Mika, you idiot

I've always kind of liked you because you are capable of keeping your mouth shut even when the MSNBC cameras are rolling and because you look pretty sexy making those moues of disgust  at Joe.

But you closed the segment with The Rev.Mr. Al Sharpton this morning by wishing him well in scheme to  "keep the guns from coming into the city and going out."


And going out?  Seems to me you'd be thrilled with lethal weapons leaving Gotham. But, then, I've never been very good at finding the logic in things teevee news personalities say. I'm sure the lack is in me.

(The Rev.Mr. Al was on the show to hustle for  tomorrow's  NY gun buyback.)

Style note

I shall henceforth require my correspondents to use word frobnicate from time to time. As, for instance, threatening: "If those damned statists keep frobnicating the Constitution, I am going to kick their incrementalist arses."


I know.  All geekish young readers are already aware of the term, but my South African pal Wouter has this morning bestowed the lovely gift of discovery on me. He had to frobnicate this and that to make a new computer battery work.

---

On a related note, I am pleased to see reduced  media usage of the horrible and unnecessary wordoid "bling." Thank you all for heeding its official prohibition by the authoritative TMR.
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Passages: The Heater from Van Meter

Bob Feller of Van Meter, Iowa, gun captain aboard the USS Alabama (BB 60) and baseball player, dies at the age of 92.

He rode Alabama through her stint in the North Atlantic as part of the British Home Fleet, then through the Canal to the Pacific where, from the Gilberts to Tokyo, he and his shipmates  didn't miss many of the major campaigns.

He was not a draftee.

He is the only USN chief petty officer in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

My second day of Christmas

It's hard to be snarky when wrapping Christmas gifts. This one goes to a good lad who shows  interest in small arms; I decided he should at least be aware of St. Ackley.

Probably the first Christmas card of my very own.

 Dec. 4, 1944

  "Dear Jimmie ... Merry Christmas and Love, Uncle Amzie"  
(Corporal, AUS, combat engineer)

Unconstitutional

A federal judge says the federal government does not have the authority to require  you to buy health insurance.  That element of Obamacare is, therefore, unconstitutional.

The pleasure here has nothing to do with health care, and little with Obamacare.

Break out the Templeton Rye and toast U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson of Richmond for simply pronouncing what should be a self-evident truth: There are some things governments have no privilege  to do.

Maybe my mind does work weird.

The good man at Random Acts of Patriotism publishes a nice take on the TSA boys eye-raping Donna D'Errico, and a quite different image comes to me.

Janet Napolitano in a little black dress, oozing her way to the front of the security line, stage whispering,  "Me. Me. Probulate Me. Please."

So sue me.

Cheated Death Again

It was brutal, but the practical effect on me was about 36 hours of enforced sloth. We're now behind the blizzard --  in garish sunshine, in the middle of one of those huge mid-continent high-pressure systems that portend days of sub-zero annoyance.

Never mind.  It keeps out the riff-raff.

Paul appeared at 10 a.m. on his sturdy International Harvester M, and  my lane  is   now passable. As Jinglebob reminded  us yesterday, it is good to live in a place where "neighbor"  is still a meaningful word.

Arm the Iowa Hawkeyes

A Fort Madison Democrat by the name of Gene Fraise is the new chairman of the Iowa Senate Judiciary Committee. Among other things,  this means he's the crisp-suited critter who can pretty much decide what public safety matters the other 49 senators can and can not vote on.

One proposal would amend the state Constitution to recognize the right to  use arms for  personal defense and, perhaps, depending on final wording, defense of your property.

Senator Fraise finds this chilling.  "I've always felt like we've got to be real careful about what we start sticking into the constitution," he said.

Danged straight, Senator. For instance, sticking all that stuff about freedom of speech and privacy rights and what-all into constitutions has caused all sorts of inconvenience for senators and presidents and so forth. It makes the proles uppity.

---

Adding a 2A style amendment to the Iowa Constitution is part of the liberty wish list for the 2011 session. The askings include a move to adopt the Alaska/Arizona/Vermont philosophy. (By what right does a state have any business whatsoever hamstringing a right guaranteed by the federal Constitution?) 


Never mind, says Senator Fraise. "At first blush, I'd say I don't think we want to go down that road, but I'm open to looking at it, with reservations."  Translation:  "Not a  prayer, John Q.  Any such thing gets lost  in my blushing drawers."

Another proposal would forbid cities  to water down Iowa's new shall-issue law by restricting concealed or open carry in parks and public buildings. That gets city commissars nervous. For instance, Keokuk Police Chief Thomas Crew said "the last thing his city needs is irritable people openly carrying weapons when paying their parking tickets or handling other city business."

