Oooooh, That Smarts

The feds say we must do away with children's books published before 1985 in order to avoid the carnage we used to experience when kids licked the lead out of the ink in "Lassie" and similar tomes. Surely you recall that the near-zero survival rate of literate 10-year-olds a generation and more back. Who can forget the mass funerals of pre-teen innocents in the wake of "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." The bodies were stacked high in the corridors of children's libraries everywhere.

And you're not gonna change my mind, but if you happen to disagree, you probably will like a Tamara take on DeeCee's designation of Big Little Books as a pandemic in the making:

I will adapt to my cigarettes getting messed with; I will improvise and overcome if you want to take my bayonet lug away; but I am this close to saddling up and busting caps over The Wizard of Oz.

Keep your slimy, regulation-encrusted hands off my childhood, you bastards. I'm not kidding.

:)

Sex and the Shooter

A prime cause of Mr. Sodini's gory shootup of the health club women was unwanted celibacy. Or so cops, shrinks, and media would have us believe. It's reasonable. I think many of us would become irritable after nearly two unlaid adult decades.

Okay, so we need a new common-sense law. Any citizen unserviced for an unreasonable interval is hereby required to undergo a therapeutic trip to a cat house. And, yes, Obamacare will cover it.

I mean, like, Dude, if it saves just one life....

Cheaper .22 LR

An impulse struck me to check ammo availability as I was passing the local WalMart, and I feel like a prospector seeing color in the pan. Wally W. here is selling Winchester 36 grain coppered hollow points for $16.97 per bulk pack of 555. A few weeks ago in Davenport, Iowa I bought a box of Remington 40 grainers, about $26 for a pack of 525. So Remington cut its bulk-pack count by 25 rounds and Winchester boosted its by five. The marketing titans battle.

The WM clerk said he had "quite a lot" of the Winchesters but wouldn't elaborate. I bought two packs, bringing the strategic reserve to 5,000, and probably should have bought more. Probably will, come to think of it.

So long, Good Dog.

Moose, RIP.

G-Next

A certain 13-year-old demonstrates good form and good judgment. Offered the opportunity to shoot anything in the patriarch's gun room, he immediately chose the sublime U.S. Carbine, Cal. .30, M1.

It didn't end there. The young shooter and the old combined to put a few hundred rounds downrange Saturday afternoon, calibers ranging from .22LR to .30-06. (The latter were from an impressive Savage 110 which may get some Jeff Coopering if I can find a long-relief scope I like.)

The lad is not fixated on firearms. That's good. But he likes them and respects their potential for both good and ill. That's better yet.

Gag

The beer summit was a national embarrassment. As male bonding it was Barney Frank meets Larry Craig.

To answer a doofus-duhh question asked by a million talking teevee heads: Biden was there because the official White House Keeper of the Image wet the bed at the vision of two part-blacks ganging up on one white guy.

Next time, Mr. President, try the Tune-In.

A current outrage

You're invited to visit The Smallest Minority for the latest on third parties trying to shut down commerce and charitable giving in anything they happen to dislike. The villain this time is Pay Pal which pulled the plug on a Soldiers' Angels project. Seems that a firearm was mentioned.

Gore Report

The warming of the globe seems to be on hold this summer.

Two mornings running.--->

Shame on Us

Hardly anyone in this corner of Blogopolis recognized the 55th anniversary of this hemisphere's greatest triumph of socialism, and so I leap into the breech.

Fidel, being somewhat under the weather despite Cuba's universal health care system (which features a public option*), did not speak. Instead, brother Raul sang the praises of socialist solidarity and the terrestrial heaven it spawns.

NPR covered the celebration extensively and reported on El Supremo Raul thusly:

His biggest announcement was a prediction that an aqueduct renovation to provide water every day to Santiago should be completed by 2010. Residents there complain that the water is often out for days and even weeks on end.

And so we understand that socialism is that form of government which, after only 55 years in power, can promise that there will be running water in its second largest city** in only two more years.

Perhaps someone on better terms with Current Administration than I am might mention some of this to Our Leader.

