some other ridiculousness like that. And the liberal media... they're too busy with the "Guns are bad... m'kay?" line right now to get beyond that.
So here we are, left with a 17 y/o boy that may or may not have attacked Zimmerman, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and is now dead. Let's take a moment and remember, the gun didn't kill him, the man behind the gun did, and whether it was self defense or not, remains to be determined by the courts. Let's just all take a deep breath and go from there...
Friday, March 2, 2012
#2 Behind... THAT?! #EFAD
Wow... While I'm impressed with the meteoric rise to #2, I'm slightly (ok, HIGHLY) disappointed that it hasn't quite beaten out "Divorced, Desperate and Delicious" for the #1 spot yet. I would go ahead and make with a conspiracy theory here that the anti-gun crowd is keeping the download numbers up on that one... but I actually did the research and found that Ms. Craig happened to do the same thing with the free deal on her book a couple days before #EFAD hit, so we can't really blame her on that. We'll just have to keep sharing/retweeting/liking/+1'ing or whatever and persevere.
Amazon: Enemies Foreign and Domestic ...Come on... download it... you know you want to. ;)
I've been dealing with some... issues... here at work lately, so I haven't really been able to blog as much as I'd like. But when you have militants attacking ships close enough to see... yeah, my attention's been elsewhere. Promise to make it up to you guys soon though.
Amazon: Enemies Foreign and Domestic ...Come on... download it... you know you want to. ;)
I've been dealing with some... issues... here at work lately, so I haven't really been able to blog as much as I'd like. But when you have militants attacking ships close enough to see... yeah, my attention's been elsewhere. Promise to make it up to you guys soon though.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Free Kindle Book!!! #EFAD
I don't know about you, but I always like just about anything free... so how about a free book? I'll let the Author do the explaining though in a second, but from what I've heard it's pretty good. No, I didn't write it, so it's actually possible to be good. ;^)
Here's the Amazon page for it: Enemies Foreign and Domestic
Here's the author's website: Matt Bracken
And here's the info from his page on why he's giving it away free... and hoping that it goes viral --
Want to join a beat-up old ex-Navy SEAL, ocean sailor and book writer on a real-world covert cyber operation?
I knew you did. So here's the deal. The idea is a national clandestine psyop, using my first novel as a vehicle.
On Thursday, March 1, Enemies Foreign And Domestic will be put into Amazon Kindle's free library.
Where EFAD's free download promotion will be different from those of the thousands of fantasy/romance/vampire novels currently offered on Kindle, is that I'm simultaneously coordinating a mass plan to ensure that Operation EFAD goes hyper-viral on all constitutionally-oriented, freedom-loving, and Second Amendment websites and blogs at the same time.
Or on at least on as many as I can reach, and that is where you come in. There are literally hundreds of patriotic websites and blogs, and I can only reach a few. You can reach them all, every last one. And then some. More about this in the next communiqué on D Minus Six.
Despite its many limitations, Twitter will be useful for rapid tactical coordination. Operation Enemies Foreign And Domestic will be code-named #EFAD, in order to use Twitter as an always-open back channel for project updates and participant feedback. By typing #EFAD into the Twitter search field, you will find every new message related to the operation. I am @MattBracken48 on Twitter, I am Matt Bracken on Facebook, and I can be reached by email at steelcutter48 at gmail.com.
My goal is to make the spike in the number of free Kindle downloads for Enemies Foreign And Domestic so dramatic, that the national media will notice the passionate interest in this "dangerous and seditious" novel among the bitter clingers. But this is just the first step of a jiu-jitsu move. The light thrown on EFAD's sudden nationwide surge in popularity will then be mirrored back onto the federal government's most egregious usurpations and abuses, and on the mainstream media itself.
The idea is to force open a long overdue national conversation that the elite MSM very much wants to ignore. In large strokes, it is about our federal government morphing into a socialist tyranny before our eyes, a tyranny that is no longer soft, but getting harder with every passing month. Which is it to be: freedom, or tyranny?
The first step in forcing open this dialogue will be to explore the mainstream media's active collusion in the cover-up of a scandal that is demonstrably orders of magnitude worse than the worst previous scandals, such as Watergate, which was "a third-rate burglary" where nobody was killed. To date, the DOJ's Operation Fast And Furious has resulted in hundreds of murdered Mexicans and at least two dead U.S. federal agents. But instead of providing real news coverage, the MSM feeds America the pabulum of celebrity worship and an artificially-contrived debate about artificial birth control.
