You're right about us having to produce our own oil. Using food to do it doesn't make much sense considering the oil reserves we have exceed those of the middle east Why expend food on an inferior ethanol fuel when we have plenty of oil and coal of our own? By the time we run out of oil, we can get the auto makers to produce good turbo diesel cars and the biodiesel process working on an economically viable scale THEN we can tell OPEC to go sort out their problems and stay to hell away from the western hemisphere Any arguments and we turn Iran and any of its terror sponsoring buddies into ghost towns with neutron weapons or glass parking lots using regular nukes.

I'm a fan of simply flying over the Somali Coastline with a flight of Spectre Gunships dropping fliers saying "We'll be back, and not dropping leaflets next time." Then if all of the ships and hostages aren't released within a week, go back and and make good on the promise. Level a few pirate villages and the rest will get the idea. Don't leave a single building intact.

A guy I know was involved in that episode. He managed to generate temps in excess of 400 degrees from nothing but sunshine and a number of small polished brass reflectors. Now reflecting that heat to a single spot over a long distance is another story. Not impossible but incredibly difficult. It's the same technology used in some solar generating arrays.

I actually had a former Deputy Sheriff for Dallas County tell me how he and others would take ballots to the local nursing homes and "help" the residents fill them out while on the county payroll. He said that many of the people were entirely too senile to have a clue what they were signing. The deputies were filling them out and having the person scroll an "X" in the signature box with the deputy signing as a witness. The Sheriff he worked for had an incredible following among his elderly constituents.... at least the ones in rest homes.

While I don't know about Ohio, but there were thousands of deceased voters who voted in the 2008 Democratic primaries in the Houston area. Most of them in person. This was rather surprising to some of the widows and widowers who were certain they had buried their spouses years before. THAT is not rumor, that is substantiated fact as reported in the Houston Chronicle.

Welcome to the US. We love immigrants. We don't like illegal invaders or their anchor babies. Immigrants work and make the country a better place to live. Illegal alien invaders are incapable of getting jobs legally and therefore end up costing all of the rest of us so much more.

That sounds good Abn, but I wouldn't want to be the one carrying it. If I were a commander facing it on the battlefield, I'd command my snipers to consider anyone carrying it a target of opportunity to be targeted at will. It doesn't do much good if anyone who picks it up is perforated with a rifle round almost immediately. If my snipers were good enough, I'd tell them to target the weapon itself. I would guess that anyone capable of a 700 meter head shot could reliably hit that weapon out to 1000+ yards. While a single rifle round through the weapon might not detonate the rounds inside, it will almost certainly render the weapon into a very heavy, but classified, paperweight. As I'm sure you're aware, most sniper fire in Iraq and Afghanistan is coming from within 200 yards from well concealed positions such that putting rounds through the weapon is almost like shooting fish in a barrel. Think about how easy it would be for you to hit a weapon that sized with a scoped sniper rifle out to 300-400 yards, and have friends who could do it out past 1000 yards. I could do it easily with a decent rifle. If they could get the price down to $20,000 or less per unit, I could see it as a solid investment. Otherwise, I'd rather see the money go to better body armor, better weapons, a replacement for the M9, better commo gear, etc etc etc. BTW I had a few training landings on Sicily North and South DZs myself back in 83.

Amen to that brother. They did make a step forward when they started issuing optical sighting systems. Now they need to go ahead and upgrade to gas piston uppers and 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel rounds. Yes, they have a LOT of 5.56 NATO stockpiled. Use it for the Navy and Air Force security forces and sell the rest to the public via the ODCMP. Then the Pentagon could recoup some of the costs. The M16 series of weapons has it's strong points, but that direct impingement operating system and 5.56 caliber ammo aren't among them. I always said that if we actually did have to go to war in Europe, I'd have the M16 in the jeep for looks, but an AK or G3 in there for use. I know lots of people who have ARs, but I prefer the solid reliability of a gas piston. That and I love how much easier an AK or FN FAL is to clean. I'm also a huge fan of the convenience of a folding stock. A 30 inch long weapon is SO much easier to negotiate entry and exit from a vehicle with than a 40 inch one.

Considering that most people that I've met at tea parties ARE veterans or their families, I doubt most are going to push too hard to cut military spending. I personally have trouble justifying buying this particular piece of equipment for that kind of cost when we have soldiers being deployed with the same M16 series of rifles their grandfathers carried in Vietnam. My cousins weren't fond of them in Vietnam, I wasn't particularly fond of them as a stateside active duty officer, and the same problems that they had in the jungles of Vietnam are popping up in the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iraq. The weapon is too prone to jamming when not kept meticulously clean and the range is limited by the caliber. A simple conversion to a gas piston upper and a heavier, larger diameter round would solve both problems and has proven effective at doing so. How about buying one less XM 25 experimental weapon and buy 50,000 gas pistion uppers in 6.8 SPC or 6.5 Grendel for the same $3.2million and give our soldiers weapons that will work more reliably AND have the range to reach out and touch the enemy? The government could even sell the 5.56 NATO uppers surplus and the people would be lined up to buy them. Hence the government would recoup some of their costs. For those who don't know, the uppers aren't even BATFE controlled items. So anyone in the country could buy one for their military memorabilia collections.

You're right Necronty. All the gold and silver is worthless if you can't stop a person from putting 230 gr (roughly half an ounce, and the weight of a 45 caliber slug) of copper jacketed lead between your eyes and taking it from you. Didn't have the money to invest in gold, and missed the chance to get in on the cheap silver. But I did my best to stock up on food, steel and lead.