Bush Jumps the Gun on Obama Terror Regime

…and the Dow closes almost 700 points down. I’ll quote it again, folks:

…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Scary times…

Is someone doing a real life remake of “Seven Days In May”?

Meh. We will always need musical theatre.

This has been happening for DECADES and there are two stories – the militarization of local cops through new federal programs to provide them with martial ordnance and training – and the increasing sense of domestic mission among thought leaders in the military, running under a lot of different guises like ‘Operations Other Than War’ and driven by thought-leading intellectuals at the armed forces colleges and research centers who saw the possibility of identity politics engendering domestic terrorism, imagining scenarios such as 9/11 and outright urban warfare in the states being fought between, say, DeMolay and the Gay Brigades. A lot of the regulatory barriers to involvement of the military in domestic law enforcement and domestic affairs were really torn down in a series of findings, directives, amendments in the 1980s and 1990s. It really is an issue, but rolling it back now would take the force of a very persuasive administration working full-time to get the average voter to understand how eroded the barriers between martial force and civic life have become and why that is perilous. One fellow, judge adjutant, I forget from where, maybe Nebraska, Air Force, had his career go into long stall mode when he wrote a piece on the Origins of the Military Coup of 2012, a letter ostensibly written by an officer from his prison cell to his military academy classmates after a failed attempt to halt a coup that installed a military junta. It was footnoted – all with factual reports. If the ACLU wants to advance this campaign, they would do well to find the military personnel who are terrified of the prospect of being hauled into domestic conflict – especially now after seeing the horrors their men inflicted and endured in Iraq.

I blame this entirely on that Soviet wimp Gorbachev. As long as the US military could trot out the specter of nuclear war against the evil empire of the USSR nobody whined and moaned too much about the massive wealth disappearing into the maw of the military-industrial complex. Once the frightful Soviet bear turned out to be as insubstantial as a puff of smoke the US military had to find a new way to keep the dollars flowing. They couldn’t turn any other nation into such a viable threat.

What better way to stay relevant and fully funded than to initiate the new war against terrorism both domestic and foreign?

That’s 20,000 more soldiers who won’t be looking for OBL and his ilk. What will they be doing when there’s not an OKC or Katrina happening? Strip searching hotties at the airport? Checking fishing licenses? Making sure you got a tarp on your load on the way to the dump? It sure won’t be teaching reading, history or phys ed in low income schools.

@Benedick: The Allied prisoners put on shows in the German Stalags.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: The scope of the disaster that has hit international finance, and the economy of the industrialized world, is so off the charts, so inconceivable to someone immersed in the conventional thinking, that I think, so far, the reactions of those who are supposed to know about these things have been shock, panic, denial, not denial, maybe, just “this does not compute” incomprehension.

Today, the market apparently reacted to yet more reports being issued that just quantized what happened in October. I was screaming about it in October, because I was hearing and seeing day to day statewide sales reports from my industry, it fell off a cliff. And apparently the same was true for many industries.

You know, they didn’t know it was a “great depression” in 1929, they didn’t know until around 1932. It wasn’t deliberate, these things are not in their theories, they cannot deal with them, they cannot see what they have not been taught to see.

I do so hope I am wrong, I really do, I am not normally a doomsayer. The lesson I always take from history is “It has always been thus,” that the state of the world is never really worse than it has been, its just a perception everyone has that all was well when we were young. Take the military’s contingency plans for domestic operations in the event of civil strife, hell, you think during the McCarthy era there weren’t equally scary plans? Civil liberties were curtailed more during WWI than any other time in recent history, the Alien and Sedition Acts anyone?

Right now, they are comparing current economic conditions with 1981-2. I was in college then, I had no idea whatsoever that anything was wrong with the world.

So, I try, I try hard, to maintain my composure, and I remember that I also predicted widespread violence after Obama’s election, the American people are better than I thought, in that respect. I keep firmly in mind that there is an easy trap to fall into, thinking that these are the end times, that the wisest course is to remember, “it has always been thus.”

But I am afraid that this economic crisis is one of those once a century, world-changing events. That its scope and severity have yet to be admitted by any of the mainstream “experts.” Not that they are lying, but that what is happening is beyond the system of analysis that they use, that they don’t yet know that what they thought was true and what they thought was the way things happen, isn’t so anymore.