Imagine for a moment if President Nixon's men, when called before the congressional committees invistigating the Watergate scandal, had provided nothing but thousands of pages of fully blacked-out paper. In effect, a giant, bored, "F--- you, what are you going to do about it?" to Congress. Then imagine if the Washington Post, the New York Times and the television networks never mentioned Watergate or the hearings, except rarely, and then only to call the congressional investigators partisan hacks who were bent on destroying our beloved President Nixon.
Reverse the party polarity, jump forward through the time warp, and you have the current reality, where gangsters rule the federal government from the White House, the Fast And Furious congressional investigators are impotent buffoons, and the MSM is fully in on the cover-up. Nobody died at the Watergate, but recall what the hysterical 24-7 news coverage of the Watergate scandal and hearings accomplished: the end of a presidency, pronto. And an Attorney General in prison.
In the modern case of Operation Fast And Furious, hundreds of Mexicans were murdered as the result of a diabolically evil plot laid with the sole purpose of discrediting the Second Amendment, by deliberately funneling semi-automatic rifles to known drug cartel killers and assassins. Their goal was to bury our Right to Keep and Bear Arms beneath a mountain of Mexican corpses.
Folks, it doesn't get much more evil than that.
And we know why these socialist dictators-in-waiting want us disarmed.
In 2012, the fictional premise of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, that a small clique of senior BATFE officials might conspire to arrange a mass shooting into a packed football stadium (also with the intention of discrediting our Right to Keep and Bear Arms), suddenly seems much less far-fetched.
So here's the plan: on Thursday, March 1, we will engineer a stratospheric spike in the number of free Kindle downloads of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, and continue this operation for up to five days, the max allowable under the terms of the free download program. Then we will sit back and watch the bewildered and alarmed MSM explore this sudden and frightening phenomenon erupting among the unwashed gun nuts and wild-eyed Constitution fanatics. You know, us. Real Americans, out here in fly-over countery.
And when they predictably condemn EFAD for its fictional assassinations of government officials, and the rest of the story that they will pretend to find so abhorrent, we will shine their own spotlight right back on them, and yell Fast And Furious in their faces!
"Really? Enemies Foreign And Domestic is a terrorist manual? Well, I'll see your fictional stadium massacre, and raise you a real-world conspiracy to murder hundreds of Mexicans for political purposes. If you would ever cover the story, instead of covering it up!"
And this can all happen by getting a million or so gun owners and other freedom lovers to download EFAD, totally for free, beginning on March 1st. This will be a coordinated "time-on-target" fire mission. Further communiques will be forthcoming from EFAD HQ. Search keyword #EFAD on Twitter for other operational updates, including links.
If you email me (steelcutter48 at gmail.com) , please include #EFAD somewhere in the subject line, so that I will know that you have been briefed to this point and are up to speed. And keep in mind that while you are all my patriotic friends and loyal readers, at various time I may know you by a screen name, a real name, a website name, or an email address name. It gets mighty confusing, so forgive me if I can't keep all of your various handles straight. And remember: D-Day is March 1.
Matt Bracken---Out.
Here's the Amazon page for it: Enemies Foreign and Domestic
Here's the author's website: Matt Bracken
And here's the info from his page on why he's giving it away free... and hoping that it goes viral --
Want to join a beat-up old ex-Navy SEAL, ocean sailor and book writer on a real-world covert cyber operation?
I knew you did. So here's the deal. The idea is a national clandestine psyop, using my first novel as a vehicle.
On Thursday, March 1, Enemies Foreign And Domestic will be put into Amazon Kindle's free library.
Where EFAD's free download promotion will be different from those of the thousands of fantasy/romance/vampire novels currently offered on Kindle, is that I'm simultaneously coordinating a mass plan to ensure that Operation EFAD goes hyper-viral on all constitutionally-oriented, freedom-loving, and Second Amendment websites and blogs at the same time.
Or on at least on as many as I can reach, and that is where you come in. There are literally hundreds of patriotic websites and blogs, and I can only reach a few. You can reach them all, every last one. And then some. More about this in the next communiqué on D Minus Six.
Despite its many limitations, Twitter will be useful for rapid tactical coordination. Operation Enemies Foreign And Domestic will be code-named #EFAD, in order to use Twitter as an always-open back channel for project updates and participant feedback. By typing #EFAD into the Twitter search field, you will find every new message related to the operation. I am @MattBracken48 on Twitter, I am Matt Bracken on Facebook, and I can be reached by email at steelcutter48 at gmail.com.
