I am she

An honest libertarian writer serves best when moved by hatred, despair, and bile.  His highest moral function in a statist society is to scream at  the looters, Attila and The Witch Doctor. His every essay should be a simple, logical, variation on the theme of "supercalaphuckyoustatistscuzuareobnoxious."

Any day when he fails to verbally horsewhip a pewling collectivist tyrant is a wasted day.

But this one is just not feeling it.  For reasons he can not fathom life has lately been a series of warm fuzzies. Nothing moves him to take up arms and unfurl the black and yellow flag. Maybe too many spoons full of sugar have deballed him, created a literary diabetic.

He hasn't noted that Zimmermann is probably an idiot but not a racist murderer -- nor its corollary, that Sharpton rates an eternity in that hottest Hell reserved for  the most fraudulent journalists. He has savaged neither Obama nor Romney. He has failed to document recent justifications for rebuilding the Tyburn gallows to honor the Weimarites Bernanke and Geithner.

He can only hope that the sense of mission will return. Perhaps soon. Perhaps this weeks struggles with the income tax forms will stoke the fires of rage. They usually do.

Meanwhile:

'Ave you ever seen  The grass so green? Or a bluer sky?

Screw you, Bert. This crap has got to stop.

Renewal

What a bright and cheerful  daybreak here in Camp J country.  My Easter finery is laid out for dinner with the C family, but at the moment I look more like a cobbler and smell quite like his work shop.

It just seemed like a nice  morning to finish a small project. You've seen the renewed blade, salvaged from a USMC KaBar which appeared to have been discarded on Guadalcanal in the autumn of 1942 and dug up during the last Bush Administration. But the sheath -- a Jedidiah Smith pattern :) -- got its final dose of neatsfoot oil this morning. It awaits delivery to an exceptional young man.

A Saturday Morning Ramble

My week is out of balance. Let me explain.

Life around here is pretty random. True, I get up early every morning and dress for success with a crystal vision of the productive and goal-oriented day ahead. The clarity always persists at least through the second cup of Folgers. At that point alternatives seem to present themselves and, as a man of small character,  I find myself too willing to entertain program changes.

(For instance, the Tuesday agenda required re-shingling a leaky part of the roof. But it might not rain for a while. Therefore there was no important reason not to stuff my fanny pack with cheap .22s and the Colt Huntsman and go afield in search of dirt clods which needed busting. This sort of thing improves soil tilth and is thus an environmentally responsible action, but I digress.)

Just one point of iron routine governs the schedule. Friday night "fish," a gathering of old friends for a drink or two and something to eat. We're all more or less retired these days, and Friday fish is about as close as most of us get to discipline and structure in our social and professional calendars.

So imagine my disorientation this morning. It is as though Earth's magnetic polarity shifted overnight as predicted by the Mayans or Jimmy Swaggert or one of those authorities. We canceled Friday night or, rather, we voted to hold Friday on  Thursday. That was yesterday, of course, so this is Saturday morning, confirmed by the stock markets, which are closed.

A taxing cerebral proces leads to intellectual understanding that, in fact, Saturday won't arrive until tomorrow. But the notion can not be assimilated into the spirit, so I remain  doomed to a purgatory of temporal disassociation.

Why would we subject ourselves to such confusion? Because of a Holy Day, that's why, combined with a business decision by a nearby Elk's Club.  These Elks own a fine building and up until a few months ago contracted the restaurant space to someone who put on a Friday night buffet and poured an honest drink. It became uneconomic. We were forced to cross the club off our rotation list. We missed it.

But the Elks decided on a special offering for Maundy Thursday as the day appears  on the Gregorian Calendar which has pretty well won the Easter Date wars around here; at least we hear nothing about bloodshed with the Julians in these parts.

They advertised chicken and ribs, and we bit. I, in particular, bit hard and long and irresponsibly enough to be happy for the reserve supply of bicarbonate of soda in the Armageddon-prep locker.  These guys apparently produced the feast themselves. We know they served it.

I am tempted to use all-caps to announce that they know what they're doing. The fellow on the broaster was a fowl artiste, and the rib man had a full understanding of the world's most sublime method of acquiring severe heartburn.