May I make a constructive suggestion, here, Chief? Thank you. Stop doing so much petty crap that tends to make so many of your subjects irritable.

---

It's early in the lawmaking circus, so I of course have no idea how all this will end. But the GOP -- pretty libertarian on gun rights, if on little else -- recaptured the house, 60-40, and closed the senate Democrats gap to 24-26.

And Republicans in the upper house are led by a fellow whose sentiments are not in doubt.

"Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton", ... bought his wife a .38-caliber gun for their wedding anniversary.

Shaking Hands with Admiral Beaufort

(Or, "Where's the Furshlugginer St. Bernard When you Need Him?")

The century-old burr oaks shimmy in the wind.  I cannot see the  road some 250 feet away.

It is timely, therefore,  to think of the admiral's classification of winds. As the Camp J day progresses, we'll work our way up the scale.

First, Force 7:  Whole trees in motion. Effort needed to walk against the wind.

Then, Force 9:  Some branches break off trees, and some small trees blow over. Construction/temporary signs and barricades blow over.

(Those are the land conditions. For a further journey into mortal fear,  see the link for parallel effects asea.)

The six inches of snow today will add to the merriment as we progress toward a predicted low of minus 15.

If you care to have your sympathy further elicited, see it live.

Theocracy 101

The Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning may have been freed due to pressure from the slightly more civilized world, according to AFP and  the Vancouver Sun.

She was convicted of two crimes, involvement in her husband's slaying and sleeping around. The murder charge finally brought a 10-year prison sentence, but letting strange hands and whatever creep up under her abaya generated the death-by-stoning decree.

I submit that is all we need to know about governments which claim to have God's unlisted number on speed dial.

In Praise of Matt Dunham, AP photographer

I can't recommend highly enough that you look at Mr. Dunham's photo of Charles and Camilla under seige.   A less staid editor would have captioned it, "The Duchess needs fresh stepins."

This one will win prizes, and I'll give odds on it taking the Pulitzer in spot news photography.

His other riot shots aren't bad, either.

Kicking the Duke's Carriage, Oh My!

We sadly note that England has given us a disrespectful lead. It seems that London youth today have been observed kicking the carriage of His Future Royal Majesty. And on Regency Street, no less, even with Mrs. Future Royal Majesty, Camilla, aboard.

The AP determined that this event required a bulletin and a quick subsequent lede  quoting a Charlie factotum that "Their Royal Majesties are quite unharmed."

I, for one, am quite relieved.

And the AP, on it's own, reports that the couple, after speeding off, dismounted at at London Palladium to view a Royal Variety Performance,  (Judge Lynn in "Divorce Court" reruns?)  "looking quite composed."  This, too, is heartening.

The protesters are angry because Parliament, which has recently discovered that the Exchequer is still bare, plans to triple university tuition to 9,000 pounds per annum.

---

I probably wouldn't have found this worth a little essay except for one factlet. AP said one protester carried a sign saying "Education is Not For Sale."

Look, you little batty English socialist nincompoop. If it isn't for sale, then what in the Hell have you parents been sweating for all their lives? Where do you think that chunk of their paycheck went every fortnight? Or that confiscatory value-added tax they forked over every time you whined for a for a pretty new waistcoat and the latest pop CD while you were in the lower forms? If it isn't for sale,  where the deuce does it come from? Your Inland Revenue Service is funded with unicorn farts, maybe?

Now, if you had said that your universities are as bloated as ours, that students are getting a bad bargain at almost any tuition level, then I wouldn't be calling you a  stoned-out, smack-brained, collectivist doowhackadoo whose economic understanding is lower than whale excretia.

And if that ain't the ever-loving truth I'll kiss your arse at Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard and give you an hour to alert Fleet Street.

Survival things

Coffee. America is wired on coffee. When the ships stop bringing it, social unrest will escalate.

So the savvy preparer makes room in his secret bunker for a good supply. It is most efficient to hold the instant version. Of course, the effete SHTF survivalist might want keep grounds on hand for personal use, reserving the powder for barter. Two ounces of Folgers "crystals" for a pound of Unique. Take it or leave it, Bub.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

(Next survival exegesis: whiskey.)

M1 Carbine and Military Personnel Policy

This policy would have shortened World War 2:

Any recruit who could immediately, intuitively, attach the sling to the carbine, threading web around the oiler correctly on the first try, should have been instantly promoted to staff sergeant.
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His Obamaness and the Troops

Kurt has a funny take on it, with photos.

(And is an addition to the blog list.)

Tomorrow

On December  7, 1941,  it started for us. 

McGee: "With every passing year  it will seem more quaint, the little tin airplanes bombing the sleepy giants." 

Not many months later, sergeants barely old enough to shave crept through the western Pacific island  jungles. It was not quaint for them. It was ultimate struggle. 