I hope I am wrong, I sure do. But this looks like real bad times coming, real bad times, like noone in the US has seen since the 1930s.

I am serious about communal living becoming a rational and doable response if it gets bad. Its already happening, been happening for a while, kids don’t leave the nest nowadays, houses have 5 cars in front of them because the young have no ability to find work to support themselves independantly.

If this is a severe event, people will be taking in adult relatives.

Yeah, I do believe it could be bad enough that a commune in New Mexico, RML says he knows the property that would do it, should be something we should think about as a contingency.

And in the end, it would probably be a better, more rewarding life.

@Promnight: I thought of you the whole time I was reading the long article in yesterday’s New York Times about how the independent car dealers are PHUCKED.

@Promnight:

I’m hoping this whole thing gets Americans thinking about exactly what is wrong with this whole disposable, grab-all-you-can culture, but I gotta tell you, Prom, it’s a forlorn hope at best.

@SanFranLefty: If they are phucked, SFL, I am afraid everyone is. Seriously. My industry, in my state, generates one-third of all sales tax revenues. Its down 30%. Businesses nowadays work on a leveraged, last-minute model. Inventory has to move, if it does not move at projected levels, the business very very quickly becomes insolvent, as the costs of financing the inventory cannot be met. You can lay off everyone, you still have to pay the floor plan. And thats true of all retail. So many retailers are gonna go under, leaving so many deserted malls and strip malls, after Christmas, they are all just holding on hoping for the christmas season to save them, and its not going to. DO NOT BUY GIFT CARDS. They will be worthless when the retailer goes into bankruptcy.

SFL, like I just said, I don’t want to be a doomsayer, but its fucking bad, worse than anyone in the mainstream will say, can say, its inconceivable to them.

Look at the news today, massive reductions in manufacturing in China. That means that the orders for spring are down massively. Thats a fact. It means it will not be better in spring.

Unemployment will explode in January and February, then mortgage foreclosures will explode, because now prime mortgages will go bad as people lose their jobs, and all that housing inventory being dumped on the market at foreclosure sale prices during a severe recession will further reduce real estate prices. What happened in sub-prime will happen across the board. Spiralling ugliness.

I hope I am wrong, but you see, we are going to see something never seen before, a severe downturn, combined with the relatively new business models which stress maximizing leverage, businesses today just cannot handle a downturn, they have no capital in reserve to survive a downturn, the fucking MBA’s have for years been preaching that any capital that is not used to maximal leverage effect is a sinful waste of opportunity. What that means, is that all businesses are conducting themselves like consumers, surviving paycheck to paycheck, and if they suffer a 30% or 50% reduction in their paycheck, their sales, they cannot affford to pay the vig on all that leveraging. Scaling back is no an option, because you cannot scale back your mortgage payments. And everything is mortgaged, thats what leverage is.

I hope I am wrong.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Oh, they will have no option, because that disposable, grab all you can with borrowed money option will no longer be an option. But there will be severe pain as this adjustment is forced on us.

You know who will do fine? The immigrant small entrepenuers, who provide small scale but neccessary local services, gas stations and 7-11s and small apartment buildings, these people operate on the old model, work and scrimp and save, their businesses are not leveraged because that kind of credit was not available to them. And people gotta eat and in a downturn, they need the fantasy of the lottery more than ever. The profit margin for the retailer on gasoline is the same whether its $4 a gallon or $1 a gallon. Many of them will prosper. Home depot, not so much, though one effect of a real estate downturn is that people fix up the house they are in instead of trading up, so maybe small home renovators can survive, too.

But my fear is, still, that this is so much worse than anyone realizes.

@Promnight: Right now, they are comparing current economic conditions with 1981-2. I was in college then, I had no idea whatsoever that anything was wrong with the world.

Oregon was going off the rails right about then — the historic timber economy crashed. (Pre-Spotted Owl, I might add.) Everyone saw it coming, and acted surprised when it happened — you could draw a map of forestry crashing from Germany westward over centuries. But of course fingers had to be pointed, and environmentalists were easy targets.

The effect I’m most familiar with is that college tuition skyrocketed, just after I escaped with my degree. Resident tuition at Oregon universities was about $225 a term when I attended, which meant you could build your future without mortgaging it. Or, more appropriate to me, you could take risks without fearing your finances.