---

*And damned little else, if anything.

**Santiago gets 43.6 inches of rainfall a year, leading to a sort of WTF? moment. I mean, if the unemployed, approximately everyone, were assigned to catch rain in coconut shells and dump the surplus in a reservoir...

Talking to Judge Bean

Ambulance Driver comments about a girl battered beyond recognition by her boy friend:

"It may not be codified into law, but in some places in this country, "the sumbitch needed killin'" is still a viable legal defense." (Let's reopen the hearings and see what a wise Latina thinks of that.)

As a bonus he also gives us: "Remember, the recidivism rate for freshly ventilated girlfriend beaters is zero."

A professor of rhetoric would credit A.D. with admirable idea density in the post and a follow-up. A professor of morals would add that they can be good ideas. A screen printer would visualize a tee shirt with a message on the back, another on the front.

Prickley libertarians

The AP's Adam Geller joined some of our comrades at the Porcupine Freedom Festival. His report is a pleasant read if you appreciate nice, breezy newspaper style. I leave it to the reader to judge whether Geller assumed a tone of amused condescension, particularly toward the shooters and shooting contests.

Mushroom Food

It was a measure of the nation's keen sensitivities on matters of race that the fallout from a disorderly conduct charge in Massachusetts — and the remarks of America's first black president about it — had mushroomed....

---

So says AP, stupidly.

The mushroom results from a President who shot his mouth off on a pending legal situation without having a clue as to what he was talking about.

Economics Stimulates Me

And so does the aesthetic of burning wood.

This is the 2009/2010 supply. It will be supplemented with about $250 worth of propane. Some days I'm just too lazy to build a fire.

Note the assault saw. It's largely as issued by the Stihl Armory, but I've replaced the original carry gear with a a semi-custom Husqvarna OWB rig of high-density polycarbonate. It is awkward when wearing business attire but compensates with a high level of safety. In many years of use, this rig has never caused an accidental amputation.

Every Man a Minute Man

I never enter the woods unarmed. Today's carry piece features the well-proven flintlock system in marine boarding pistol platform from an unknown custom shop c. a. 1740-1820. About .69 caliber, smooth bore. Fully equipped with serviceable flint held in vise padded with bambiite.

Moose

Along the Mississippi River, well upstream of the Twin Cities sprawl, a very nice dog, owned by a very nice couple, is quite ill. Recovery is something of a long shot, but maybe if enough good people send enough kind thoughts in that direction...

I've known her for most of her ten years, and may I say that I have never met a dog quite so ... well ... polite.

But not servile, as several woulds-be alphas learned when they finally crossed Moose's tolerance line.

Illiterate Redneck Gun Creeps

BookFinder.com is one of the net's good resources for out-of-print books, and once a year or so it publishes a report on the top 100 searches of its databases. The most recent one shows four of the top hundred to be dangerously subversive rants by armed Enemies of the State:

Keith, Elmer - Hell, I Was There

Rule, Roger C. - The Rifleman's Rifle: Winchester's Model 70, 1936-1963

Sharp, Philip - The Rifle in America

Howe, James Virgil - The Modern Gunsmith

---

Nice first editions of the Sharp and Howe books are on the Camp J shelves, but I covet a copy of Keith's book. Also of Bill Jordan's No Second Place Winner.

Travis McGee, horologist

"Meyer, the longest 28 minutes in the world begin when you put the brownies in the oven."

We have already assumed the position?

I make a small hobby of reading survivalist and Armageddon novels. One of them I missed long ago and recently read is a 1971 work called Vandenberg by Oliver Lange.

It's a real stinker with one saving grace -- its premise that Americans have allowed themselves to be conditioned to accept any tyranny so long as they are permitted their accustomed creature comforts. This lets Lange get away with a vast plot simplification about the genesis of America slavery in the late decades of the 20th Century. The Russians destroy Washington, then promise the rest of us three hots and a cot, beer, and plenty of games. We shrug acceptance, even of the concentration camps for the serious non-conformists where the treatment is merely undignified rather than brutal.

After this many months of Obamanization, I do not find Lange's premise incredible.

