The AP tells us:
A widening dispute between the president and the nation's judiciary is at the center of the uproar over a constitutional declaration placing Morsi above oversight of any kind, including by the courts.
Dang. Democracy in the Middle East fails again, and we are all astounded.
I hate radical solutions, but I fear we must send Susan Rice to Cairo with a page of talking points.
Personally, I blame the video.
Nov 28, 2012
Nov 27, 2012
A little gun lust
Next Saturday morning is reserved for a lethal weapons bazaar out in the country, a backwash farm not from from the head waters of Stony Creek where Inkpadutah's band of Wahpekute Dakotas liked to hunt elk when they were not busy killing white people for stealing their land.
Nothing on the auction goes back as far as the ~ 1855 to 1865 period when old Inky was making a pest of himself in these parts. Only the Colt D.A. .38 comes within a long generation of being contemporary. It could be a model as early as 1892 or as late as 1905, the latter only as a USMC variant. It took Colt a long time to get this one right, especially to make the cylinder turn the right way. I owned one decades ago, flimsy lockwork, impossible trigger, and all.
The lineup, with the three that interest me in bold:
GUNS: Mossberg Model 185D-B 20 ga. bolt action, 2 3/4" chamber; Winchester 3030 Model 94, used very little; Marlin Model 19G, 12 ga. pump shot gun w/long barrel; Marlin Model #37 -22 pump rifle; Colt DA 32 (sic) w/case & US issue holster, was Jim's dad's WWI issue; Rohm 22 Magnum Model 66; Ruger 22 long, auto.; Colt Huntsman 22 long rifle, auto; WWI steel helmet; WWI gas mask; 1917 Camp Dodge pic.; 1917 Soldier's Handbook; lrg. military shell
World War 1 is a bit outside my interest, probably because I have never fully shaken the vague notion that Mrs. Wilson may have chosen the wrong side. Kaiser Bill wasn't really an evil dude, and it might have been useful to have a bunch of snobbish Prussian junkers between us and Joe Stalin in the middle third of the 20th Century. God knows the Frogs and the Brits weren't all that useful.
Still, the Colt is a bona fide U.S. Military relic, so maybe I'll bid even though it was a miserable design first built for a pipsqueak cartridge. Also, this example is rough.
So is the Colt Huntsman, but I'll try for it anyway. In the first place the one already resident in the local vault is lonely. In the second, it will make my friend K grit his teeth in jealousy again, and that's worth something. :)
The Marlin Model 37 would likewise make good company for the M-38 already in hand. They're fraternal if not identical twins, and a sweeter little rabbit gun/plinker never existed.
So, we'll see, but I'll show up at Dick's auction prepared to be disappointed. Our agrarians are flush this fall with crop money, drought disaster money, ethanol mandate money and Lord knows what else from the generous hands of His Ineptness and master gardener Tom Vilsack. This tends to make them excitable at auctions.
Nothing on the auction goes back as far as the ~ 1855 to 1865 period when old Inky was making a pest of himself in these parts. Only the Colt D.A. .38 comes within a long generation of being contemporary. It could be a model as early as 1892 or as late as 1905, the latter only as a USMC variant. It took Colt a long time to get this one right, especially to make the cylinder turn the right way. I owned one decades ago, flimsy lockwork, impossible trigger, and all.
The lineup, with the three that interest me in bold:
GUNS: Mossberg Model 185D-B 20 ga. bolt action, 2 3/4" chamber; Winchester 3030 Model 94, used very little; Marlin Model 19G, 12 ga. pump shot gun w/long barrel; Marlin Model #37 -22 pump rifle; Colt DA 32 (sic) w/case & US issue holster, was Jim's dad's WWI issue; Rohm 22 Magnum Model 66; Ruger 22 long, auto.; Colt Huntsman 22 long rifle, auto; WWI steel helmet; WWI gas mask; 1917 Camp Dodge pic.; 1917 Soldier's Handbook; lrg. military shell
World War 1 is a bit outside my interest, probably because I have never fully shaken the vague notion that Mrs. Wilson may have chosen the wrong side. Kaiser Bill wasn't really an evil dude, and it might have been useful to have a bunch of snobbish Prussian junkers between us and Joe Stalin in the middle third of the 20th Century. God knows the Frogs and the Brits weren't all that useful.
Still, the Colt is a bona fide U.S. Military relic, so maybe I'll bid even though it was a miserable design first built for a pipsqueak cartridge. Also, this example is rough.