Today you’re staring at about $2,500 a term, which is a tad more than inflation since 1980. And that’s because when the economy fell, so did subsidies. Anti-“elitist” state legislators were more than happy to stiff those liberal campuses, never mind that higher education is one of the state’s best investments in its future.

In any event, the Eighties were a good decade to be a bohemian. Even if the economy was tanking, the cost of living was bearable.

Along similar lines…

Strangely things have gone pretty south in Canada City. The dumbshits in Alberta are shrieking because oil crashed. The miners out west and up north are doing the same because all commodities have crashed. Ontario and Quebec have been in recession for the last six months. And what does leader Maximus Assus aka Stephen Man Boobs Harper say?

“Looooooow Taxes. More deregulation. Don’t need no stimulus package. Don’t need to spend money on infrastructure. We don’t care. Oh and BTW, fuck you opposition, fuck you with a pointed stick.”

Normally that kind of talk is reserved for the majority government. Maximus Assus overplayed his hand and it seems that the minority government could be in opposition in the next week as the Libs and NDP are working out a coalition (?) government with support from the Bloc Quebecois.

Like I said many times, RWers don’t do well in disaster because they lack empathy (in this case for anyone who isn’t rich or who donates to them.) Our historical analogy to Herbert Hoover was the unlamented Bill Bennett.

Bill, meet, Stephen. Stephen, meet, Bill.

@nojo: Nojo, I wrote essays I still have hanging around about how the undergrad boho lifestyle of the 80s was the most fortunate time to live. In 1984, I had a one bedroom apartment that I would not be ashamed to live in today, if I were single, that cost me $190 a month. I made $100 on a good night delivering pizza. UF’s tuition for a year was around $3,000, and I am proud of my alma mater, they have not raised it since then, for in-state residents. I could buy a 6-pack of Old Milwaukee for $1.79. I could go out for a weekend night with $10 in my pocket, buy pitchers of beer for $2.50, 10 chicken wings for $2.00, and leave a tip. And leave blasted.

We did have it good, I always thought so, we were in a situation where it was respectable to be poor, as students, and it was also possible to enjoy life on a poverty budget. I knew then I was lucky, that I was the beneficiary of just being young and alive in the richest nation that ever was in the history of the world, and I wrote essays about how lucky we students should all feel, while people around the world struggled and starved.

First news I’ve listened to in three weeks gives me the disappointing but not unexpected news of Unicorn’s cabinet nominees. Some good some bad, but on the whole I think playing to the “center”, which as we all know is really “mainstream right”.

But I still haz Hope™!

Anyway I’m starting a new job next week, at a startup, where I’ll actually have to work. Still feeling the relaxing glow of three weeks away from everything foul and nefarious about US American Life (i.e., breathing in the fumes of Buenos Aires crazy traffic but not looking at the news at all) and giving thanks to FSM for the blissfully dry cool climate here in Sandy Eggo.

Promnight — love the flowing blond locks!

@Promnight:

Agreed, but my fear is that a people so addicted to immediate gratification, with a world view that despises the poor and victimized will turn lawless and vicious in this brave new world. We are a long way from the decency and dignity of our forefathers.

@Promnight: Ever since high school, I’ve had this sense of things quickly collapsing behind me, as if I was the last to enjoy some opportunity or advantage denied to those that followed.

It started when our school district imposed “competencies” (70s-model standardized testing) for classes starting after mine. And it certainly continued when Jimmy reinstated draft registration for kids younger than me. And definitely after college tuition started rising soon after I graduated.

Oh, and somewhere along there, everybody suddenly wanted to sniff your pee. Except mine.

This isn’t a form of false nostalgia, waiting ten years to wonder what happened to the pinball machines at Charlie’s. These things were happening in the moment, and only by advantage of a pre-JFK birthdate did I seem to avoid them. They all changed for all the wrong reasons, and everyone following me has suffered for it.

@ManchuCandidate: I’m really having schadenfreude about all these countries who are suddenly shocked! shocked! I tell you about how their budgets predicted upon high oil prices are “suddenly” in question. The extremely high oil prices were only with us for a year or two, but gubmint budgets are always based on the best of all possible worlds, where the recent and seasonal good fortune is used as the basis for fantastic projections about surpluses, etc. (Like in the “good old” Clinton era).