EDIT: It didn't begin with Obama, of course. He's just the most recent messiah of c'mon c'mon and get happy....

Golden Oldie -- New York gun laws

to wit:

"...That every able-bodied Male Person, being a Citizen of this State, or of any of the United States, and residing in this State, (except such Persons as are hereinafter excepted) and who are of the Age of Sixteen, and under the Age of Forty-five Years, shall, by the Captain or commanding Officer of the Beat in which such Citizens shall reside, within four Months after the passing of this Act, be enrolled in the Company of such Beat. . . . That every Citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within three Months thereafter, provide himself, at his own Expense, with a good Musket or Firelock, a sufficient Bayonet and Belt, a Pouch with a Box therein to contain not less than Twenty-four Cartridges suited to the Bore of his Musket or Firelock, each Cartridge containing a proper Quantity of Powder and Ball, two spare Flints, a Blanket and Knapsack; . . ."

An act of the New York state legislature, April 4, 1784

Big Pow Wow on Plains

SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 5:30 p.m. -- GUNS, STEAKS, AND A BIG ROOM FULL OF GOOD FOLKS

Time for the Prairie Land Area annual Friends of the NRA banquet for any of you in southwest Minnesota or northwest Iowa. We hold this shindig at the Hunt Club north of Lakefield, Minnesota, and it just keeps getting larger and larger.

The advance price of $30 gets you a T-bone, a handful of lottery tickets, and an ownership hunk of our pro-shooting work in both states. The profits go toward shooting ranges, youth firearms programs, and wildlife habitat.

We here at the Travis McGee Reader don't ordinarily flog causes other than pure anti-idiotarianism, but the TMR chief propagandist happens to like this bunch of people, so an exception is being made.

I mean, the hair is bad enough

I wouldn't deviate an inch from my path to greet Sen. Orrin Hatch,* as vile an authoritarian theocrat as ever trod the sacred sands of Provo in New Zion. But at this moment I feel kindly enough toward him to make a campaign contribution.

He has just made the wise Latina look the fool on incorporation. No one following the issue can now fail to believe Sotomayor thinks Heller is irrelevant. Under the "rational belief" standard she loves, Heller would apply nowhere except Washington D.C. It is a permissive standard and could sanction your city council banning firearms because of a public health danger to to citizens' hearing. All you have to do is get a petri dish full of politicians and a few Schumeresque judges to agree deafness is bad and there oughtta be a law preventing it.

Hatch did let her off a little too lightly on her conviction that arms possession and use is not a fundamental right.

Not that it will do any good. Barring evidence of cannibalism, she's in. Since I need to look at her the rest of my life, I just wish Ms. Justice Sotomayor would quit getting her hair done at the barber college.

*Namedropping: I've worked with him, however briefly. His personality is as repulsive as his politics.

Hopeful change comes to the prairies

South Dakota has a new U.S. Attorney, a fellow named Greg Johnson who is among the "fine attorneys (who) have distinguished themselves as some of the brightest their profession has to offer," (President) Obama said in a statement.

Greg , 34, has been brightly chasing billable hours for a private law firm since 2005 or so. Previously he was a state prosecutor in Sioux Falls where he distinguished himself by trying "a range of felonies and misdemeanors," according to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader.

He also avows he told his dad to butt out of the appointment process, and U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., can be right proud that his kid made it strictly on his own merit. Nope, no nepots 'round these parts.

I just knew things would get all unicorny under His Obamaness.

How quaint

From some garage or auction sale I have an old window fan, the small one with expandable sheet-metal wings designed to be placed under a sash open about ten inches. It's a supurb idea, particularly to exhaust a kitchen where garlic is popular. This morning mine started wheezing and stalling. I was distraught because they're hard to find. Then I remembered how we used to live and took a look. Sure enough, a little hole in the housing is marked, "oil."

Huh? Well of course I keep a can of 3-in-1 oil handy. Do you take me for a yuppie or something?