In due course I waddled to the cashier's counter where the money Elk wondered -- I think sincerely -- if I felt as though I had obtained full value for my twelve dollars (including the bourbon).  I assured him of my pleasure as he watched me write the check for fifteen. He seemed to find the amount odd and muttered something about twelve out of fifteen. "No, no, That's for the server, or your program, whatever." The smile returned . He took the check and dropped the "change" in a jar. That money, plus the night's chow and booze profits, would finance scholarships in his town and mine.

Well, maybe things are a little hickish out here in the heart of Flyover, USA,  but (a) that was a damned nice libertarian thing for the Elks to do and (b)  not a hundred people on the entire planet ate better than we did last night.

And that's what I wanted to tell  you this Saturday morning.

Carry enough gun

The Oakland outrage led this morning's CNN infotainment as chesty anchor girl  Solecism O'Brien (BA, Harvard, 2000)  interviewed the Oakland police chief.

"We understand the weapon  was a 45 millimeter handgun," she said.

"Yes, the shooter was a dedicated wildcatter and handloader," the chief responded. (Okay, I made that part up.)

Genetics

Sir, If you had a son it would undoubtedly take after the Old Man.

(March 27, 2012, in a wild corner of the Camp J wilderness.)

Prrivacy

I confess this photo is staged. The macho pickup/camper and the manly John Deere 318 were placed for a reason. Namely, I need the Chuck Norris points after having, and I swear this is true, made drapes. I really haven't had all that much trouble with tourist ladies hiding in the bushes with binoculars, hoping I'll change shirts or something in the wide open living room, but you never know.

In further defense, I created the curtains in a way that would never occur to a cute fellow in the lime green jumper and yellow ascot.

It is perfectly possible to create window-treatment elegance with a vintage flannel sheet printed with what someone (maybe the fellow mention supra) believed to be an authentic American Indian motif. It merely requires pinking (blush) shears, a Stanley 30-foot tape measure, a stapler, and a roll of Gorilla tape. The latter two items help fabricate the tunnel through which the curtain rod goes.

N.B. Above the window hangs a nicely scoped .30-06 in further testimony to my masculine status. It was cropped out, however, too black,  because my three volt cockroach by Canon couldn't solve the contrasty light problems.  

In lieu of writing about the equinox

Walnut on slate, 2012

With me pike upon me shoulder

And you're of the country, aren't ye, lad?

Aye, the son of kings. Maybe the kings of the Annaly bogs but p'raps of the Fearghael  kings of  of the wild Wickelow mountains. 'tis hard to says since the bloody English burned the baptisimal certificates. Anyway, won't I be celebratin' this lovely day in a quiet manner? And won't I not be be with the Germans and Dutch and like pretendin' raff in Emmetsburg? And even if a few sons of the Auld  Sod be there, haven't I already seen me Paddy brothers and sisters brawling' and pukin' in the streets  before and them not even knowing about Colonel Farrell up on Kilgarry Mountain?

But if you're of another mind, lad, don't I wish ye the best of St. Patrick's Day, and as an act of kindness don't I remind ye to keep a few punt in your boot for bail money when the black and tans jug ye just for bein' what youse are. 

Bad bangs

If you pull the trigger and the bang does not sound quite right, you might want to open your action and take a peek.







Mainly, you're looking for a hole through the barrel, confirming the round you just fired made it all the way out. Apparently one didn't when two young snow goose hunters went into action near here this week. The injured fellow lucked out with just minor injuries. 


... (The victim)  was hunting with 19-year-old  (buddy) ... (who) had taken a shot but the shell in his gun didn't fire properly. (Buddy) reloaded and when he fired again, the barrel exploded. Authorities believe the barrel was blocked by the misfiring of the first shell.


It can happen with any ammunition, of course, but reloads are the usual suspects. (I'm particularly sensitive to this because my buddy had a close call shooting unknown reloads in his 1911 a few years back.  And I had provided the mystery rounds. I was shooting them myself. Very, very dumb even though I had reason to trust the guy who sold them to me.) 


---


I borrowed the picture from a good Shotgun World thread.

Looking for Boris Karloff

It's brightening a little now, but the first hour of daylight brought memories of   opening scenes in Isle of the Dead which I still consider the ultimate horror movie. I could see the three burr oak trees closest to my window -- about 20 yards. Beyond that was nothing, the kind of nothing harboring something horrible about to emerge, slimy, hungry, and not quite dead.