Thing is, the drop in oil prices is also very temporary, when reality kicks in it will make $4/gallon gas in the US seem like the good old days. Let’s just enjoy it while we can because the future still portends the same energy-scarcity it always did, and unfortunately the low oil prices have exactly the wrong effect on investment in alternative strategies.

@Pedonator: You seeing my new avatar? I can’t see it yet. She’s the picture of 80s loveliness, I watched a movie she was in a month ago and was captivated, you see, she looks exactly like an old girlfriend, a girl, at the time, way way way over my head. A fluke, she was, I was so a geek, then, in college, chicks like that were unimaginable to me, yet for one month, we had a romance. Not just beautiful, smart, valedictorian of her high school. DAR stock. Wasp princess, slumming with the cook at the restaurant where she was a waitress. Susan. Maybe the worst thing that ever happened to me.

@nojo: I have only escaped piss tests because I am a lawyer, they wouldn’t dare, still. I would freak if I was ever asked to do a drug test. Totally freak, even though I have not taken in an illegal drug, not even a puff, in a year or more, and years before that.

Other than that, I have felt I came just too late. No secretary for me, I was the very first generation expected to master word and type. Dammit.

@Promnight: Typing was still a “girls” class in junior high, but I took it anyway. And good thing I did, because you don’t want to see the lawnmower carcasses I left in my wake during shop.

@Promnight: The day when THEY all have security measures that take a drop of blood upon entrance to the sanctified grounds of the Corporation where we prostitute ourselves for a bit of bread…

…is the day I head off to whatever wilderness is most accessible, dig my field latrine, and hunker down.

@Pedonator: Commune in New Mexico, dude, we could do it, we are not impractical hippies, we are world-wizened practical people who could make it work, if it gets bad.

@Promnight: Goat cheese, Benjamin, we could make artisanal goat cheese.

@Pedonator: Welcome back! I love your new avatar!! My favorite Sesame Street character.
I’m dying to find out… How was Buenos Aires? Did you go to my favorite restaurant? Did you go to Colonia? Patagonia? I am very poor right now so some vacation/food/Malbec/Latin American men porn could help me get along.

@Promnight: I started seeing your new avatar today. BTW, FSM forbid if I were ever asked to do a piss test. On the other hand, I think there’d be one person left to work in my office if they did impose piss tests. And it wouldn’t be my boss.

@Promnight: Problem is, if it doesn’t involve a computer, I’m absolutely useless.

@Promnight: If you didn’t already see it, here’s the article about how dealers are phucked.

P.S. NYT has a Snorg Girl T-shirt ad on the side of my page, I guess in honor of you.

@SanFranLefty: I forgot what your favorite restaurant was, too lazy right now to dig through the files. But suffice to say, we ate marvelously. La Vineria in the San Telmo district was a revelation, one of those molecular gastronomy places but it didn’t go too far, it was just heaven. Though it was a fixed menu the chef even accommodated my pescatarianism!

BsAs was great, I’m not a shopper but I bought lots of clothes and hand-made shoes, and I still have a palpable sore near my vestigial tail from a day of riding horses at an estancia. The last couple of days it got really hot and muggy-steamy, and at that point we were ready to come home. Also our last day there we were in a taxi that just avoided a collision. The two cars behind us (or behind/beside us, as you no doubt know how the lanes are so respected there) weren’t so fortunate.

We went to Patagonia, but just the tip of it and I’m dying to go back and experience El Calafate, Bariloche, etc. Not to mention Salta and Mendoza. We loved Ushuaia though. Meant to go to Colonia but by the time we were back in BsAs we just didn’t have the energy for customs, etc. just for a day trip. Would love to go to Uruguay for a whole trip in itself.

As usual I just got comfortable with my Spanish, and the particular flavor of Argentine Spanish (sh-sh-sh) near the end of the trip.

@Promnight: Two words: cannibal anarchy. Likely, anyone with real money has been banked in Sterling, Euros and Swiss francs since 2005 and is packing up. What will be left for those who can’t get out is to sit on our front porches, armed, waiting for the lights to go out and wait for neighbors to die so we won’t be forced to kill them for food. While the gun fire pierces the soot-clogged night, thick with smokes from fires of furniture for heat and barbeques of the dead, we can entertain ourselves with broadcasts on the handcranked shortwave radios of Sarah Palin shouting scripture and entreating the last remnants to join her for the final stand against satan. In the end, the money will be worthless and people will be fighting each other with sticks and rocks and fire axes over fields of hastily planted potatoes.

