Showing posts with label Viable Alternatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Viable Alternatives. Show all posts

Aug 18, 2011

Really, kids, you hadn't oughtta do that

In general, I oppose vandals. But sometimes they pluck a sympathic note on my heart strings.

Down in our capital city the politicians bought the cops a robotic camera  lashup to collect more speed tax administratively, that is, without all that pesky due-process-of-law crap.

It's in a van, and t'other night somebody egged the windshield in an apparent effort to block the camera view.

No suspects, but if they're caught I suggest they be sentenced to windex the glass and promise not to get caught repeating the offense.  Their court records should be expunged if they aren't again caught throwing eggs at robots for 12 consecutive hours.

Aug 7, 2011

Armed peasants

It isn't time for this solution in the United States, but unleashing the peasants may not be the worst idea in the inventory.

Down Mexico way, an enclave of murderers and rapists was getting uppity in the environs of Santa Cruz Tepenixtlahuaca, The village doesn't have many local cops, and the federales weren't much help.  So village elders gave aggrieved citizens a green light for direct action.

The results were not optimum. Among other sadnesses, a kid was killed in the crossfire.

This does not necessarily argue against the villagers' strategy. It does suggest the need for a higher level of tactical training for  Citizens Juan and Diego, and perhaps a weaponry upgrade. (I've spent a little time on the Tehauntapec isthmus, and one of the enduring memories is of small farmers carrying their old single-barrel shotguns on slings made of sisal. Their hearts are right, but -- along with a good small-unit training program --  they need a bit more firepower.)

As I say, using armed good guys to rein in village thugs may not be right for U.S. villages yet. But I suppose if I were in the village of New Orleans I might be thinking about it. Or Washington, D.C.

Aug 3, 2011

By Royal Command

Two identical envelopes arrived in the morning post. Two commands from the halls of the mighty. In large block letters I am directed to OPEN IMMEDIATELY.

Go to Hell.

They contain demands for my annual tribute for permission to own my vehicles and trailers.  Today is August 3. The licenses expire September 30. A statutory grace period delays actual delinquency and penalty until October 31.

My masters are getting cash-flow savvy.  If they can cow me into paying 88 days early, they collect interest and I lose it. Tough luck, citizen.

I know. We're taking about maybe 17 cents cash management advantage, but principle, man, principle. Also entertainment value.

I'll put the still-sealed envelopes into the tickler file. About Oct. 28 I'll stop by the court house and submit in person. I like making the tax collector get her upholstered butt out of her  upholstered chair and actually deal with one of the proles who paid for them.

Gee, it's not even lunch time and I've already committed an act of wanton disrespect to a bureaucrat. Feels quite good, actually.

Jun 13, 2011

Sale! Belgian Browning pistols -- only 27 gallons of gasohol

The great Waterloo gas for guns extravaganza is history after a scant 40-minute run.

Stranded in Iowa, to whom a hat tip, suggests some of us crazy gun freaks get into the business of relieving citizens of those lethal weapons which kill people and cute kitten all by themselves. We should do it for the children.

Jun 11, 2011

Bacon, curried on the hoof

I must be sick. Despite foul weather I am unable to summon up the bile, scorn, and hatred necessary for socially useful blogging. It is a serious case, friends; if I had a  copy of The Sound of Music I would watch it.

Hence this morning's link, to a genuine feel-good story about some diligent kids unafraid of actual work, not panicked at the thought of getting their hands dirty as they prepare for a life's working putting bacon next to our over-easies.

One of the nice things is that any nose rings present would be on the hogs. Another is the illustration that bacon can be beautiful even when  still in its oinking and grunting stage.

Apr 11, 2011

What gun for carp?

This is funny. Hoosiers in action.

The fantasy is inevitable.  I'm in the bow with a Mossy 500 and a case of 12 gauge No. 6's.  Hoosiers Tam, Roberta, and Brigid  man the rails for perimeter security, carry pieces at ready.

---

(Courtesy of  former-Hoosier John of the GMA)

The HMS Astute

Only men who sailed with the HMS Astute crew are qualified to say much about why Able Seaman Donovan cracked while in possession of the SR80. However:

You really shouldn't shoot your officers.  Sure, once in a dozen voyages you'll be thrown together with one who needs to be enlightened in a physical manner. You still shouldn't. It's prejudicial to good order and discipline.