I thought of taking a picture for you but decided not to bother. What is the point of posting an 18 per cent gray card?

Advance Australia Fair

Roger. Wilco.

Language note

Pink slime is repulsive stuff they put in hamburger.

It is not the  MSNBC prime-time team.

But if you insist I'll try to be tolerant. After all, language is a living, growing gthing.

The ultimate question

The GOP governor is coming back to the neighborhood Saturday. He'll join our two local GOP legislators for "Eggs and Issues" -- one of those little confabs where the lawmakers try to persuade a skeptical dozen or so people that know WTF they're talking about. It's usually an informal thing with no ground rules other than common courtesy and a bit of Iowa nice.

But the governor is expected to be a big draw. Organizers booked a bigger room and limited attendance to 100 subjects.* They also changed the ground rules. Questions must be written.  The emcee will read them from the podium.

Leading to a pleasant little fantasy. I would write and slip into the middle of  stack, "Sir, why did you give such a bullshit answer to the last question?"

Update: Turns out there will be two meetings. The other one will admit 250.

---

*How's that for political savvy? They don't call it the stupid party for nothing.

Why we're broke (or) Is that a corn cob in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

Things are popping down in Emmetsburg, one of the few places in the country with a statue of Robert Emmet on the court house lawn. The governor was there yesterday to, so help me, assist in announcing that there would be a groundbreaking for a cob plant.

It's a POET project, and we're not talking e.e. cummings here. By its own admission, POET doesn't really stand for anything.  The huge ethanol company concedes it's just designed to conjure up beautiful thoughts about  clean, renewable energy made from corn squeezings and, now,  stover -- the stalks and cobs.

Agribusiness has done well, mostly courtesy of taxpayer subsidies, in turning one of our basic food stocks, corn, into a marginal motor fuel. Of course that comes with a cost, and if you've priced a pound of low-grade hamburger lately you know  what we're talking about. (Assuming the awareness that cows eat corn.)

It finally dawned on us proletarians -- and later on our political masters --  that there might be a conflict  between burning corn in our gas tanks and being able to afford corn flakes. Maybe less corn for cattle meant fewer cows, and that might make them more expensive. Same with pigs. Same for Coke sweeteners. Damn, how can a guy get a hundred bucks worth of food into one little plastic bag?

So the agribusiness fellows decided to oil the water. They would use the stover -- the semi-waste in the corn field --  to create fuel. It isn't very efficient, but, what the Hell,  with the right lobbyists and a crack public relations consultant we can lay off the risk on the suckers.

---

It isn't hard to understand why the governor was there, or why POET distilleries across the Heartland have drawn visits from presidents. The industry is heavily a political creature of Washington and of state capitols. It is a darling of so-called conservative Republicans, and rural Democrats, aided and abetted by the icky-poo-oil haters, the Greens who consider a tank of gasoline felonious.

I wish it were easier to dig out the actual total of taxpayer forkovers for this little project in my neighborhood. The immediately apparent subsidies total $125 million -- $20 million from the state and a $105 million loan guarantee from the feds. There is undoubtedly much more, ranging from other lightly reported direct handouts to the amorphous cost of mandated ethanol in your Chevy.

---

But, Jim,  don't you think we must invest in clean energy, get independent of the greedy Arab sheiks and their buddy Chavez, prepare for the day when there is no more oil?

Sure. All of the above. But you're faking it with the word "invest."  You mean "extort."  You're nicking every taxpaying manjack in the country to support a handful of ethanol speculators. It it were an investment the ethanol barons would sit down with private investors and make their case. If the private parties bought the idea, they would front the  money. That would be an investment.

Besides, not to put too fine a point on it, we're already broke.

---


Nevertheless, the deal is done and Emmetsburg and its outlying growers will benefit. Millions of dollars in checks will be cashed at local banks, and the check will be signed by POET.

All we can do now is hope that there's a glimmer of understanding down there that the real power behind the company check is a sweating Ben Bernanke, hunched over the mimeograph machine with the green ink, cranking out C-Notes for all he's worth.

---

May I be permitted one final word? Thank you.

Solyndra.
'

Stupid is as stupid votes

The headline poses the question: "How much do voters know."

The answer: Not much. Little enough, in fact, to send sentients whimpering to their beds.