 For personal survival.  For revenge. And yes, for Mom and apple pie.

Fools are  willing to forget these men and women. No one else.

Loophole AAR

I shillied and shallied and came home only a few small-denomination Federal Reserve Promises lighter.  The headline buy was a vintage Pacific case trimmer.

I know I mentioned wanting another .38/.357 shooter, but I got emotionally involved instead with  a pretty  $900 SW 25 in .45 Colt. I made no long-term commitment, though a return to re-fondle and re-consider is not totally out of the question.

(Is Providence telling me to quit fiddling with minor calibers? )

To make my fellow WW2 arms fans feel better -- if you bought yours long enough ago --  the offerings were limited to one so-so 1911A1, a Remington Rand at $2,200.  No Garands. No Carbines.

Savage 99 prices caught my eye. There were several, about $800 to about $1,900, the latter for an 80 percenter in .250.

---

If I do go back, I'll  try to come home with, at least,  the ratty Mossberg 144LSA, one of the more underrated  target .22s.  The price is too high, $150, but maybe I can negotiate well enough to make a refurbishing worthwhile.

Tamara and the Sailor

When Tam graces a fellow's thoughts  with a link and  kind words , the readership curve goes vertical, and I like to browse through the site meter to see where some of these new readers are.

I was especially taken with a hit from UTC + 3, which is the sand box, The origin was a net openly identified with the United States Navy, and I picture a tired sailor in a dim compartment,  braced in his work chair against the chop of a shallow sea, taking a moment to look in on the rest of the world and divert his mind from  the dreariness of a sea warrior's environment.

Which, as older guys say too often, takes me back.  Years ago I spent most of Advent aboard a pitching little ship on an Asian sea and Christmas itself among throngs of people speaking a strange and chattering tongue, people to whom it was just another day. To  a man -- boy, really -- raised in the  American tradition it was disorienting and disheartening. To be homesick at Christmas is to have a real disease.

And so, Unknown Visitor, I wish you the strength to endure the season in your haze-gray box and an early return to the land of your parents. Merry Christmas, Mate.









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Show Time

Another weekend, another show


   Another Loophole, where we will go...

(With apologies to Cole Porter, PBUH, too.)

---

This is one of the small country shows, at the Jackson National Guard Armory.  We expect a high proportion of hobbyists behind the tables, trying to unload their old surplus  stuff. That interests us more than acres of dealers loaded down with black guns or, at best,  the latest factory output of ho-hum quality attached to birch stocks.

My inner thug is telling me I really ought to own another handgun or two.  For one thing, my shelves are fat with .38 Special and .357 Magnum rounds, and the only shooter I own for them is a Taurus snubby. I hear Pythons are pretty nice.

---

My loopholing  habits have changed.  When the world was a better place, I'd always toss in a few pieces I was tired of for trading stock. No more. I and most of my comrades have adopted the never-sell-a-gun philosophy. We keep them all  on grounds that the Messers Bernanke and Geithner can't press a computer key and create 60 billion Colts and Winchesters out of thin air.

Dear Mr. President:

Could you please take a moment to tell me the name of the next young American who should die for President Thieu, errr, I mean Karzai, of course.

TIA,
Jim

...so I kicked sand is his face back

Washington is beyond any hope of parody. The President and Mrs. Obama today wet kissed Congress for turning the nation's school children into legions of Arnie Schwarzeneggers and Twiggies. Fortunately,  it's going to cost only $4.5 billion (B), plus overruns. For a time we were frightened that it would be expensive, but it's only a little more than half of the new money the Fed printed today.*

The new nutrition standards would be written by the Agriculture Department, which would decide which kinds of foods may be sold and what ingredients can be used on school lunch lines and in vending machines.

"The $4.5 billion bill approved by the House 264-157 would also try to cut down on greasy foods and extra calories by giving the government power to decide what kinds of foods may be sold in vending machines and lunch lines. The bill could even limit frequent school bake sales and fundraisers that give kids extra chances to eat brownies and pizza."

Since the Ag Department boss is our old buddy Tom Vilsack, former weekend gardener and mayor of Mount Pleasant, I thought I would reintroduce you to the man now in charge of your kids' school food.

Tom is the one on the right, a lithe example of American manhood, or, as we used to call him when he was our governor, Ol' Brownie Bake Sale.


---

*The latest  iceberg collision of the QE2. Ben invented $8.3 billion to buy federal bonds.

Of COURSE she misses me.

Sarah Palin is about eight miles north of Camp J,  signing books in WalMart. I'm cleaning up paperwork, enjoying a nice fire of oak and ash, and waiting for her heartborken email lamenting my absence .

