Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must make two public apologies.

The first is to his good friend and co-blogger, the Smallholder. Like the Foreign Minister, your Maximum Leader neglected to call, e-mail, or otherwise make note of the Smallholder’s birthday. There really isn’t any excuse. There were reminders and such, but your Maximum Leader dismissed them and then promptly forgot. Your Maximum Leader will admit that he is horrible about remember birthdays. He rarely remembers his own in fact. The only three that he remembers faithfully are those of his own children. For all others he requires unceasing reminders.

Happy Birthday, Smallholder. Many happy returns to you.

The second apology your Maximum Leader must make is to his friend Gordon the Cranky Neocon of Six Meat Buffet. A little while ago, your Maximum Leader shot Gordon an e-mail indicating that he (your Maximum Leader that is) would be in his (Gordon’s) neck of the woods in late April. Well… Your Maximum Leader, Mrs Villain, and all his villainous progeny, did make the trek to the greater Philadephia area this past weekend. It was your Maximum Leader’s intention to contact Gordon and try to meet him for an adult beverage and conversation. It was Mrs Villain’s intention to have many activities planned for the whole family and to keep a tight schedule. So, unfortunately, your Maximum Leader owes Gordon an adult beverage and conversation at some indetermined point in the future.

By way of further explaination, the whole Villainous family was in the Philly region from Friday to Saturday. It was your Maximum Leader’s original understanding that the family would not return until Sunday. Reality was that we departed Philly Saturday and made our way back to Fredericksburg. During our brief visit, we were able to visit with some family friends of Mrs Villain and her parents in New Jersey. Then your Maximum Leader took his children to see the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute. After Tut, he took his villainous progeny through the Franklin Institute, saw one of the IMAX films there, then caught lunch. After that carousing, he had to gather up the family and stick to the plan to return to the Villainschloss.

By the way, if you have a chance to see the Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute, you ought to. It was well worth it. It kept a 9 year old girl and a 7 year old girl captivated for over two hours…

So… In closing… Happy (Belated) Birthday Smallholder; and Gordon, your Maximum Leader owes you one.

Carry on.

When the Smallholder “quotes” me about the Indian Jones RPG… he always gets the date wrong.

While the Soviets did have an early type of RPG during WW2, the one Indy grabs is a later version, the RPG-7 IIRC….

Knock down! (?)
This is just a term that is used… without wiki’ing anything, bigger slower bullets transfer kinetic energy to flesh better than small fast ones… and the .45 is a big slow one.

But…
Is this navel gazing or what? We are comparing real life ballistics to what freakin’ Hollywood shows us on the silver screen???

Gack…

Hollywood does things for effect, not accuracy. They sell tickets, not textbooks. Even when they are trying to be historical, its hysterical.

If you want accuracy (pardon the pun) watch a British film. If you want fantasy pistol shots that are deadly accurate at 300 yards, never having to replenish an empty magazine (or even switching to a full mag) than watch any Hollywood movie.

And have you noticed that, despite the fact that those in Hollywood despise firearms, they can’t seem to make a movie without glorifying them (guns) in someway?

Lastly
The Smallholder called last night and we talked and talked and talked….

We even talked about getting older… which was probably the SH’s way of saying, “Hey friend, aren’t you gonna wish me a Happy Birthday????”

The reality is that I have my Microsoft Outlook set up to “remind” me that SH’s birthday was April 28th… and it reminded me so incessantly that i turned it off 4 days ago and it slipped my mind when he called.

Sorry buddy… Happy Birthday!!!!!

Back to the Trenches…..

Via Wikipedia:

Robert McNamara’s Lessons Learned From Vietnam:

1) We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

2) We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

3) We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.

4) Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.

5) We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine…

6) We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

7) We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.

9) We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

10) We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

11) We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

I’m sure glad we learned from McNamara’s mistakes.

Polymath’s comment on my pics of synthetic Bishop - wait scratch that - artificial person Bishop - was quite clever:

Unless I am mistaken, Bishop considers, and then hands back, a M1911 as he is about to do the “tunnel rat” through the duct, sewer pipe, or whatever.
Are aliens (or borgs) affected by stopping power? Apparently not.

I am amazed that Polymath can remember what type of firearm was used in a movie he probably hasn’t viewed for a decade. But this is par for the course with my friends.

When I was watching “Holy Grail” with Polymath, he paused the action to point out the door of Castle Anthrax: “Look! It’s historically inaccurate! That door was machine-planed!”

When I was watching an Indiana Jones movie with the Foreign Minister, he was outraged that the Nazi antagonists were armed with an RPG that wasn’t developed until 1942. The horrors!

Of course, when I stop movies to point out the ahistorical use of livestock, people thank me. Because understanding what breeds were present in 18th century Appalachia is much more interesting than carpentry tips or Wehrmacht weaponry.