I never did, but the tragedy aboard the hard-luck Astute reminds me  of Mr. Klem. I once promised myself that, when we were both civilians again, I would invite him  to  discuss his calling me a son-of-a bitch for correcting his line-of-position plot. Never did, but, Ensign Klem, if you happen to be reading...

(That's not to say I was totally revengeless. For the longest time I let him send his unedited course and speed recommendations to the bridge, hee hee. It is my understanding that this resulted in a number of discussions between the young NROTC officer and our captain.)

Apr 2, 2011

Even if you don't like what those people do

There's a certain unease in citing this opinion piece by a recovering homophobe politician who may have finally decided it's catastrophically wrong to screw up our constitutions with limits on individual rights.  Jeff has, perhaps, come to understand that the purpose of a constitution is to limit government power.

Jeff left the Iowa senate and opened a "media relations" operation. He is now somehow connected with One Iowa, part of the national coalition of weepers who, among more noble goals, want to turn the gay-lesbian-transgendered-etc. bunch into another victim group. If he's being paid, he's not the first ex-pol to shoot for riches by hawking his residual clout to the highest bidder, ideas be damned. Within the limits of my Bing patience this morning, I couldn't learn if he is taking One Iowa bucks.

That said, I recommend the piece. Among other things, he makes a point pertinent to "conservatives" interested in freedoms guaranteed by Amendment Two:

When we start allowing constitutional amendments that limit individual control, and give that control over to the government, we open ourselves up to more limitations on our individual freedom. It's easy to feel so passionately about an issue that you don't look at it objectively, but what happens when the individual freedom we're discussing is gun control or universal health care? We need to set aside the rhetoric and look at the slope on which we're starting to slide.

Mar 18, 2011

Idle reflection

When your site meter goes bonkers it's a fair bet you have been favored with a Tam trackback, and a few minutes with the "details" and "referrals" columns reveal this woman has readers by the hundreds -- at least -- in the worlds of academia and government.

This gets a fellow asking why academia and government continue to harbor so many slovenly thinkers.

Long ago I subjected myself to the study of that branch of the psychological sciences dealing with need satisfaction. Reduced to its basics, the science holds that if a hungry ass sees a pile of hay, it will eat it. Apparently this is incorrect.
.

Feb 28, 2011

Make ready, Gridley

The USS Iowa (BB61)  still floats but faces a wistful destiny as a tourist trap. The old girl is being fought over by two California SSRs -- Mare Island (a Frisco burb), and Los Angeles.

No contest. Moor her in the City of Angels. Go ahead and fill her with your tacky boutiques and souvenir shops.

Just keep the main battery oiled and the powder bags dry.

From LA, the Port of Long Beach is within easy range of the 16-inchers, allowing us to work our will on the container ships from Shanghai, just in case we ever need to declare war on China and /or WalMart. A half-dozen broadsides and we've  wiped out at least half the Middle Kingdom merchant fleet.

(The exit strategy is to get our plastic flashlights and cheap tee shirts from Malaysia.)

Feb 15, 2011

I'll clean the house when it gets cold again.

At least the new plastic Ruger  22/45  goes bang every time you pull the trigger, and the rounds hold in a couple-three inches at 50 feet from a semi-steady braced position.  (Leaning on the truck is our bucolic version of bench rest shooting.) Thirty rounds of el cheapo 36-grain hollow points were fired. Not counting two trigger jerks, all but three or four of them punctured a beverage can of my choice.

The same trip to a piece of DNR land a couple of miles west of Camp J gave me the excuse to run New Dog Libby and see how she  works the brome and cattails. Not bad, but she did let a winter-killed deer distract her.

It isn't spring yet, but the sun is becoming slightly more arrogant, and a chinook  wind is aiding the illusion that winter at 43 North is tucking himself into the history books. It is a day when the Lords of Blast and Fire would not be denied.