Scholarly Report

History reveals all sorts of things, even the probable origin of hoary jokes. For instance, contemporary writer George Ruxton created a composite 1830s Rocky Mountain fur trader named Killbuck who yarned a lament on his bad luck with Indian wives.

"...There wasn't enough scarlet cloth nor beads nor vermilion in Sublette's packs for her. Traps wouldn't buy her all the fofurraw she wanted; and in two years I sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of Jake Hawkins guns -- this very one I now hold in my hands...".

So next time you hear about a guy who got a gun for his wife "great trade, eh," you'll know.

Say what?

The police chief shot one of his officers in the Carter Lake, Iowa, station yesterday. Here's the official explanation as relayed by the AP

"City Attorney Joe Thornton says Police Chief Shawn Kannedy was discussing firearms with two officers on Wednesday when Kannedy’s weapon went off. Sgt. Dan Driver was hit in the torso."

The chief said "go bang" maybe? Sounds more like a finger on the trigger. There's a rule against that, I think.

Sgt. Dan is in the hospital. Chief Kannedy is under suspension. I am pondering the universal government mantra that us poor klutzy civilians should entrust our personal defense to the "trained professionals."

Idly thinking

Is the Obama administration yet bad enough to make Lyndon LaRouche look good?

Truth as We See It

H/T to my buddy John, Chief Officer, GMA

Risque Piece

The heart of this Pelosi pleaser is an Augusta Arsenal rebuild of a 1911. It should shoot okay (not quite done, yet) but the general idea is to irritate the authoritarians.The carbine kit is from the 1980s or '90s, a 16 1/2 - inch barrel and walnut stock serviceable also as an emergency canoe paddle.

Part of the fun is its very illegal appearance. (It is if you install only the stock.)

From the front deck

From the back deck

B'ar

These b'ars are highly classified.

The certainly worser Bert Waisanen

A wire story reporting on the degrees of bankruptcy facing California and some rational states contains this:

"Numerous things look worse than some past recessions," said Bert Waisanen, a fiscal analyst with the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures. "The housing market is worse. Industrial production is worse. Wages are nearly worse."

No punishment is too great for a linguafelon who would construct "nearly worse," and I'm at a loss even to find a label for the assault against both language and logical thought processes. A subjective hypothetical comparison of a non-comparable eventuation resulting in anti-meaning?

To even begin to justify the impossible concept of "nearly worse," his data had to show wages either the same or slightly better, but to say so would have stalled the verbal cavalry charge.

Vocabulary note

One finally gives up and looks up "bling."

It is an unnecessary word and gentlemen should not use it.

The Roadworthy Travis McGee

Janine: "Oh how I hate that goddam car. That goddam stinking car. How I hate it!"

Travis: "Janine had nailed it. People hate their cars. Daddy doesn't come proudly home with a new one any more. ... We hate our cars, Detroit. Those of us who can possibly get along without them do so very happily. ... they are expensive, murderous machines, and they manage to look glassily contemptuous of of the people who own them. A (broken) car is something that (made Janine) whomp (her) youngest kid too hard and then feel ashamed...".

This McGeeism is available in its insightful entirety in Pale Gray for Guilt, p. 15 of the Fawcett printings.

Honduras

By all odds, the Honduran fracas is just another falling out among banana thieves. Nothing much is going to happen beyond the range of the Tegucigalpa teevee cameras if you don't count leftist politicians straining and grunting to present the most populist image.*

So it's okay to play this one strictly for entertainment value, and to that end, TMR offers a Honduran resource.

Or if you happen to be female, maybe you can get the glands in action by summoning up a vision of a bare-chested Obama arm-linked to Hugo Chavez and Danny Ortega, marching on the Palacio as the chorus of thousands brings Guantanamera to crescendo.

If I had a serious bitch about this comic opera it would be against -- you guessed it -- wire services which kept leading their stories with soldiers ousting "the democratically elected president."

As a general matter I do not disapprove of democracy, but as an icon of righteousness it has its limits. I can't recall, for instance, any news items emphasizing that his political foes ousted a democratically elected Richard M. Nixon. Or that the Grand Alliance of 1941-1945 ousted the democratically elected leader of of the Third Reich.