I'll reply -- with all the compassion and sensitivity I can muster -- that I always avoid groups of more than 5,000 people when I can gracefully do so and remind her that I already saw her once.

On a Bike Trail Built for Few

Sill looking for an explanation of how we destroyed our economy so badly? Come visit. On a five-minute drive I will illustrate it for you.

We'll be motoring along the busy two-lane state highway which has just been graced by a new bike trail.

First, however, kindly permit me a brief personal aside. I am a fan of the trail concept.  People who walk and ride bicycles instead of driving cars and trucks  become healthier and wealthier.  When protein-based locomotion is substituted for fossil fuel, we reduce our overseas cash-exodus and debt problem.  Our world becomes a little cleaner.  It's all good, or would be if  (a) trails were built with a degree of intelligence and (b) they actually went somewhere.

The one I refer to starts at the driveway of a big church well outside of town and ends a couple of miles away near the entrance to a  lakeside park. Aside from a country convenience store mid-way, there is no reason travel it except to look at pretty scenery on one side and the highway on the other. So virtually no one uses it.

Which is not related to the three other primary absurdities, the least of which is that about a third of the trail goes through a public hunting area. Before long some lonely yuppie will be biking along on his Koga Kimera and notice a guy with a gun. He will make a  horrified complaint to pliant authorities who will then be faced with a dilemma. Do they close down hunting, or do they offend the hoplophobic wailers,  noisy all out of proportion to their numbers? You get one guess, and it will be right.

It is more ridiculous that this trail -- and all others in this  part of the world -- are built to standards more often associated with roadways for Freightliners, fully paved with (most likely) over-specified concrete. Someone with access to the public tit missed the point that a trail, by definition, is intended for Nikes, Schwinns, and baby strollers.  Call it, generously, GVW limits of of 600 pounds, and those would be tandems piloted by the couples who badly need the exercise.

The best for last: One and-one half miles of this trail are easily visible from the highway, and just for the Hell of it I counted the traffic control signs -- on the trail and meant only for all those bikes and baby strollers. Forty-two in the mile and one-half. Some warn of curves, the sharpest of which limits visibility to maybe 300 yards.  Some alert the soccer moms to the beginning and end of the trail. But most, and I swear to the gods this is true, are incline markers, cautioning that the trail drops or rises 10  or 20 feet in the next couple of hundred yards.

Ignore the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the underused trail bed itself Just multiply 42 by a couple of hundred dollars, the minimum imaginable cost of buying the treated posts, the signs, and people and equipment to install them. You get $8,400.

So what, Jim? You're bitching about a pittance.


No, I'm inviting attention to the reason why our Leaders this week are stumbling around Washington, wall-eyed  with the realization that we have nearly borrowed ourselves into Third-World debtor-nation status; why an American plea for IMF bailout loans in the next decade is no longer unthinkable. Why you may wake up one morning in the near future and discover that your stash of  well-hidden C-notes,  totaling  a thousand dollars, for emergencies,  won't buy your hungry kid a Happy Meal, even if they remain legal.

Bike trails built to Interstate Highway standards, a million or two  to dissuade kids from eating Cheetos, a few billion to send an extra $250 to each of the nation's old farts.  They are linked to a pervasive political attitude: "Dream up something  -- damned near anything -- that sounds nice and green and healthy and friendly, and, of course, badly needed. Hire a lobbyist. We'll find a way to make you happy by extorting your neighbors, Of  course, they're broke too these days, but we'll just borrow what you need and sign their name to it."

High-Plains Ugliness

Alternate title: "Just Bitching and Moaning"

From the official gummint guessers:

Today: Scattered flurries before noon. Cloudy, with a high near 22. Blustery, with a northwest wind between 23 and 29 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph. 

Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8. Blustery, with a west northwest wind between 15 and 21 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. 


D.C. al fine. And there is no "fine" in the forecast furs the eye kin see. 


To Hell with winter.

The Great Princeton Hummus War

Will you join me in a great cause?  Hummus eaters at Princeton are being exploited, and a mass protest is necessary.

The problem:  Grocery stores operated by Princeton offer only one brand of hummus. It is owned by Pepsi Cola and a  subsidiary. A Palestinian student group accuses Pepsi of donating money to support Israeli human-right violations.

The Palestinian kids collected enough signatures to force a student  referendum. If it passes the university will be asked to stock its hummus shelves with competing brands which do not contribute to Israeli human rights horrors.

(1) What in holy Hell is a university doing running grocery stores?

(2) If we can find a way to send the complaining kids home when they've finished matriculating, they'll become the rulers of whatever sort of nuisance the Palestinians next establish to misgovern themselves.   That is, they stand a good chance of becoming Gaza warloards in L.L. Bean button-downs who can quote Norman Thomas. (Princeton gives great credentials for aspiring rulers, foreign and domestic.)