@FlyingChainSaw: When does Tina Turner show up?

@Promnight: I have a spiritual affinity for impractical hippies, but I’d much rather join your commune-slash-gated community for cynical refuseniks.

@FlyingChainSaw: As long as we can hoard vodka-tonics and toilet paper, count me in.

@nojo: It will make Thunderdome look like Club Med. @Pedonator: You think there is going to be things like running water left? Liquor stores? Wow!

@FlyingChainSaw: In my post-apocalyptic fantasy, yes, of course.

But for reals I have a large attic and I’m stocking up on Costco-sized bales of toilet paper and cases of vodka, strictly for bartering purposes.

@Pedonator: You think the mob is going to barter? Cement all the windows and tear off any of roof cornices that obstruct your line of fire and stock up on RPGs. That is, if you have your own source of water. If not, find a house with its own water supply, wells are best, on high ground.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: We are a long way from the decency and dignity of our forefathers.
QED.

@FlyingChainSaw: I know my stockpile of luxury necessities is likely to be taken at gunpoint (or sharpened stick-point) at the first possible opportunity, but hey dude, why do you have to be such a buzz-kill?

And on my vacation I was thisclose to the giant aquifer that the Bushes and Moonies are trying to monopolize down at the tres fronteras. I so wanted to steal a five-ton jug of their water and take it home with me but, you know, they’re charging now for extra baggage on the aeroplanes.

ANd if Prom has anaged to depress you completely, you can go read about the coming credit card debacle.
@Pedonator: Welcome back, darling. Missed you!

@Mistress Cynica: Credit crunch? What credit crunch? I still get 3-5 offers a week to increase my credit line and/or foolishly cash “checks” to help me with my Xmas shopping! Maybe I’d feel the crunch if I actually tried to cash one of those checks…?

Anyway I’d love to get a new house, I have some cash and a great credit rating but I’m totally upside-down on my mortgage so I guess I’ll just have to enjoy what I have and wait for the inevitable? upturn in housing prices before I can make my next speculative move!

@Pedonator: I have no debt, my house is paid off, I pay off my credit card balances every month. I put myself through college and law school and I put my kids through college. My financial reward for being a good worker bee is that I’ve seen my “savings” go down the toilet like everyone else’s. The consolations of well-educated irony in this situation are exactly zero.

@Pedonator:
Welcome back.

@Dodgerblue: Right, BushCo has organized the collapse of the economy and subsequent depopulation of the states so the currency will flatline, too. (Cheney’s in Euros.) In a generation or two, their patrons and their progeny can return to buy whatever is left standing for pennies and hire the survivors for slave wages – or finally just enslave them after the repeal of the 14th amendment by a plenipotentiary organized in 2064 to reclaim what the Canadians and Mexicans weren’t able to seize and garrison.

@FlyingChainSaw: The young people I work with seem to think that the Clinton/Bush recession/depression doesn’t affect them — they have 40 years of working life ahead of them. I worry about what those years are going to be like. And don’t get me started on the business community’s suicidal opposition to measures to stop global warming.

@Dodgerblue: They’re insane. If we’re lucky it will just be a multi-generational depression without complete meltdown into cannibal anarchy. The warming trend will hit us with crop failure in a few years and then boxes of oatmeal will go for $100,000 USD. The armed services will revolt and throw off civilian rule to use the ordnance to loot the states of its last food supplies and sell on the black market in trade for gasoline and women. The last stand in the US will between what’s left of the armed services and small communities of truck farmers that will adapt to conditions and organize weather resistant crops for wholly local consumption. The armed forces left in Iraq will denounce fealty to the US government after it falls and reorganize itself into the New Persian Expeditionary Force which will call in nuke strikes in Iran and set about depopulating both Iran and Iraq with biological weapons and securing the oil fields to use as a bargaining chip against the rest of the world.

Texas judge drops all charges against Cheney and Gonzales.

@FlyingChainSaw: “The Almanac of the Dead” by Leslie Marmon Silko (Pueblo girl!) has a harrowing picture of the collapse of US Amerika with white hordes heading south to Mexico. That is one of a handful of books that kept me awake reading all night.

