The reason the United States will never be successfully invaded and occupied is not necessarily the size and efficiency of its standing army, air force and navy.  It is the armed citizen, the policeman, the target shooter and the simple men and women who take their rights under the second amendment seriously.

The Minutemen of the Revolutionary War are still with us today, passing us on the street, across from us in the local diner, or working in their every day jobs.  Ready today, as then, to stand up and defend their land.

After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941, they could have sent their troop ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started. The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River. Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships all fighting the Germans.

So, why did they not invade?

After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question. Their answer|...they know that almost every home had guns and the Americans knew how to use them.

The world's largest army... America's hunters! I had never thought about this. A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion: There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin. Allow me to restate that number. Over the last several months, Wisconsin 's hunters became the eighth largest army in the world. More men under arms than in Iran .. More than in France and Germany combined. These men deployed to the woods of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed. That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan 's 700,000 hunters, all of whom have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

The point? America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower. Hunting -- it's not just a way to fill the freezer. It's a matter of national security.

Thanks to Maggies Farm for this bit of wisdom.

Great fun making fun of enviro-nutcases, as long as a frequent and emphatic use of the F word doesn't offend you. 

Heh, this is one funny picture.  Yeah, guys, governing the country can be a tough job, and you don't have to like each other.  I say put them both down for a nap, cause they're starting to get a bit cranky.

Your Thursday morning cup of joe.

Lightning TO from Jon Simonassi on Vimeo.


I enjoy watching the little balls of plasma that dissipate beautifully in the air in the instant after the lightning finishes striking.

Epic geography fail.  Did these people ever graduate from elementary school?  And the editors...just as much at fault for letting this laughable error get on the air.  CNN = joke.

Hmm, this looks pretty good.  I'll have to give it a go this weekend.

Muslims, such fabulous people.  This guy, if he and his boys get control of Egypt, will indeed cause a war, that will result in the destruction of his own land.  But that won't bother him at all, since violence and blood is what he is about, although he calls it Islam and sharia.

Mondays, they're like that.

They weren't even recognized by science until they were photographed from the space shuttle in 1989, but now the odd phenomenon of red sprites are being photographed by amateur photographers. There is even a website for them.  

Forming above large thunderstorms, at the edge of space, their genesis is poorly understood.  They occur most often in bunches, at about 80km high, when a strong lightning bolt draws a charge from a cloud near the earths surface. Electric fields then shoot to the top of the earths atmosphere, and the result is a sprite.

Here below are some fine captures from backyard sprite hunters.  

Here is a handy chart to show how to watch for a sprite.  I must say that armed with this knowledge, I plan to keep my eyes open the next time a thunderstorm marches across the valley.  I'll have the camera battery charged, the ISO setting high, and the remote shutter release primed and ready.  Hopefully I can capture such a crazy sight myself.

Yeah, some of that.

The kids wanted to do a photography expedition this Saturday, so we manned up and arose at 5:00 am, got in the car and drove out to the delta and two little towns, Locke and Isleton.  We spent most of the early morning wandering the streets of these tiny burgs, snapping away.  Other than getting up at that ungodly hour, we had a great time, and scored some decent images to boot.

Saturday porch pictures