(3) What in holy Hell do the P-kids kids think they're at Princeton to accomplish, anyway? If one of their goals is to learn to draft carefully thought-out proposals, mark down a failing grade:

"The referendum was originally scheduled for last week but was canceled then because of a goof: The wording called for Sabra hummus not to be offered at university stores rather than for additional products to be sold, too."


---


Hummus: A sort of sandbox  salsa of chickpeas, sesame seed paste, olive oil and whatever spices do not violate camel country dietary laws. Suspicions that it diminishes mental capacity are so far unproven.

Death in the North Country

The Mossberg 500 had never seen field duty. It serves as one of the local security tools since having the "turkey" (20-inch) barrel installed for purposes of launching magic cones of certain death at intruders, along with, of course, the fearsome Clickety-Clack Chorus. (by Anton Dvorak, I think, or maybe Bill Haley.) On a lark I took it to the game farm near Avon, Minnesota this weekend for a morning of shooting at ringnecks. It turns out that the cone of death is real when the gun is  loaded with lead No. 6s and properly pointed. Modesty be damned, I estimated the range at 40 yards. My hunting buddy called it 40 to 50, but he is an extremely generous fellow. (The 3-inch double ought-buck in the stock band was set aside for the duration of the hunt.) 

 

The breast is preserved for an evening when I am absolutely certain to be dining alone. It will soak in salt water -- perhaps with a pinch of cumin? -- and be severely seared before hitting the oven. The legs will become part of a slow-cook stew, company welcome.  And anyone who isn't jealous gets a lot more pheasants than I do. Or has never tasted one.

  

RIP

With melancholy,  I record the passing of Clyde. She kept to herself when outsiders --- meaning everyone but her mistress and master --  were around, so I knew her only as Mencken knew Coolidge.  "...no ideas and ... not a nuisance."

She lived a fullness of cat years in a loving home.

Physics for Greens and Other Beginners

Iowans would have saved $3 million — or $12 a family — this Thanksgiving weekend on gasoline if the federal government already had required vehicles to get 60 miles per gallon, an environmental group said Tuesday.


What a limited world-view these guys have. If Mommy Dotguv required vehicles to get 120 miles per gallon, that same poor family would have saved $24.  Further, imagine how rich we'd all be if His Obamaness told Detroit to make 'em go 1,000 miles on a gallon.

Not to mention the joy of having Washington mandate on-board, on-demand force fields fueled by unicorn farts.

The Only Ones

AP corrections are more fun than the original stories.  In this one, intense editorial oversight and multiple layers of fact checking revealed that revolvers don't use clips.


(This version CORRECTS Corrects to say ammunition clip was from officer's service weapon instead of revolver),  reads the appended editorial note. 


Sure, it was actually a magazine, but why get pedantic?


Officer Friendly lost his ammo on a previous flight.  He either didn't notice or decided to brazen it out to avoid crude locker room cop jokes. "Got your ammo, Sam Spade?"


The air line security biffs, who carefully sweep the jets between flights for dangerous objects, didn't find it either.


Let us hoist a glass to the Only Ones.

To Grandmother's House We Go

If you believe your government and the national news media, the pornscan opt-out is so far a bust. Only a few American fliers are crotchety enough to object to  displaying their junk to total strangers. When an intimate grope is the alternative, I suppose that's understandable.

If we paid attention, we saw it coming. Various polls have shown 70 to 80 per cent of us are willing to trade our Fourth Amendment protections for the illusion of security.

I live mostly rural these days and fly seldom, but I remain an American citizen who understands that what happens to my fellows in mobbed airports will, in due course, happen to all of us somewhere.

Do you doubt that the bureaucratic imperative of mission creep will eventually strip your mother naked during rush hour in the D.C.Metro system, at the AmTrak depot,  and before she's allowed to enter a crowded theatre?

North Korea

Wait a minute. Didn't we pay up when Kim demanded a bribe a year or so ago?

Maybe it would be easier just to put him on our MasterCard. Automatic pay the first of every month.

  

Traver

The new BATF boss-designate likes to crow  about his achievement in arresting "18 people who bought and traded 'illegal' guns at a shop in Rockford, Ill."  He extrapolates; "Every illegal firearm removed from the hands of an unlawful possessor represents one or more potential violent crimes that was not and will not be committed..."

"Was not?" So, if you seize a gun at midnight there will not be a violent crime committed with it the previous noon? (Do you happen to drive a DeLorean?)

Look, Traver, we can create a better dialogue here if you familiarize yourself with some simple tenets of logic. Among other things, if  the firearm is "illegal" then its owner is by definition "unlawful," and there's no need for the repetition  -- beyond the euphonic requirement of cheap and redundant  rhetoric.