Feb 5, 2011

Man against nature

It is in the nature of man to wish to be at a small show about an hour east of here this morning. It is typically a hotbed of loopholes. This is the one where, last year, yours truly loopholed an excellent .30-06 and a pocket full of other shooty trinkets.

Unfortunately, Nature's nature is to subvert such lofty motives, just to keep us humble I suppose.  A sliver of warm front is passing, and with the following clipper, that means all kinds of potential road misery. Light freezing mist and fog are with us now. It's 50-50 whether it will let up or get worse.

My decision is to gather the troops and give it a try. After all, there's a substantial little city about half way. It boasts good ambulance service and a well-equipped emergency room. Yes, it's something like "Here. Hold my beer and watch this," but cabin fever and the prospect of  five days of unbroken Hell-freezing is a powerful motivator.  

We solicit your magic vibes, not only for an uneventful drive, but for several loopholes we can't refuse.

Jan 27, 2011

Baby ballistics

The well-known instigator Tam has me sweeping brass from the living room floor -- .22 Super Colibri brass, to be exact. It is a way passing a few moments of dull winter.



As promised, I dug out the box I thought I'd filed in the "Miscellaneous" corner.

(There are four corners in this gun room. They are labeled "Will shoot," "Won't shoot," "Miscellaneous," and "Other."  But I digress.)

I stuck one in the BL22, stepped to the deck, and let fly. Of such simplicity is fun created.

The Colibiri descends from the old BB and CB short "caps" for .22 rimfires. It's purpose in life is shooting in places where conventional wisdom,  and sometimes the law, say there should be none. 

It looks a lot like the defunct .22 Long -- a Long Rifle case stuffed with a 29-grain bullet. The small difference is that the Colibiri uses a 20-grainer.  The big one is that there's no powder behind the bullet, just a hot priming compound giving you about 500 fps, a low pop instead of a bang, limited range and penetration. However, my lashup buried the bullet to its depth in soft wood 30 feet away, so the Four Rules apply.
--
The North Wind doth blow, so I plot for comfort. I will block the front doors open,  fire out the door, over the deck, across some 20 feet of drifted back yard, into a target, using the  shed as a berm.

The  target? One of those ridiculous little shovels with a four-inch blade and a foot-long handle, sold in better WalMarts everywhere as "roadside emergency tools."  (I gaze at it and  speculate on my probable need, to, some day,  inter a small budgie bird, at roadside, in an emergency setting, in soft earth. More is beyond its capacity. But I digress. )

Ram the handle into the snow and the blade makes a nice aiming point. Hit it and it moves a little.  I make it move 20 times or so, bare-handed and bare-headed in January. Grinning all the way, even at something like eight cents a round, counting the tax.

I can't really comment on accuracy other than that, offhand, I got consistent minute-of-useless-shovel groups according to my examination of the hit marks -- faint smudges of lead.

---










The Calibiri, left, next to a .22 Long Rifle.

The box warns that you should fire these rounds only through a hand gun because, it says, the charge may fail to drive the bullet all the way through the rifle barrel. Then, if you fire a full-power round behind it you'll wind up with Elmer Fudd's barrel  after the wabbit stuck his finger in the muzzle.  I report this at the command of the TMR Legal Review Section.








Jan 18, 2011

Haiti Cheri

The teevee pundits are all over themselves wondering why Baby Doc came home.  The dunderheads. Two simple explanations cover it.

1. He's run through what he stole prior to 1986 and needs to replenish the numbered accounts.

2. Not even the French could stand him anymore.

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And isn't it weird to think that if the cheering throngs who greeted him at Port au Prince put him back in power, it might represent an improvement on what those poor bastards have suffered in past  quarter century?

Jan 16, 2011

Sunday Mission

It isn't usually this bad, although it will never win a New Yankee Workshop award for compulsive neatness. Too many late fall projects -- plus the tendency to toss stuff into the shop just because I can't immediately think of a better idea -- have left it in this chaos. I couldn't put my hand on a  two-inch C clamp if my life depended on it. 

And so to work. The Knipco is drinking kerosene, and in a few minutes it should be warm enough to turn to out there.

If I post an "after" picture today, you'll know I was diligent. If not, you can ask me which book I decided I must read immediately.