Reporter Alexander Burns presents the case more gently:

"...Add up that litany of contradictory, irrational or simply silly opinions, and it’s enough to make a political professional suspect the electorate is, well, not entirely sophisticated about the choices it’s facing in 2012.

But not always too gently:

“The first lesson you learn as a pollster is that people are stupid,” said Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm.


The rest of the Politico report expands the theme, and folks should read the whole thing if they are interested in the burning issue of the day: "Why are things so  TARFU?"

More danged politics

Folks are voting down below the Smith and Wesson line today, and those very clever teevee persons are calling it "Southern Tuesday."  Well, okay.

Afghanistan -- Editors note

An incomplete post got away from me a little bit ago. I pulled it from the blog but it may appear in some RSS etc. feeds. It's now finished but isn't quite "right," so it's tucked away for revision. Nevertheless,  the posts on which it is based rate mention.  Must-reads, if you ask me.

---

Tam dissects our domestic bed-wetting in the wake of the Afghan killings. Because a staff sergeant snapped,  our longstanding wise and productive diplomacy in Afghhanistan is imperiled.

Roberta adds essential background. Brutally condensed, it suggests that the Great Western Powers have done bully work in restoring the spirit of the Dark Ages west of the Khyber Pass.

Wells Loophole AAR

My local gang of loopholers totalled six, spread out over three generations.  The youngest came home with a tactical pocket knife and a nicely carved sling shot, featuring a bear's head fashioned from a nub where the forks joined.  The poor kid had to listen to the grandpas tease him about taking them to school for show and tell like we used to do.

Perhaps a stainless steel object which could have been -- but wasn't -- fitted with a shoulder thingy that goes up might have found its way into a certain vehicle.  (My, don't we get weasel wordy in these days when we suspect the gendarmery trolls the internet,  tirelessly alert for words suggesting badthink among the proles.)

Anyway, us older proles settled for non-bangables. In the trove is an early-1940s book co-written by Melvin Johnson (yep, that Johnson). It's a detailed guide to ammunition of the world as it existed before John F. Kennedy was (allegedly) suspected of balling a German spy and sent off to wreck PT boats in the Solomons. The book went to a comrade, and I am jealous...

...Jealous but content, satisfied with seeing old acquaintances, having a few laughs, and scoring exactly $10 worth parts which solved a cursing, hair-pulling problem.  I recently wrote a bit  here about scoping that Mossberg/Varberger .30-06. I'd have sworn I had the correct parts on hand, so I screwed them on. Lovely except for the bolt making minute contact with the scope. Teeth gnashed, and I was frustrated enough to consider dragging out the angle grinder and butchering the offending 1/16th inch from the bolt handle. Or, Hell, maybe the scope. I had a tot of Tullamore  Dew instead.

That rare, correct judgement was rewarded in Wells. A dealer's junk box yielded a ring and base set which looked right, and was. That helped pass an internet-free day yesterday, and I happily report the Mossy is now reliably scoped and  bore-sighted. Just in time for spring gopher season. Always use enough gun.

Check Point Charlie

We leave Hawkeye free soil on Highway 86, about 10 miles south of thriving Lakefield in the Minnesota SSR. There, we either disarm ourselves or become felons.

While we honor Minnesota carry permits, they scorn ours. So we must go barehanded to the big Wells loophole-in-the-school, at the mercy of any Ole-and-Lena biker gang bent on robbery and murder to finance their lutefisk habit. Pray for us.

Good morning, America

1. The day of glory arrives. It is a moveable feast. Let history record that on March 9, 2012 C.E. the  Master of Camp J, having read prophets in the Book of Aerology, ceremonially unplugs the heat tape.

2. Attention Willie Geist: It's none of your damned business why I'm up so early. I know. The marketing psychologists told you the way to maintain viewership is to get your audience *involved" with your show. Make them *part* of it by giving them an *ownership stake.*  Look, son, I don't want to own your program. I don't want to participate in any manner at all. I don't care to be your buddy. I want you to sit your eflin butt down behind a desk and read me the news off your teleprompter.  I don't need your clever exchange with the weather guy or your guesses about basketball games. (One concession. If you want to have some papers to shuffle on your desk so as to look more like a really studious and concerned journalist, why, I guess that's okay.)