So is the Colt Huntsman, but I'll try for it anyway. In the first place the one already resident in the local vault is lonely. In the second, it will make my friend K grit his teeth in jealousy again, and that's worth something. :)
The Marlin Model 37 would likewise make good company for the M-38 already in hand. They're fraternal if not identical twins, and a sweeter little rabbit gun/plinker never existed.
So, we'll see, but I'll show up at Dick's auction prepared to be disappointed. Our agrarians are flush this fall with crop money, drought disaster money, ethanol mandate money and Lord knows what else from the generous hands of His Ineptness and master gardener Tom Vilsack. This tends to make them excitable at auctions.
Nov 22, 2012
Thanksgiving
There's nothing like a Thanksgiving Dinner with old friends to make a fellow thankful to live in a time and place where, on one day each year, wretched excess feels just right.
Nov 21, 2012
Quote of the Day: Tam on the Flippy Lindsay Stone
Why do we "blog," people?
For attention, of course. Is it possible to find a "post" -- or, for that matter, any piece of writing, anywhere, in any medium -- which doesn't announce in one way or another, "See how cool I am?" Not to worry, fellow writers. A sin so universal is no sin at all; like gravity, it is a natural fact, something to which we accommodate ourselves.
But we use and abuse our keyboards for other reasons, causes beyond the human desire for one 15-minute period of personal fame after another.
In this libertarian-ish corner we emphasize mocking authoritarians. Strip the pretentious bastards bare. Lock them in stocks on the village green. Joyfully invite public attention to their warty morals. It is a vital public service.
We have the good fortune to exist under a Constitution which protects our rights to the most forceful speech and gesture from criminal prosecution. This includes you and me calling President Obama ugly names, and it includes Lindsay Stone.
She's the thoughtless bitch who deemed it harmlessly cute to be photographed at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, flipping off something or someone. The internet made her famous, then infamous, and she slithered under the First Amendment blankie. That's her defense against being arrested, and I glory in the fact that she has it.
At the same time, I would shed no tears if Fortune punished her with a loathsome disease, perhaps severe adult-onset acne. Her attention must be engaged with the notion that some things, however legal, mark her as a thickhead whose taste and judgement ceased developing about the time she was potty trained.
Now, we can do only a little to alter the fact that obnoxious numbskulls exist among us and that the internet gives them power, or at least wide exposure. But we should try. That's where discerning writers come in, encapsulating the concept in a couple dozen words which even Lindsay might one day understand.
It's the difference between lighting up next to a "NO SMOKING" sign, and lighting up next to a "NO SMOKING" sign in a pediatric lung cancer ward. One's rebellious, the other's reprehensible.
.
For attention, of course. Is it possible to find a "post" -- or, for that matter, any piece of writing, anywhere, in any medium -- which doesn't announce in one way or another, "See how cool I am?" Not to worry, fellow writers. A sin so universal is no sin at all; like gravity, it is a natural fact, something to which we accommodate ourselves.
But we use and abuse our keyboards for other reasons, causes beyond the human desire for one 15-minute period of personal fame after another.
In this libertarian-ish corner we emphasize mocking authoritarians. Strip the pretentious bastards bare. Lock them in stocks on the village green. Joyfully invite public attention to their warty morals. It is a vital public service.
We have the good fortune to exist under a Constitution which protects our rights to the most forceful speech and gesture from criminal prosecution. This includes you and me calling President Obama ugly names, and it includes Lindsay Stone.
She's the thoughtless bitch who deemed it harmlessly cute to be photographed at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, flipping off something or someone. The internet made her famous, then infamous, and she slithered under the First Amendment blankie. That's her defense against being arrested, and I glory in the fact that she has it.
At the same time, I would shed no tears if Fortune punished her with a loathsome disease, perhaps severe adult-onset acne. Her attention must be engaged with the notion that some things, however legal, mark her as a thickhead whose taste and judgement ceased developing about the time she was potty trained.
Now, we can do only a little to alter the fact that obnoxious numbskulls exist among us and that the internet gives them power, or at least wide exposure. But we should try. That's where discerning writers come in, encapsulating the concept in a couple dozen words which even Lindsay might one day understand.
It's the difference between lighting up next to a "NO SMOKING" sign, and lighting up next to a "NO SMOKING" sign in a pediatric lung cancer ward. One's rebellious, the other's reprehensible.
.
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