Never mind your reliance again on "potential" for violence.  We've all had enough of our Masters' protecting us from potential by any means their propaganda arms can shove down our throats.  Two ounces of apple juice in a baby's sippy-cup is a potential  911 replay.   Driving my pickup to the lumber yard creates a potentially tropical antarctic.  Every Viagra tab is a potential geriatric rapist.

---

As you might expect, Paul Helmke is conducting the Traver-As-Second-Coming Hallelujah Chorus:

"Apparently the gun guys are upset that Traver did a TV interview where he helped demonstrate the lethality of an AK-47, while explaining, 'Pull the trigger and you can mow down people'.” 


Get an Escalade. Push the accelerator and you can mow down people.


Then Traver added that, “the growing frequency of gang members and drug dealers using heavy caliber military-type weapons” is a problem we should be concerned about.


I don't know if the tendency is growing or not, and neither do you.  Point 1: We don't know how many "gang members and drug dealers"  exist. Point 2: We don't now how many of them use "heavy caliber military-type weapons." and neither do you. As a matter of fact, when  objective and hard-working scholars who have investigated for years  are asked about the the total number of guns in the country they reply, "Uhh, we really don;t know. We think about 200 million, or maybe 290 million, possibly 300 million but, but, but...".

So forgive us, Messrs. Helmke and Traver if we pee on your colongenic data about  trends in tiny unknown subsets of an uncertain total number.

---

Just one more thing. You guys keep whining about "heavy caliber military-type weapons"in civilian hands, and you like to use the AK47 round -- 7.62 x 39 -- as an example.

Ballistic charts are free. They're on the internet. You can use them without applying for a big research appropriation.  If you do, you'll discover that the AK47's heavy caliber is about the same as my great-grandpa's .30-30 lever gun.

(H/T Tam)

Trevanian's Pig Weather

Questions arrive here about  the meaning of "pig weather."

It denotes a land saturated with unpleasantness from the skies.  Mist, chill, sporadic rain accumulating as filthy slush. Low grey clouds portending not storms but a long siege of wet and boring discontent with the world outside your window, neither the balminess of a good spring and summer, nor the crispness of autumn, nor the challenge of winter's worst.  Neither one thing nor another, merely enervation.

The phrase comes to me from Trevanian's great and gentle novel, "The Main,"  set in Montreal and  following an adventure of aging detective Claude LaPointe.   Trevanian called it a roman policier. Most Americans would probably refer to is as a police procedural, but that shorthand connotes too much of the mindless whodunit.

It is certainly possible that some better novel has been written about culture clash and human frailty and the innate compassion of the best police officers seeking to temper human violence. I haven't found it, and that is not for a lack of looking.

My Cup Runneth Over

I've mentioned the big lead stash and the barrel leading from the first batch of c. 230-grain round-nose bullets. Pan lubrication solved that problem, but a delightful auction has made it nearly moot.  I cannot explain why the gunny crowd let me  buy 1,500 commercial   .452 SWC 200-grainers at exactly one and one-half cents per round.

Geeking it out: A cent and a half for the bullet, three cents each  for the primer and case, just under two cents for the Unique.  I'll be shooting Mister Browning's (PBUH)  big pistol for about  twice the cost of the cheapest  .22 rimfires.

My oracle foresees more and louder bangs in the Camp J vicinity for the next year or so.

Social Networking Tools

The final 200 commercial cases on hand  are in the tumbler. Loaded with excellent 200-grain SWCs today they'll bring the Colts' fodder inventory up to the strategic reserve target.

(Pig weather rules out pleasant outdoor work.)
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Al Sharpton

The Rev. Mr. Sharpton continues his career of missing the point. He and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly are holding hands, skip to my Lou, to  get guns off the streets.

A careful reading of the wire story suggests Sharpton is close to concluding that thuggery, with and without guns, is a problem most highly concentrated in a tiny portion of his admiring hordes in Bloombergistan, but he just can't bring himself to say so.

Abortion

I try not to discuss abortion because its spiritual dimension is unrevealed to me.

I will observe that it seems to me to be a particularly cruel and emotionally draining form of birth control. I will make what I think is a practical observation. Laws forbidding abortion create two classes of affected women. Rich girls fly off to Switzerland. Poor girls are found in the  alleys.

Thailand is not the United States, but a grisly report illustrates the problem.  
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In Search of Class

TMR tends toward the rustic. Guns made of steel and walnut.  Dead oak trees turned  into fuel. Barely sentient critters such as politicians and leopard frogs.

This sometimes shames me, and I yield to the urge to offer urbane content.