3. The news this morning seems to be that  the Glory that was Greece is back.. Works like this: You loaned Athens a hundred bucks. Athens promised to pay it back. Athens then decided payback would be inconvenient. So you had your Travis McGee conundrum -- settle for half or take a dead loss. More technically, you had to trade your hundred-dollar IOU for a 50 dollar IOU, backed by colllateral identical to the original: the integrity and competence of Greek politicians.

4. Actually, we get two glory days in a row. Tomorrow is the big loophole in Wells, Minnesota. We may or may not loophole anything lethal, but it's always a pleasant pilgrimmage. Imagine. Hundreds of tables of death insturments in many calibers, most of them capable of bringing down a J3 Cub.  And they're all on display in a school. True, this travesty explains Wells' reputation for rivers of blood and streets of gore, but you can't have everything.

Britain. Bacon. World War 2

In  late 1940, the port of Liverpool in Merreye Olde was not a nice place to be. The noise of the ship yards.  Rowdy sailors on shore leave and their impure thoughts as they eyed our maidens.  And especially the shortages. There was little enough of anything to eat and almost nothing  *good* to eat.

U-boats sinking too many of the food ships from the colonies, don't you know?

By late November the war had shut down many of Britain's other ports. Liverpool became even more crowded with freighters which survived the North Atlantic run . It became a juicy target for Luftwaffe Heinkels. The concentrated bombing created a bit of a stir. But one night, perhaps, some of the calorie starved civilians might have had one small good word for the Nazi bombers:

"There were, Adams recalls, some bizarre scenes. 'I can remember the warehouse outside the docks being on fire. The bacon fat was running down the gutter, and several women were running out of the houses with their pots trying to save the fat'."*

Fast forward the the time of those ladies' grandchildren whose passion in life is avoiding bowel cancer by banning bacon. Along with the usual Albionic hand-wringing and pants-peeing, our cousins seem, somehow, to connect it with their clever "rear of the year" award.

Okay, sweetheart, even though it's a small picture, I can see you have a delectable rear. Still, all in all, forced to choose, I think I'd have preferred life with your grandma.


----

*From Andrews Williams, "The Battle of the Atlantic." 2002.  P. 107. ISBN 0 563 53429 x.

My review: Excellent.

Texas Good Guys

Why don't  y'all turn your head toward Klleen, Texas, down there by the gate to Fort Hood in the flat middle of Lone Star? Flip a little salute toward the local junk yard, CenTex Scrap and Metal.

The owner has decided on  an act of public service. He'll pay for the CCW course for his employees who want a carry permit.

---

One problem.The teevee  station  doesn't even mention that the CenTex policy  will lead to more crazed cowboys packing heat, ridin' in on Sattiday night, gettin' all boozie,  shootin' up the town, and skeerin' the womenfolk.

Somebody ought to caution KWTX that one more error like that and Mr. Obama' s FCC is probably gonna jerk your license.

Super Tuesday

Romney won the cities, Santorum won the countryside, Gingrich won Georgia, and the Dutch make cheese.

Three scoundrels, alike in their lust to replace the sitting Scoundrel in Chief. Their differences reflect only marketing judgements as to which popular superstitions are most panderable in the amoral quest for fifty per cent plus one.

H.L. Mencken, from Dayton, Tennessee, on July 14, 1925:.


In his argument yesterday judge Neal had to admit pathetically that it was hopeless to fight for a repeal of the anti-evolution law. The Legislature of Tennessee, like the Legislature of every other American state, is made up of cheap job-seekers and ignoramuses. The Governor of the State is a politician ten times cheaper and trashier. It is vain to look for relief from such men. If the State is to be saved at all, it must be saved by the courts. For one, I have little hope of relief in that direction, despite Hays' logic and Darrow's eloquence. Constitutions, in America, no longer mean what they say. To mention the Bill of Rights is to be damned as a Red.

---

If asked, Mencken would surely have agreed that secular superstitions exist. Free money. The nobility of pre-emptive war. Widely diffused responsibility for individual actions.

I don't know if he would praise Ron Paul, but I think that, at a minimum, he would concede that Paul's ideas are not those of an ignoramus, a word he would have found accurate in describing the Others.

Have you heard the one about squawberry shortcake?