---

*Our President in Washington is not excepted, having missed another fine opportunity for silence.

Well I swan, y'all

Thanks to Roberta we have the very latest on QE2's swan upping. It's a Reuters report, natch, and the Queen's Own editors at one point feel obliged to tell us of "young cygnets."

I report all this mainly because I'm always looking for an excuse to use my favorite label.

Another serving of moonwalk tears

No one bearing four functioning neurons expected early abatement of the hair-pulling, shrieking, face-blackening national grief orgy on the electric teevee, but somehow I expected a little more from the mighty AP newspaper service which still contributes to my support.

The world's largest news operation believes, in this fourth day of Michael's enforced absence, that the most world's most vital story is cops interviewing his doctor.

The frogs disagree. AFP editors judge Janet's demand for autopsy redux as the supremely significant event of this news cycle.

Morbidity saturation alert

Two celebrities, both talented and very lucky, died within the past three days, and already the media are altering my consciousness of Farrah and Michael.

They and I had an excellent working relationship. I never thought about them, and they undoubtedly returned the courtesy. The increasing nausea I feel at the mentiion of either name is a media-driven event.

RIP, the both of you. (And between us, Farrah, I'll miss you quite a little more.)

Sure I will

Suspend disbelief, at least for a while. Missing the title, cast, name of executive producer's mistress's cat, I don't know what I'm watching except that a loincloth-clad guy is poised high on desert rock and wipes out his distant moving target -- a guy pushing a jeep right along. One shot, through the wind screen, between the eyes. The sniper weapon is a US M1 carbine, scoped. Hokay. They'll either justify the odd long-range pop choice or I'll get to grunt a bunch of derisive snorts.

Why yes, it is raining rather heavily. How ever did you know?

EDIT: Coogan's Bluff. Baaah.

SUX*

A faithful reader occasionally mentions the reputation we Northern Plains rurales have for good sense, rational laws, all that salt-of-America stuff. It could be we once did,** but no longer. Whatever authoritarian kumbayah juice is consumed in megaglobia seems to have leeched into our ground water, and Sioux City Sue is about to be declared a criminal if she sets the old rocker out on the porch.***

"The ordinance would make it illegal for residents to keep indoor furniture and appliances on their unenclosed front porches, driveways, patios, roofs or yards."

Maybe the scariest thing: The proposed ordinance is so prone to mockery that the Leaders are starting to promise that they won't actually use it. It'll just hide in the books for emergency deployment, so: (a) Call it a concealed harassment permit for use against people City Hall no like. (b) Think about selective use of silly statutes in context of our trumpeted belief in a "government of laws, not men."

----

*Google it in airport codes and grin.

**But maybe not. I once covered a knock-down, drag-out legislative debate over repeal of a law requiring hotels to iron the bed sheets.

***I don't know for sure that Norman Rockwell ever painted a Saturday Evening Post cover of Grandma rocking away on the the front porch, handing out fresh cookies to one and all, but if he didn't I'll kiss your arse at the Sgt. Floyd Monument, loan you a loaded camera, and sign an unlimited model release.

Acetate memories

Kodachrome is dead at the age of 74. Kodak pulled the plug after the latest production run. Personally, I never liked it, but I'd shoot a roll or two on vacations just to have something to show the home folks who thought I shot Pan/Plus/Tri-X to save money.

And next time you set your Coolpix to ASA 1600 or so, think about the original 'chrome at ASA 25.

And yes, I know people call it ISO now. Scroom. If the American Standards Association was good enough for Eisenstaedt it's good enough for me.

Voltaire says:

"Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one."

One wishes. Have a look at the Ron Paul view of our latest national foray into the business of being a universal home-plate umpire.

Little edgy here

Thanks to Lawdog, I feel a knife post coming on. You should go read him (linked, over to your right) on the recent zaniness in Washington about banning import of one-handed openers.

Dunno whether I'll actually kick in a couple of pennies worth myself. I'm scared I won't be able to avoid making fun of a local DNR cookoo who dresses all tactical and sports a very prominent clip knife in the clip knife pocket of his SWAT pants. Along with the Glock it sure makes us civilians around the lake sleep better, knowing that he's standing between us and the dreaded bullhead poachers.

