I don't pass along much from other forums, but I liked one from  "Overheard in the News Room" well enough to make an exception.

Editor 1:  "What did we do before Google?"

Editor 2:  "Journalism."

Reloading note -- .45ACP cast bullets

An experiment with as-cast and unlubricated .45 ACP bullets did not work well.  We fired just over  50 mild --c. 725 fps -- rounds  last week. Accuracy was acceptable, given that the shooting was pretty casual, and there were no malfunctions.  But the leading was very bad. A stiff brush and Hoppes 9 removed only part of it, and I'm facing the need to use the hydrogen peroxide and vinegar trick.

These were cast from mill-run wheel weights with no additves, and that may be the problem. I read that wheel weights use far less tin and antimony than they did a few years ago.

To avoid the mess of lubing, I'm going to try a new batch made from the harder alloy I mixed last month. If those lead, I'll try pan-lubing and pray that's a solution. I really hate the idea of gettiing into the dedicated luber/sizer mess.

For what it's worth, I've been counting on the Lee  taper crimp die to do the final sizing, assuming it squeezes the bullet into dimension as it full-length sizes the entire finished round.

EDIT: Oh dang. I meant "boolits," of course, not bullets.

Just grumpy, I guess

Maybe it's just the backache, but I am a hostile man this morning, and the thing that's cocking my hammer is the concept of zoning laws. Why the Hell should should a  blob of politicians and their hired hands assume full authority over  everything a home owner wants to do around the place?

Answer: Because the local political blob listens to unfulfilled little old people with nothing  better to do than vote and bitch about  the way other people live.

I propose a better way.  End all zoning codes now. Create one single replacement sanctioning  Prolonged Gross and Insufferable Prickishness in Violation of Contemporary Community Standards.  The penalty for petty  complaints  would be high enough to discourage Aunt Tilly from calling the mayor in a fit of pique about the neighbors' yard-mowing habits.


The new law might also stifle these expensive and endless squabbles about whether your new storage shed will be six inches too close to the property line. What sentient life-form really gives a sweet rat's ass?

(No, nothing personal going on here, though if I decide to publicly explain the back ache I may have a bit to say about a strange disease wherein the mention of docks sends politicians into paroxysms  of applied  idiocy.)

He Speaks

He can be forgiven the pompous tone. Today's commemoration justifies  a measure of formality. But words represent ideas, and ideas have consequences. 


 "If there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: We are one nation — one people — bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals," the president said Saturday ....

...eine volk,  eine reich,  eine fuhrer, Mr. President?*


"One nation" is all right, but, Sir,  we are not "one people."  We never intended ourselves to be a  blob of metabolizing protein. 


The United States  is the  idea of 320 million discrete, individual  human beings, united by the beauty and the logic  of  personal sovereignty and voluntary  cooperation.  The result of that interaction among free men and women  is the nationhood you speak of.


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*Objections to premature Godwinisms duly noted.