And yes, I am fun at parties.

And sorry ladies, I’m taken.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees the challenge glove thrown by Mrs P. Thus, your Maximum Leader feels honour-bound to respond…

Of course, upon a moment of reflection, it is possible that the most honourable thing to do would be to not try to compete with the lady and smile politely while attempting to make small talk. But, the boor in your Maximum Leader compelled him to take the quiz.

You Are 88% Gentleman

No doubt about it, you are a total gentleman. You please the pickiest ladies, and you make everyone in a room feel comfortable.

Apparently, your Maximum Leader is as much a gentleman as Mrs P, who also discusses religion and politics at the table. Your Maximum Leader tries not to interrupt anyone, except Smallholder. When with his good friend the Smallholder, often all bets are off when it comes to good behaviour.

Carry on.

Robert D. Novak, noted liberal, suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome. All of you Republicans ought to reject the analysis of this DailyKos kid out of hand.

(Why does Liberal Robert Novak hate America and love the terrorists?)

Novak writes:

Retaining Gonzales means Bush has slipped behind the barricades.

All the Republicans in Congress whom I contacted view this as pure folly. For the long term, they predict that constant war by their president against the majority Democrats would cast a pall on the Republicans’ chances of retaining the presidency in 2008. For the shorter term, they foresee nothing but trouble from Gonzales continuing in power. “I cannot imagine,” said a House GOP leader who would not be quoted by name, “how [Bush] thinks Gonzales can function effectively with no Republican support.”

From today’s Washington Post:

During that spree, police spent three minutes rushing to the building and then about five minutes carrying out the complicated process of breaking through the building’s doors, which Seung-Hui Cho had chained.

A timeline of Cho’s morning and the final moments of his life emerged Wednesday during a news conference by police who are still struggling to figure out why the 23-year-old student carried out the rampage.

The five minutes police spent breaking into the building proved to be crucial as Cho moved through Norris Hall unimpeded, with police locked out.

Authorities eventually blew their way into the building, and as they began to rush toward the gunfire on the second floor, Cho put a bullet through his head and died, surrounded by his victims.

State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller praised the officers’ response time, noting that had police simply rushed into the building without a plan, many would have likely died right along with the staff and students. She said officers needed to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors.

“If you go in with your backs turned, you’re never going back,” Geller said. “There’s got to be some sort of organization.”

People are second-guessing many decisions that happened at Tech. To a large extent, many of the criticisms of the Tech Administration are monday-mornign quarterbacking driven by people’s grief-fueled need to assign blame. However, the idea that Police took five minutes on the scene to get organized is galling.

Why did they have to go through the doors? Were there no first floor windows they could break into? I don’t know the layout of the building, but one assumes there were alternate entrances availble to highly motivated rescuers.

If I was a cop, I cannot imagine wiating five minutes while ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY rounds were fired. Screw waiting for organization/blowing the doors. I’m going in the window.

Cho evidently killed himself when he heard the cops running up the stairs. Imagine if they had arrived four minutes earlier. How many people would still be alive.

Since my former student was in the last room Cho entered, you can be damn sure that Heidi wouldn’t have taken three rounds.

The police were too cautious. If a crime is ongoing, the first objective should be to put the shooter down.

Sentient people following the Gonzales tempest have reached one of the following conclusions.

A) Gonzales is incompetent, inattentive, and ineffective as a leader. He may not have lied, but he is a world class idgit. There is nothing to see here. Move along.

B) Gonzales doesn’t clearly remember the political machinations behind the prosecutor firings, but it is no big deal because the executive branch has the power to fire and hire. Democrats can scream about the possibility of the firings being used to encourage/discourage investigations a la Domenici, but they can’t prove nothin’ and we should take the administration’s word that the firings were innocent, even if Gonzales can’t remember the actual reasons - he just knows that obstruction of justice was not a motivation.

C) Gonzales used his office to obstruct justice, politicize the judicial system, and lied under oath. Misstatements and faulty recollections my liberal ass.

None of these interpretations of Gonzales is particularly confidence building.

What then are we to make of President Bush’s statement that Gonzales’ testimony had increased his confidence in the Attorney General?

What conclusions are we to draw about Bush’s judgment?

Speaking of Bishops…

The Federalist Society is hosting a debate on the meaning of Carhart. I’m not the only one who noticed that Carhart reinforced the view that abortion is a fundamental right.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees two things on the new wire.

The first is that Rosie O’Donnell is leaving “The View.” It is a pity she isn’t being swallowed up by a great gaping chasm in the earth never to be heard from again. Frankly, your Maximum Leader has never seen “The View.” But he does know that former “View Personality” Lisa Ling - now of National Geographic Channel fame - is quite attractive.

The second item off the wire is that “The Bishop” has been arrested.

Not this Bishop.

