Thank you, Raizy.  I had not previously delved too deeply into the Marranos.  Your timing is impeccable, though; I just bought an album by the band DeLeon, which, according to their website, "uses their own distinctive style of rock to transform ancient Sephardic folk music into a sound that is both brand new and centuries old."  I've heard good stuff about them, but haven't listened to the album yet.  This afternoon seems like the perfect time!

And you are all very welcome. It's good to be back!

That almost makes it worse.  Can you imagine how much dig into the wrist that the recoil would cause?  Egads!

That glove might work best for an agent with no middle finger.  I'd hate to be the guy volun-told to test that thing at the range.

It sure would be nice if Breitbart had not cherry-picked DoD's statement.  The prohibition against proselytizing in uniform already exists; the Air Force has just never enforced it.  The Fox Radio link actually has most of it towards the middle of the page.

There are two very large points being missed, here.  The first and largest is that we are, by our very nature, as hierarchical an organization as one can have in our society.  We're like that for a whole host of very good reasons.  Any proposed enforcement of current policy - which is what this is - regarding proselytization within the ranks is geared towards curbing unwarranted pressure from leaders on their subordinates.  That's a good thing, and it can be no other way given the nature of our organization.

The second point is that there's no change in policy, real or proposed, to the chaplain mission.  None.  Chaplains cannot proselytize, period, the same as it's always been in the modern military.  Nothing has changed.

Again, you are absolutely incorrect.  You are aware that Sufism is both a movement and a sect, aren't you?  And that a plurality of the world's Muslims ascribe to at least some of its tenets?  That Quranism is a philosophy of Islam, and a widespread one, at that?  I would at least hope that you are aware that most of the "1.5 billion Muslims" -- a faulty number if there ever was one -- don't live in countries that support terror, or even tolerate it on their soil.

I forgot about that!  Thanks for bringing a smile to my face.

Ugh.  You've driven me to Alka-Seltzer.

He's wrong on all counts.

1. Iran and its proxies infiltrate this country every year, primarily via our southern border when those agents really wish to avoid notice (i.e., they're carrying money, guns, drugs, etc).
2. The assertion that Iran does not have weapons-grade nuclear material is ludicrous.  They've had plutonium for twenty years and have been refining uranium on an express timescale for the last ten.  And until very recently, the IAEA has been notoriously lax in its monitoring duties.
3. All countries mentioned except Afghanistan and Pakistan live in abject fear of Iran, even if they sometimes cooperate on specific goals.  Iran and Pakistan share nuclear technology and material, as well as intelligence TTPs, and both use Afghanistan for natural resource exploitation.

It's gotten worse since I enlisted in 1999, I know that.  Two things really stick in my craw about our contracting:

1. End of FY "use it or lose it" budgeting;
2. Inflexibility in spending and contract purchasing, particularly for expendable items.

I put together a pretty good estimate of statewide Company-level waste from #1 two years ago, based on my own Company and extrapolated out, and presented my numbers to three levels of Command within my organization (we were in a budget crunch at the time).  What did I get? 

Crickets. 

The very next week our Recruiting and Retention branch sponsored a four-day retreat in Savannah for every recruiter in the region so they could burn through their budget before the new FY.  This at a time when our line units couldn't shoot for an entire quarter because they couldn't afford ammunition.

Waste has become part of the culture, from the Feds on down.  Something has to change, and soon, yet all we get from leadership is a bunch of shrugs.  At what level does someone start changing system policy?  Who is able and willing to say enough is enough and make it stick?

Tricare is great!  If you can find a doctor who takes it, that is.  And it's within your region.  And you don't mind paying up front, with reimbursement to (maybe) come in six to nine months.  And you don't mind that covered treatments, procedures, and medications change every quarter without notice.

Other than that, it's awesome.

That is completely ahistorical.  Without even looking at the historical record, that statement is absurd on its face.  When do you think Sufism arose?  Or the Ahmadiyya movement?  Or Quranism?  Or even the modern Islamist movements that are the root cause of so much strife, which are newer than the other three?  Both Wahhabism and Salafism are less than 300 years old, and the scholarship they use to justify their continued existence as spiritual movements has mainly been written within the last 80 years.

In answer to your question KP, we absolutely need to reevaluate our posture.  The Right is far too defensive of military spending, to the point that even basic cost savings are ignored.  I'm not going to get into our insane contracting policies here, but take this as a case in point: FN just won the Army's service rifle contract. 

How did they do it?  They underbid Colt by roughly $550 per unit.  That's half the cost of Colt's rifle, and it's roughly commensurate with what one would expect to pay for the same rifle at a gun store (before the latest round of panic buying, of course).   There are quite literally tens of thousands of smallish, long-contracts just like this that could use the same review; $10 million here, $30 million there, $84 million over there... it all adds up to give us a terrifically bloated budget.  And it makes no sense, given the pace of technology and the fact that most of what we use is readily available on the civilian market.  Those of us who actually use this stuff regularly have been screaming this for years; hopefully we're finally being heard.

Grr.  I can barely listen to The Gun Dudes anymore because it saddens me so to hear about the great fun they all have shooting IDPA.  Which is all they seem to do, the lucky dogs.

I may not be able to shoot competitively, but I take consolation in the fact that I don't have to suffer through metro-Atlanta traffic.  The worst I have to deal with is visiting Flo-Ridas stopping in the road to take pictures of cows.

One of the few downsides to living in the sticks is that the closest range set up for IDPA is at least two hours away.  Damn these beautiful mountains!

If there's such a thing as a fundamental rule of human psychology, it is this:

Ban a behavior to get more of that behavior.

This is a terrible idea.  Shah Reza tried the ban and it was used as a rallying point for young Iranian women in 1979.  The Turks did it, now the veil is everywhere.  The French actually tied the veil to criminal prosecution, and now wearing it is openly flaunted outside the banlieus. 

Let business handle this.