Every time this claptrap about offensive place names hits the press I recall a jingle in one of the old Boy Scout handbooks. How to make a fire:

"First you get your tinder, dry as can be,
"Then a little squaw wood, dead but from a tree...".

As far as I know this did not lead to widespread disrespect for female Indians, or Native Americans, or if you must, indigenous people of the American continents.  If it had any implication at all beyond simple bush craft, it taught scouts an anthropological fact. In many tribes, men hunted and made war.  Women cooked and kept wigwam.

"Squaw wood" was the term for firewood light enough to be handled by women.  I know of no case in which a lad, upon hearing it, was carried off into perverted reveries about primitive females' private parts or had even heard that "squaw" is a vulgar synonym for the v-word. (Which it probably isn't.)

That came later when white (mostly) America became rich enough to afford to pay idlers to point out and rectify the moral failures of our fathers in naming the new places they ran across. It continues to this day.

And so it is that the board (of  Geographic Place Names) , which tends to listen to what locals want, has slowly set about scrubbing the word from the landscape. Late last year, for example, Squaw Peak in California’s Inyo National Forest became Wunupu Peak, a Paiute name for “tall pine” or “pine-nut tree area” ... and Squaw Creek in Montana became Two Moons Creek, in honor of a Cheyenne leader of the 1870s.

"Wanupu?" Say it out loud and think thoughts of wholesome purity.

"Two Moons?"  If I were a Cheyenne I'd be less than thrilled about a place named for a turncoat who -- after helping lead his band in a couple of victories against the white eyes -- became a turncoat and spent most of the rest of his life as a lackey for paleface General Bear Coat Miles.

I was pleased to see the term "niggerhead" (a rock awash) disappear from United States nautical charts, but beyond that sort of thing this preoccupation with titivating the language of our fathers strikes me as expensive, time-wasting, history-denying bullshit.

And if that ain't the Taku-Wakan's own sweet truth I'll kiss your arse in the shadow of the Grand Tetons and give you three sleeps to gather the tribes.

Good Morning. Let's Welcome a Super Tuesday

A Maryland win for gun rights, and -- for that matter -- all the others

Maryland cops were looking for an excuse  to refuse a gun permit to Raymond Woollard.  He got one in 2002 after a home invasion. Seven years later the masters denied him a renewal . They decreed that he couldn't prove he still had a need to exercise a Constitutional right. 

Now, Federal District Judge Benson Everett Legg has a birthday coming up, on June 8, and we should send him a nice card.  He told the regulators to stand near  a rope, unzip, and aim high. 

Or, in his more temperate  language:  “A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights,” Legg wrote. “The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

Needless to say, the Bradyites didn't bother to unzip before wetting, but in due course they whipped out their lawyer who said, " “The Supreme Court has recognized the right to have guns in homes, but there is no right in public places,”

Uhh,  Lawyer Lowy, you don't get to make binding judgements like that. Courts do.  And Judge Legg did.

Our friend Alan Jura again led the attack, and we suppose he'll still be with us when the case hits the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.


---

 

A cursory Bing of the 4th doesn't give much fodder for speculating about how it views self-defense rights lately, but there's a small clue in US v. William Chester, Jr., (4th Cir. 2010).  (That's a long and complicated opinion, but, effectively, it questions government power to deny Second Amendment rights on the sole basis of a misdemeanor domestic violence  conviction.) 

Quote of the Day

From my government via the National Weather Service which ruminates about the minutia of advection and troughs and progging 850hb molecule collisions and all that before getting to the money quote:

...EITHER WAY NO COLD AIR IN SIGHT. 


Free market Nostradami agree, warm for at least the next two weeks.


Ahhhhhh.

Awwwww

The man who gave us the refined wookie, the self  we wish to be, had died. RIP Ralph McQuarrie.

Speaking of civil discourse...

Ron Paul finishes second in Washington and the local press reports;

 Attending his first caucus at the Labor Temple in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, Dillon Smith, 31, vowed to write in Paul's name no matter who is on the ballot in November...


Good for you, Dillon. And it isn't a "wasted" vote. It is a statement of enlightened disgust, of which we have too few.


"I would rather die than vote for any of the other candidates," said Smith,...


That may be carrying things further than necessary. You could just move to another country, like maybe Malawi, where all of our over-the-hill celebrity sex sirens lived and adopted babies during the eight years of the Bush Administration.