@SanFranLefty: Wuss.

@redmanlaw: Wouldn’t Canada be a better option? They have water, and global warming may increase the amount of their farmable cropland.

Personally, I’m going to hang with the Amish — they’ll be OK.

@Dodgerblue:
Not so easy to get here from the Southwest especially with the Mojave (?) in the way.

Seriously, the Amish and Mennonites might be our only hope, English.

@Dodgerblue: She wrote the book in the late 80s or early 90s, before Things Started Catching Up with Us. I got an early draft from her of one of her character’s speeches on the foundations of Indian law that she sent me after I saw her do a bookstore reading in advance of publication.

@redmanlaw: I used to have to deal with custody claims under the Indian Child Welfare Act, and I think SFL sees those now. That introduced me to some of the weirdness about who’s a tribe and who’s not.

@redmanlaw: Yeah, but most of those escaping from the north won’t be armed. The population in the southwest will be. If you end up with tens of millions seeking refuge south, your biggest problem is running out of ammo to shoot them all and the public health nightmare of tens of millions of carcasses rotting in the sun and tens of thousands of cars abandoned on public thoroughfares. Might be a good time to invest in ammo loading equipment and earth movers.

@Dodgerblue: Obviously, it would be but the Canadians may have an interest in making sure tens of millions of starving desperate armed Americans don’t come across the border. The Canadian federal and provincial governments could sell it as payback for the crimes of 1775 and 1812 and, sensing an opportunity, one or the other or both could move expeditionary forces south to seize and garrison failed states of the disintegrating USA. We may live to see the Fleurdelise flying over Montpelier and Rochester, or at least hear about it on shortwave.

@FlyingChainSaw:
Aside from the faded memories of the idiots who call themselves Loyalists, we won’t take revenge on US Americans but we would politely demand that you go unarmed when you cross the border.

@FlyingChainSaw: I have reloading gear but not earth moving equipment, although I was pointing out an ATV-based bulldozer I saw in an ad to Mrs RML. Too bad her mom is selling the ranch. The had a nice old Ford tractor up there.

Years after the bodies have gone to the earth, the soil will be very rich, like a WWI battlefield.

@redmanlaw: Well, with that equipment, you could end up appointed at least ministry of defense for whatever nation state organizes the governance of Sante Fe and environs when the US disintegrates and the Chinese call in the bonds.

@FlyingChainSaw:
On a related apocryphal note, How to Stay Alive in a Terrorized Hotel.

And Part Two of how to stay alive in a terrorized hotel.

@SanFranLefty: Regarding the tips, I didn’t see “grab an automatic weapon and a radio from a terrorist and move through the building’s HVAC and elevator system, picking them off one by one until the final confrontation with Hans.”

@FlyingChainSaw: As for the farming issue, I was sitting with a tribal leader before a meeting today and he was recalling the days when his village was discouraged from planting individual fields of corn, wheat and other crops by the Bureau of Indian Affairs because “silos all over the country are full of wheat.” The BIA paid the Indian farmers to idle their fields and to fill in the irrigation ditches. My guess is that this was partly to integrate the Indians into the cash economy so they would buy flour and bread at the store.* Here in Santa Fe, our water rates are going so high next summer that people won’t be able to afford to water their gardens with city water. Flowers in blue collar yards could become a thing of the past here soon.

@FlyingChainSaw: That’s why almost all of my sporting arms except for one (a .250 Savage) are in commonly available calibers (.30-06, .30-30, .357 mag/.38 spl., .22 LR, .308/7.62x51mm NATO, and 12 ga.; .243 can be a little harder to come by, and so can 20 ga vis a viz the 12 ga). My next reloading dies will be for the .250 because I can’t always find ammo for my vintage Savage 99 lever action chambered for the .250-3000. Everything else can be had at any Wal-Mart, gun shop or another hunter’s/shooter’s stash.

I don’t have a .223 rifle (i.e., the AR-15, M-4, Mini-14), and won’t be getting one unless someone gives me one. I may get a 9mm semi-auto pistol in ’09, but not a .45 (don’t care for the recoil and I flinch like hell and shoot the dirt in front of me, which is where my foot is located), nor do I have have anything in a 7.62×39 mm, which is the AK-47/SKS round, although an AK would be cool to have.

*And start working for The Man.