My goal is to make the spike in the number of free Kindle downloads for Enemies Foreign And Domestic so dramatic, that the national media will notice the passionate interest in this "dangerous and seditious" novel among the bitter clingers. But this is just the first step of a jiu-jitsu move. The light thrown on EFAD's sudden nationwide surge in popularity will then be mirrored back onto the federal government's most egregious usurpations and abuses, and on the mainstream media itself.
The idea is to force open a long overdue national conversation that the elite MSM very much wants to ignore. In large strokes, it is about our federal government morphing into a socialist tyranny before our eyes, a tyranny that is no longer soft, but getting harder with every passing month. Which is it to be: freedom, or tyranny?
The first step in forcing open this dialogue will be to explore the mainstream media's active collusion in the cover-up of a scandal that is demonstrably orders of magnitude worse than the worst previous scandals, such as Watergate, which was "a third-rate burglary" where nobody was killed. To date, the DOJ's Operation Fast And Furious has resulted in hundreds of murdered Mexicans and at least two dead U.S. federal agents. But instead of providing real news coverage, the MSM feeds America the pabulum of celebrity worship and an artificially-contrived debate about artificial birth control.
Imagine for a moment if President Nixon's men, when called before the congressional committees invistigating the Watergate scandal, had provided nothing but thousands of pages of fully blacked-out paper. In effect, a giant, bored, "F--- you, what are you going to do about it?" to Congress. Then imagine if the Washington Post, the New York Times and the television networks never mentioned Watergate or the hearings, except rarely, and then only to call the congressional investigators partisan hacks who were bent on destroying our beloved President Nixon.
Reverse the party polarity, jump forward through the time warp, and you have the current reality, where gangsters rule the federal government from the White House, the Fast And Furious congressional investigators are impotent buffoons, and the MSM is fully in on the cover-up. Nobody died at the Watergate, but recall what the hysterical 24-7 news coverage of the Watergate scandal and hearings accomplished: the end of a presidency, pronto. And an Attorney General in prison.
In the modern case of Operation Fast And Furious, hundreds of Mexicans were murdered as the result of a diabolically evil plot laid with the sole purpose of discrediting the Second Amendment, by deliberately funneling semi-automatic rifles to known drug cartel killers and assassins. Their goal was to bury our Right to Keep and Bear Arms beneath a mountain of Mexican corpses.
Folks, it doesn't get much more evil than that.
And we know why these socialist dictators-in-waiting want us disarmed.
In 2012, the fictional premise of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, that a small clique of senior BATFE officials might conspire to arrange a mass shooting into a packed football stadium (also with the intention of discrediting our Right to Keep and Bear Arms), suddenly seems much less far-fetched.
So here's the plan: on Thursday, March 1, we will engineer a stratospheric spike in the number of free Kindle downloads of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, and continue this operation for up to five days, the max allowable under the terms of the free download program. Then we will sit back and watch the bewildered and alarmed MSM explore this sudden and frightening phenomenon erupting among the unwashed gun nuts and wild-eyed Constitution fanatics. You know, us. Real Americans, out here in fly-over countery.
And when they predictably condemn EFAD for its fictional assassinations of government officials, and the rest of the story that they will pretend to find so abhorrent, we will shine their own spotlight right back on them, and yell Fast And Furious in their faces!
"Really? Enemies Foreign And Domestic is a terrorist manual? Well, I'll see your fictional stadium massacre, and raise you a real-world conspiracy to murder hundreds of Mexicans for political purposes. If you would ever cover the story, instead of covering it up!"
And this can all happen by getting a million or so gun owners and other freedom lovers to download EFAD, totally for free, beginning on March 1st. This will be a coordinated "time-on-target" fire mission. Further communiques will be forthcoming from EFAD HQ. Search keyword #EFAD on Twitter for other operational updates, including links.
If you email me (steelcutter48 at gmail.com) , please include #EFAD somewhere in the subject line, so that I will know that you have been briefed to this point and are up to speed. And keep in mind that while you are all my patriotic friends and loyal readers, at various time I may know you by a screen name, a real name, a website name, or an email address name. It gets mighty confusing, so forgive me if I can't keep all of your various handles straight. And remember: D-Day is March 1.