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Government Gropers

An idle thought: Once in a while you'll still see a woman tastefully dressed in tightish skirt. So, when she opts out of pornscan, how does the TSA manage its 360-degree grope of each leg?

The Sentient Pistol

Tam has a piece on a Virginia nincompoop who shot himself while groping in his pocket for beer money. The judge rapped him and ordered his Glock destroyed.

Punish the gun. Fine idea. Damned guns can get willful.

I recall, but can't find, a  c. 1968 Chicago Tribune cartoon by St. Bill Mauldin. An enraged mob is watching a handgun in a noose, hanging from a gallows or lamp post. The thug in the foreground chuckles, "They decided to let me go and lynch my gun."

The Great Pheasant Shoot-At (AAR)

The clan and friends have dispersed, and I am recovering from sensory overload, a happy man to have had the fun again.

The worst imaginable hunting weather closed us down Saturday, so consumption began earlier than usual, culminating in a birthday party for my daughter which strained the capacity of my small quarters.

The grandpa gave the lad a plain-Jane pump 20 gauge as a belated birthday gift.  It is meant as a spare for days when he doesn't care to take his nice double afield. He  graciously acknowledged it on Facebook, and I can hear the shrieks of my lefty friends now. OMG, you gave a GUN to a CHILD?  (The last I saw of the child, he was nonchalantly at the wheel of a Suburban while my child relaxed in the passenger seat.)

The end of the fest pleased the pheasants, I'm sure. The noise of being shot at must be terribly annoying.

Economics

The gloom in the financial markets echos the pig weather around here. The experts are blaming my Irish kin today. Seems as though my beloved Celtic brothers have discovered that they are broke, just like the Greeks,

Funny thing about that. You expect the ordinary Greeks to lay around doing Greek stuff while their big banks burn and their intellectual betters are still yakking about men of gold and philosopher kings and suchlike. But we expect the Irish to be Paddy on the Spot and start shooting each other. That's always been their version of an economic stimulus.

The Shoot-At

In the great pheasant plains of the semi-west this morning,  22 legs are stalking through soaked fields of corn stubble,  brome, and native weeds. Ten shanks are accounted for by son, grandson, son-in-law and friends. The other 12 are distributed among the shorthair, the vizla, and the yellow-ish lab. I am keeping camp. I am hoping the boys' Filson  gear is keeping them comfortable.

It is the Great Annual Clan Pheasant Shoot-At and Group Dog Hug which is headquartered at Camp J, a tradition I cherish. It is also a tradition in which I do not  participate totally due to the approach of the time when I must concede that I nearing my mature years. Breaking through dense cover for hours is a fine way to stay young, or to remind yourself that you no longer quite are.

Although I did enjoy yesterday morning in the field. One of the  dogs treated us to a classic point and flush. She also had the manners to remain straight of face when the ringneck continued his impromptu flight to Terril, several miles to the south. My lads policed up the three expended 12-gauge rounds. I was on the far end of the search and destroy line, too far away to justify a shot. This prevented the need to dream up a creative excuse for missing. We never saw another bird.

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In fact, I own marksman-of day honors. It happened like this:

I was carrying one of my spare shotguns, just because I had never shot it and decided it was time to blood it.  On the first rest break it occurred to me that I should see if it would go bang. One of the boys tossed a can for me. Boom. Can reveals a cluster of No. 6 holes. This means that I have +never+ missed with this gun, and I'm tempted to carve "Ol' Sure Shot" on the stock and retire her to pegs on the wall.

The bird dearth didn't seem to dampen the evening of food, beer, and stories which were, in nearly every case, at least nearly true.

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If the next rain holds off, I'll be out again this afternoon. If a pheasant jumps in my zone, I'll try to remember to lead him.

George Will at the Cato Institute

Just go read it.

EDIT: The link takes you to "The Smallest Minority." Scroll down a few entries to those for Nov. 5.  It is  a transcript of the podcast. (And, by the way, welcome, TSM, to my little blog roll.)

Sample: "(James) Madison said rights pre-exist government.  (President Woodrow) Wilson said government exists to dispense whatever agenda of rights suits its fancy, and to annihilate, regulate or attenuate or dilute those others. Madison said the rights we are owed are those that are necessary for the individual pursuit of happiness. Wilson and the progressives said the rights you deserve are those that will deliver material happiness to you and spare you the strain and terror of striving." (Emphasis mine.)

Flash! Iowa Lawmen Decide to Obey Law on CCW Permits

Even the sheriffs who don't like the new shall-issue law have agreed to comply with it, according the the Newspaper All Iowa Used to Depend On. 

The laugh here probably results more from the journalistic emphasis than from the sheriffs themselves.

The Headline:

Iowa sheriffs will issue new gun permits despite worries about consequences, association says.