Sep 8, 2010

Range Note

The tourists were gone and the locals hard at work, leaving the range empty yesterday. Daughter, son-in-law and old man took advantage and monopolized the 25-yard range for a couple of hours, shooting the SS Colt 1911 and some of the guns that don't see enough use.

Dave favored the Winchester '94 but  did his best work with the 1911 -- one group just under four inches with one in the x-ring, making for a near tie between spouses.  I decline the honor of referring the  point about who shot better.

Then there was the BL22, a rifle I like a lot and one I would nominate for a  high place in the list of best-machined lever-actions ever. We didn't get compulsive about measuring the Browning's groups, just ran 60 or 70 rounds through it Chuck Conners style, fast and offhand.

My personal satisfaction peaked with the three-screw SA .22. You may recall me grousing here about the shoddy Ruger work and non-existent customer service installing the "safety" conversion. The home-brew fix  worked fine. My only regret is forgetting to bring the Stetson to round out the six-shooter and Buscadero rig. Next time.

---

For what it is worth, these two young folks are not totally unknown as players in the MSM, and you can safely bet that they won't let some cop or Brady-ite  get away with calling a 10-22 an assault rifle in their pages.

Not everyone can be lucky enough to raise a weapons-aware news kid, but you can always invite one  to go shooting with you.

Aug 27, 2010

Show Time

We'll be in Sioux Falls tomorrow for one of the better loopholes in the country -- the Dakota Territory Gun Collectors Association Loophole. This is not  their biggest show of the year, but it's always an interesting one with hundreds of classic levers and SAAs along with more modern shootery. I have no plans to loophole anything, though I really should  because my recent efforts to annoy Senators Harkin and Schumer haven't been effective,, i.e., no subpoenas whatsoever in the mail lately.

Maybe I'll find a a beat up 12 gauge double  I can bubba up like the single that came out of the shop last week. That should be twice as provocative, raving dangerous,anti-gummint  gun fanatic-wise.

It is just so hard these days  to be recognized as a leader in the counter-revolution.

Aug 25, 2010

Root Hog or Die

Most of us, even my fellow raving libertarians, are somewhat more compassionate than that toward  unfortunate people -- at least the poor who give productive living a diligent shot.

The Unwanted Blog offers a suggestion. We end the food stamp program on grounds that it is routinely abused. (I venture to add that it is also part of the federal and state Full  and Lucrative Employment  Program for  otherwise unemployable bureaucrats.)

He suggests we offer actual food instead, namely the "meal loaf" made famous by Lockup for bad guys who won't behave even in prison. It is a complete meal all done up in a blender. Think of ham hocks, peas,  bread, a spud, and your dessert brownie  all happily homogenized and served at  armpit temperatures. Your coffee is poured over the whole shebang.  Why not? The Hope is to Change hunger to good nutrition, and the meal loaf will do it.

Which provides the peg for a story.

-0-

Marv M.and I were undergraduates at a northeast Iowa university*  where we pursued BAs while always working at at least two jobs.  I tended bar, worked in the college electrical shop and made a pittance teaching scuba. Still, tuition, books, rent, interminable fees, and the cost of keeping my '56 Ford on the road kept me broke. OK, so the occasional coed played her pocket-emptying part, but, hey, a man must be part of the passions and actions of his times, right?

So I can't imagine that one spring day I trotted on down to Olson's Sporting Goods on the bank of the Cedar River and bought a WW2 Polish Radom for about $30  (sigh). **  I suppose I was motivated by being, for one of the few times in my life,  a walking gun-free zone.

Mr. Olson was a kindly soul who made a fair living  is his sprawling river bank shop selling hunting, fishing, and camping gear. He also rented boats and had a scuba compressor.  The benches along his sea wall were routinely occupied by bank fishermen, trying out his bait, drinking his beer and pop and tossing the empties into the black water. All this began to coalesce to our benefit  when he grumped that one of his rental customers, trying to replace a shear pin, dropped a ten-dollar prop into the Cedar. (Why didn't the a**hole row back and let me fix it here?" )

He wondered if  I'd be willing to dive for it for half the value, my 15 minutes as Travis McGee. Sure.