This Bishop. By the way… This mad criminal appears to be from Iowa, a manufacutring company employee, not really a Bishop, and - as far as your Maximum Leader can tell - not an Anglican.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was subconsciously looking for a quiz to post… Thanks to the Big Hominid he found one.

Your Maximum Leader admits he guessed on one or two. But thanks to the multiple choice format he could take educated guesses. He wonders which question(s) he missed.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is sad to report that the Villainschloss is rife with pestilence. It started late last week with the Wee Villain. Then the virus moved swiftly to infect Villainette #2 last Friday. Mrs Villain was virally afflicted on Saturday. And finally, Villainette #1 was stuck yesterday. So far, (he writes - thereby jinxing himself) your Maximum Leader has not been affected by this nasty 24 hour virus. Apparently you feel miserable until you just start vomiting everything you try to put down. After a few hours of that nastiness, everything seems to go better for you.

All this viral activity in the Villainschloss, in addition to his other Maximum Leaderly duties, have kept your Maximum Leader away from his blog. Luckily, the Smallholder has been talking about guns and bovine porn in the meanwhile.

Your Maximum Leader, while not suffering from a virus, has been suffering from allergies. The pollen count has been so high around the Fredericksburg area that he’s been having to double up on allergy medication just to keep from collapsing in a congested heap.

Lucky for your Maximum Leader he has his trusty iPod to keep him company. Playing a lot recently on that iPod… Amy Winehouse’s new album “Back to Black.” The song you may have heard of from that album, “Rehab.” Here it is for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Your Maximum Leader has decided that Amy Winehouse, though a great singer, has waaaaaaaay too many tattoos to be attractive. Looking at her, your Maximum Leader wonders what actually possesses a person to get so many tattoos. He can’t figure it out. Fortunately, he just listens to her on the iPod.

Carry on.

If this was real life, the police officer in question (an attractive single early thirty-ish police officer, would leave with the Minister of Propaganda. I’m not sure how he does it, but he does have the mojo, nimrod or not.

At any rate, although our resident rocket scientist has remained mum, I did get some responses to my query about stopping power/knock him on his ass power.

Polymath writes:

The story about the .45 during the Phillipine Insurrection is the reason I prefer it for a handgun. I am no Rocket Scientist, but I belive the many accounts of crazed fillipinos being knocked down by the .45.

In a standard round, the charge is more than a smaller caliber round would have, but the .45 is more massive, and so travels slower. I think it has more to do with energy dispersal into the target (why I like Glaser Safety Slugs for self-defense).

The Minister of Propaganda e-mailed me a link where my query was discussed (There is much more at the link):

The scenes in the movie where people are lifted off their feet and
knocked head-over-heels across the room when Clint Eastwood shoots them with his Colt .45 are entertaining concepts to some people, but in general they are purely theatrical and totally unrealistic. In my personal experience, if you shoot a man in the chest he will go into shock and fall down no matter what you shoot him with. If you shoot him with something big enough, he will fall down and die. Either way, they normally FALL down rather than get KNOCKED down.

The argument might be that a 200 lb. deer gets knocked down, so a human being should be knocked down too. The explanation there is three fold: First, a deer normally gets shot with a high powered rifle, which can certainly knock him or a person for a loop on impact, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. Second, a deer’s center of gravity and reaction to the impact is different from that of a human, and finally, while a deer has four legs rather than two, only a square inch or so of his hooves are on the ground at any given time, making him much easier to imbalance.

The safety officer at my school says that she was trained that people tend to fall down rather than get knocked down - and sometimes they don’t even fall down. Evidently, it is somewhat of a problem that policemen in a gunfight tend to relax after scoring a hit, assuming that the assailant is out of the fight. Police officers have gotten killed because the guy keeps going. She also noted that high velocity rounds that go through and through don’t have the time to effectively transfer their kinetic energy to the body. They just zip on through and keep going.

The Maximum Leader points out that recoil is less because of the weight of the weapon as balanced against the weight of the round.

The Browning M1911 was designed as a response to the army’s need for more stopping power, but the description here doesn’t explain what exactly is meant by stopping power: Hurt him so bad he falls down or knocks him on his ass.

Any other knowledgeable folks out there?

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Here are some links about stopping power and recoil for your consideration:

Ballistics from the Florida State University Medical Center. (This is a great link that your Maximum Leader is going to have to study further. Even if the first “chapter” has a decidedly anti-gun slant. The science appears to be quite sound.)
Stopping power from Wikipedia.
Recoil from Wikipedia.
The physics of firearms from Wikipedia.
A beginners guide to stopping power by Chuck Hawks.
Gun recoil by Sam Hokin.

The Minister of Propaganda makes the Volokh Conspiracy.

If you aren’t a Villain, ignore this post. You won’t get it.

And no, Brian, this has nothing to do with the President or any other conservative.