Matt Bracken---Out.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Smoking Blunder Vs. Smoke and Thunder
For those folks that read this that don't follow other "gunny" blogs... a guy, who will remain nameless (mainly because it was never worth learning his name in the first place) created a "Gun Enthusiast's Social Network" called Smoke and Thunder. He'd said it wasn't a blog and that all gun blogs should be shut down because there were too many of them... things like that. Might have been interesting, except he created fake profiles for just about every gun blogger he could find. I was fortunate enough to escape his compilation, so I can just sit back and laugh about the whole thing. BUUUUUUTTTTT... when said bloggers came forward to claim their profiles and delete their profiles... he threw a hissy and locked it off from outside access and turned it into... wait for it... His personal rant blog.
Now I don't know if the claims that the Brady's and other anti-gunners were behind the whole thing are true or not, so I won't comment on that, but his rants got bad enough that a parody site was created for it... Smoking Blunder... (and no, I'm not putting in links to either of them, but you have google... that's what it's there for.) Which was a stroke of genius... (ok you talked me into it... Smoking Blunder) and really summed up his attitude when everyone (rightfully) claimed copy write infringement for copying info for the fake profiles.
Anyway... I just went to see if he had any comment on his "personal gun blog" about the parody... and found... THIS!!!
For the record... I didn't do it... don't know who did... and don't want to know who did... but you rock, whoever you are. (even if you're Everett Ladd... I'd still give you props on this one, even if you did ban me on your stupid FB group.)
Tagbacks to the following: The Minuteman, Weer'd World, Gun Free Zone, and No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money (sorry guys, I only know a few of you by name so far)
PS> If I commented on your blogs and you'd already noticed the hack/takedown and posted a later note... Oops... teach me to check a little better now... and I'm sorry.
Now I don't know if the claims that the Brady's and other anti-gunners were behind the whole thing are true or not, so I won't comment on that, but his rants got bad enough that a parody site was created for it... Smoking Blunder... (and no, I'm not putting in links to either of them, but you have google... that's what it's there for.) Which was a stroke of genius... (ok you talked me into it... Smoking Blunder) and really summed up his attitude when everyone (rightfully) claimed copy write infringement for copying info for the fake profiles.
Anyway... I just went to see if he had any comment on his "personal gun blog" about the parody... and found... THIS!!!
For the record... I didn't do it... don't know who did... and don't want to know who did... but you rock, whoever you are. (even if you're Everett Ladd... I'd still give you props on this one, even if you did ban me on your stupid FB group.)
Tagbacks to the following: The Minuteman, Weer'd World, Gun Free Zone, and No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money (sorry guys, I only know a few of you by name so far)
PS> If I commented on your blogs and you'd already noticed the hack/takedown and posted a later note... Oops... teach me to check a little better now... and I'm sorry.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wow...
To put it mildly, I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of page views I've been getting since yesterday. You guys/gals that have linked to my blog (and all the new readers), Thank YOU! In the past 24 hours I've had more views than all the days before combined. Makes me at least feel like I'm getting on the right track here. I'm still learning about blogging and very much welcome comments from readers.
I'm going start doing a few reviews on stuff in the near future. Most of it will be kind of a crossover... things I use over here at work that I also use back home. For examples, The Leatherman MUT, 5.11 ATAC L2 light... Things like that that are handy for both the shooter and the boater.
As a note to the FTC JBT's, at least for now, all the things I review are things I've paid full retail for, there are no gimmies yet. Well, eventually I'll get around to reviewing a 5.11 knife that I got free because I spent too much money on 5.11 stuff at a local store... But, even though I don't think that counts for a sponsored review, I'll make sure to note that it was a freebie.
Thanks again to everyone that's reposted the link to my blog, and gimmie some suggestions on what I'm doing wrong or right here. I'm only twenty days in and still, as they say here about the FNG's, fresh fish.
...Sorry, you're stuck with my continuing attempts at a travel guide though.
I'm going start doing a few reviews on stuff in the near future. Most of it will be kind of a crossover... things I use over here at work that I also use back home. For examples, The Leatherman MUT, 5.11 ATAC L2 light... Things like that that are handy for both the shooter and the boater.
As a note to the FTC JBT's, at least for now, all the things I review are things I've paid full retail for, there are no gimmies yet. Well, eventually I'll get around to reviewing a 5.11 knife that I got free because I spent too much money on 5.11 stuff at a local store... But, even though I don't think that counts for a sponsored review, I'll make sure to note that it was a freebie.
Thanks again to everyone that's reposted the link to my blog, and gimmie some suggestions on what I'm doing wrong or right here. I'm only twenty days in and still, as they say here about the FNG's, fresh fish.
...Sorry, you're stuck with my continuing attempts at a travel guide though.
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