I didn't find it, but mucking around in the silt revealed the most amazing trove of pop  and beer bottles, worth a solid  five cents each anywhere fine beverages are sold.  Air was a dollar tank,  and at depths involved -- around ten feet -- a tank lasted well over an hour. So the the profit margin was good. We mined that lode four or five times, Marv tending a line for me and hauling up booty, me working the rocks and mud by feel.

A typical dip yielded 100 bottles and  more, call it five bucks after air expense. Five dollars would swap for a couple pounds of fat  hamburger, a can of tomatoes, a big onion,  and two boxes of Creamettes, with a little beer change left over.***  That was the year I learned to cook Hungarian. That was another year  in which we didn't often go hungry.

---

If this sounds like a BS pitch for retroactive nobility, so be it. It happened, and I have taken the lesson seriously to heart. In fact, it colors  my views on social justice to this day, even to modifying my opinion about  meal loaves for the poor.

Anyone who goes diving for deposit  bottles in order to make  goulash can still get food stamps.

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* -- Actually, it was a pretty good college with pretensions and eventually  became a half-assed university.

** -- Buying a 9mm in those days carried the perceived risk that you might have trouble finding ammunition for that oddball Eurocaliber.

*** --  For those who find this unbelievable, remember that it was in the days before Lyndon Johnson read John Maynard Keynes and learned he could hide the cost of the Vietnam War and his Great Society by installing a Borg-Warner overdrive unit in the presses. Later presidents have, of course, giggled with delight at their inprovisations on the theme.






Jul 29, 2010

Arizona and the Feds

And so the judge says "no" to Arizona. By extension,  the denial of local authority here  also applies to at least eight other states who are in one stage or another of doing as Arizona tried to do.

It's tempting to get off a line or two about Judge Bolton as a Clinton appointee, but she was nominated by John Kyl, who sports the sanity of a Midwest upbringing. His dad even performed  as an Iowa congresscritter  (R) and was not indicted.   

The lawsuit will proceed at a boring pace now, but there is a lively battle for public opinion worth our attention.   The AP, and others, speculate this morning that Judge Susan is telegraphing a message that that the Obama Administration will not tolerate uppitiness from the states. The item cautions that her suspension of all that really matter in the Arizona immigration law will chill similar sentiments on other states.

Could be, Could also not be. It depends on how serious we slathering freedom-freak libertarian types are about nullification, and here I stand on the brink of  a dangerous position.  Nullification  has an ugly  ring of facile nostalgia for the days of black slavery. So does its cousin, interposition. Neither doctrine justifies defending a  massa-servant relationship of one class of American citizens to another nor of the old Jim Crow laws, nor of government-mandated racial segregation. Nullification, as the term is used here, is not a means of attacking a race; it is an ambition to protect a nation.

It may bring life to a theoretical dispute about the the right of a political subdivision of the United States to protect its citizens from a serious local threat, even though the peril may result from politically inspired federal action, or inaction.

---

Citizens of basket-cases posing as countries flee their thug-ridden homes to places like The United States because they are driven by economic desperation, and because they lack the will to organize for the redemption of their own home lands.  They find it more convenient to follow the coyote across the border to a place where the natives have already made the necessary sacrifices to create a land of relative freedom and opportunity. 

The crossing is, of course, illegal. National law makes it so.  We were told repeatedly that the people of Arizona enacted a border control measure which mirrors the federal statutes only because Obama and his predecessors, hand-in-hand with rabbitty national legislators, lacked the courage to enforce the laws they, themselves, enacted to re-assume control of our southern boundary.

As the case oozes  through the court system, perhaps the Arizona body politic could instruct its law enforcers to suspend dwelling on the statute Judge Susan finds wanting.

Enforce the national law.

Can do? Sure:

the law on this question is quite clear: arresting aliens who have violated either criminal provisions of the INA or civil provisions that render an alien deportable "is within the inherent authority of the states."

The first difficulty I see with this form of practical nullification is perhaps one hundred thousand criminal complaints making an untidy mess in the office of the federal attorney for Arizona between now and Labor Day. If this happens, I will lose no time in sending him a card expressing my profound sympathy.