No shit Sam Spade?

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Despite the sniff of reportorial disapproval, it is not a terribly bad explanation of the law that goes into effect in January.

Jennifer does seem to get a little damp because sheriffs can deny permits for a "short" list of state and federal disqualifiers. If she wants to have a beer with me, I'll be glad to explain why the list of things that cancel Constitutionally recognized  rights is supposed to be short.

In fact, it probably isn't short enough.

I was just talking with Diogenes and...

he told me that there is no hope for honesty in the nation until a two-by-four measures two inches by four inches.

I rang him him up after finding an ancient piece of dimension lumber in the shed. It measured two inches by four inches.  I have offered it to the Smithsonian. If they decline, I'll try the Cato Institute.

Meanwhile, the project progresses, using  three and one-half (barely, these days) by one and one-halfs.

Golden Fleece

Working for modern politicians, Jason wouldn't have had to steal much fleece to renew his fleet.  A couple of the ram's nose hairs would probably cover a shiny new trireme.

Courtesy of AFP we learn that  Ben and Barry and all their recent predecessors and current pals have pushed gold through  $1,400 per ounce.

Making those who worked hard and saved their money look like a bunch of stupes. We're on a path to the day when lighting your smoke with a C-note will not be thought remarkable.

I think I'll keep hieing myself to the WalMart to invest a little more in value-added lead, copper, and zinc. Which are, of course, following gold up at $1.14, $3.96, and $1.13. respectively.

No you can't, Mr. President

We're all getting a little sick of your self-portrait as a brilliant policy maker but a poor salesman for your ideas.

Barack Obama as Willy Loman? My butt.

Mr. President,  if there's one thing you have it is the huckster talent. You could sell horse apples at a rodeo. That's how you came to be president.
.

Timbeeerrr

We called this a good Saturday morning's work. The old burr oak on the property line was long dead and leaning over the storage shed and the house.

Choice: Drop several hundred into the pocket of a tree pro or unleash my inner Paul Bunyan.

The latter, of course. Economics aside, neither the other Paul, my neighbor,  nor I concede one damned thing to the woods. If it has leaves we can handle it.

It took an hour to lay her down, also two pickups in 4WD low range, three hundred feet of 5/8 nylon,  a 10-inch  pulley,   plus the usual saws, wedges,and unfortunate language.

The notch  and straight cut were in the right places. We had no trouble pulling her on the hinge to get the new center of gravity  where we wanted it.  Then came the hangups  in the high branches of the nearby trees.  A few more judicious cuts almost  got her falling. This is where the injudicious language came into play, culminated by my stentorian voice at the tree, to Paul in his pickup,  "Hit it. Give that  *X%$(*&@ all you got."   


The 5/8 nylon line instantly  became nearer to 3/8. There was a certain amount of noise as Paul revved his half-ton up to 3500 or so and the object tree tore widow makers from its neighbors on its way to the deck.

I'm actually burning some of the small, high branches this morning. I feel quite smug about it all, knowing that success resulted from clever planning, careful selection of equipment,  and great finesse of execution. There are those who will sniff about brute force and blind luck. I thumb my nose at them.

Speaking of Voodoo Money

All the president's flack men were breathless in announcing the $10 billion deal with India. Bomba will buy airplanes and stuff from us to support about 54,000 U.S. jobs.*

Eureka.

Let's play pretend. Pretend the deals actually occur as advertised. Pretend India actually pays the bill.**  That's $10 billion injected into the national economy.

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On Wednesday, when a majority of us were taking the victory lap and most of the rest were crying in their Chablis, the  Federal Reserve Board launched  "QE2," a barbaric misuse of the English language to denote creating, out of thin air, 600 billion new dollars by buying American government bonds with money that doesn't exist.

If and when  the  the nation of OOHHMMM reaches into the pocket of its bed sheet and forks over our $10 billion in productively earned money, it will represent 1.6 per cent -- one-decimal-six -- of the the $600 billion imaginary greenbacks. Ben and the rest of the Washington monetarist geese see this as shrewd Yankee trading.

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Top of my head, I can identify at least eight or ten objections to my analysis,  and a good Keynes/Samuelson-trained economist will open the action by hollering "Multiplier effect, you moron. Multiplier effect!"

Absolutely. The airplane makers makers of American will collect the Indian cash via their Boeing and GE bosses. They'll take it to the WalMart and buy crap made in China.

I have no immediate  plan to contract something incurable, but if I do I'll be proud to proclaim myself sound as a dollar.

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* Never mind that (a) the deals had been under discussion for months or years and (b) these aren't necessarily new jobs.

** I have dealt with the Third World, up close and personal. Rule One is that if you don't get your money up front, you stand a very good chance of not getting it at all.