The health football

The Senate has the cost of the new mandatory health insurance bill down to something like $850 billion. The proposed law is only 850 pages long, so you can be sure your own congressthing will be reading it thoughtfully and in full.

The good news is that everybody seems to be going along with Baucus and Grassley, +marginally+ less dangerous than Dodds who is becoming an object of amusement around the Capitol these days. "Pass my bill. Mine! Mine!"

The bad news is that the usual herd of lefties is still demanding the bill be moved through to law at warp speed. I understand their concern for haste at the expense of good sense. Just look at all those uninsured dead bodies piling up outside the hospitals.

I do not precisely recommend sending a destroyer out to WestPac under orders to conduct gunnery practice over the bow of any KorCom ship engaged in pissing us off. But let me hasten to add that if our Commander in Chief so orders, I shall not editorialize against it.

---

I certainly wish history had something to teach us about how seriously we ought to take aerial threats against Hawaii by insane oriental governments.

How much is that in real money?

It isn't all that much in context, just $10 billion, that China proposes to loan to the Stans of central Asia. They have to do something with the baled currency we send them for leaded-paint toys and food-grade melamine for babies. And I suppose it's just as well they lend it to used-camel dealers as spend it on more attack submarines.

Global strategic implications are somewhat worrisome, but the real ass-kick comes in the side announcements at the meeting. The Chinese participants grinned and grinned as their comrades the Russians declared that the dollar is an interesting historical artifact but had seen its day as the world's reserve currency.

( Medvedev and China don't want to kill the dollar just yet; they have a lot of them to get rid of and so are pleased to continue to support Bush and Obama magic show while they dole greenbacks carefully around the world in return for goods and, particularly, influence.)

And I'll just betcha that someone in Washington today is going to go on the electric television and act surprised. If he's faking it he's just another shrewd politician. If he really is amazed that someone is attacking the American Dollar, he's a doofus who thinks you really can have an honest dollar while taking on debts you can't repay -- such as volitionary wars and free doctoring for the masses to eventually include everything from Viagara to liposuction to hair restoration, (quality-of-life issues, dontcha see?). All paid for by an economy based on trading paper promises back and forth with Washington as the referee and creator of additional promises.

Economic predictions get pretty Nostradamic, but it isn't much of a stretch to imagine your grandkids knowing, right off, how many bushels of dollars it takes to buy a 6G X-Box priced in zlotys.

From the Ministry of Horticulture

A small stand of sumac is finally flourishing in the southeast corner of the Camp J grounds, and from the angle and distance at which I see them right now, they look quite a lot like the scene setter for a Robert Ruark screenplay-- tiny replicas of the baobob.

(Getting a sumac patch started is easy enough, You just transplant one or two. But it takes a looong time, several years, before the seeds in the deer turds outpace what the deer damage. At some point the rhizomes seem to get into the act, and you start seeing sumac galore.)

Flash!

Hot off the wires, Government announces kumquats won't cure cancer and ginseng won't give you a hardon.

That'll be $2.5 billion, please.

Haggling

A retiring insurance guy wants to sell me "Dad's"  guns:

--870 Wingmaster

--"old Marlin 12 gauge pump  shotgun"

--  Remington 12c (probably, description sketchy)  in .22 WRF

-- Police Positive also  in .22WRF.  

 I see them tomorrow and meanwhile  rely on,  "Oh yeah, its real nice. Really great for its age. I shot it and it works great. But it hasn't been shot much.  I been checking around and the guys tell me the Colt is worth about $900 by itself and the ...".

I could keep the 870 as a spare birder. The others would be traders, though  it's always nice to have another Colt kicking around the collection.  Probably nothing will come of this. I see about $750 worth of value, and I think he figures  about twice that. What can you expect from a guy who spent his life telling people 20-pay life was a good deal?

Oh fer krissake

Tam reports on the  latest efforts to control armed and  dangerous domestic subversives.