... because the country needs someone who will "basically slit the throat of the federal government."


Attention all aromatherapy clinics in the Los Angeles-Frisco corridor!   Surely you understand that Dillon is speaking metaphorically and has not demanded ventilating any actual human jugulars.

Five neighbors who showed up from his precinct also supported Paul and voted 6-0 to elect Smith as a delegate to an upcoming legislative-district convention.


On the other hand, you never know. If I were a thug bent on violence, I think I'd avoid taking my jugular to Seattle's Belltown neighborhood.

Air solution

Some fellows manage to run a house and even a hobby gun-tinkering shop without compressed air. This is sad. Forget people on food stamps; an airless man is the truly deprived soul.

Couple of months ago I became one. The 10-or-12 year-old Campbell-Hausfield blew up.  It was my own fault. A consumer-grade machine  -- the happy-homeowner model -- it  still  would have lasted years longer  if I were more religious about turning it off  when I left the shop. A slow leak in the system kept it needlessly cycling on and off, at least trebling the wear.

I recently hauled a new one home.  It's also assuredly non-professional, with an  advertised output smaller than the old one, about five cfpm  at 90 psi. That's enough for most of the work around here, but too wussy if I decide to use air-hog tools -- sanders, etc. The situation is improved by adding an extra tank to the system.

Aha! Opportunity knocks.

I've never had a convenient air outlet in the gun/reloading shack. But now the old C-H tank will be mounted in or adjacent to the room and fed by the new magic air densifier thourgh permanent piping to its on-board tank.  A whip hose will be handy to the bench.  One result: tidier gun innards.  Another: About 35 gallons of  total storage capacity, just in case I want to sand-blast this or that.

Well, that's probably already more than you want to know about me and my air. So I'll sign off now.

Oh wait, you have a question? ...

Well, yes, hot compressed air is sometimes useful, but I'll be damned if I can think up a way to pipe Al Sharpton into the system

Thank You!

Your diligent discharge of unburned hydrocarbons, C02, and methane into the atmosphere is appreciated. Only three days of grungy chill stand between me and an improved lifestyle.  From Monday onward, as far as meteorological eyes can see,  Camp J will bask in mid-40s to mid-50s temperatures, well above normal. It means blogging a little less and doing actual things a little more.

Start the annual yard cleanup. Clean the vehicles. Build the new compressed air distribution system (q.v. - next post)  Catch a crappie or two.  Et a helluva lot al.


'course, there's no suggestion yet that the sublime no-socks season will arrive earlier than the usual June time frame. I wish it would, of course, and if you care to help you could certainly run your SUV around  the block a few extra times.

Iowa Stand-Your-Ground Bill

The text of the bill as passed by the house last evening is here. 

It goes to the senate. I can't offer a confident prophecy on its chances there. Comments in the previous Constitutional amendment note also apply here.

---

The best argument the opponents could dream up seems to be that we're turning gentle,  agrarian Iowa into the "Wild, Wild West."

That's nonsense. But even if it were true, so what?

Wander though the Boot Hills of Deadwood, Tombstone and the like and two things will stand out. (1) They're pretty small places. (2)  In even the toughest towns of frontier legend, moving to the local grave yard courtesy of  a gunslinger's bullet was a remote danger compared to,  say, the fatal results of untreated acne.

The point being, Ladies and Gentlemen of the statist left,  Clint Eastwood westerns are tales written to entertain, not exhaustively researched narratives of the norm in the 19th Century American West.

Iowa Gun Rights Constitutional Amendment

The language finally approved is here.  It would arguably affirm the strongest self-defense rights in the country.

Procedure: An Iowa Constitutional Amendment must be approved by both house and senate in two sessions separated by an election, i.e., two "General Assemblies" in our jargon. Then it must be approved by voters. The next step for this one is the senate where Democrats control things this year. Next is passage -- in identical form --  in the 2013 or 2014 session.

O. Kay Henderson, news director of Radio Iowa and a savvy reporter, says senate passage is unlikely. That may be slightly strong. Two years ago the conventional wisdom ruled out passage of shall-issue because of a Democrat senate and governor. But that was also an election year, and anti-gun lawmakers took a second look at citizen sentiment. They had a sudden epiphany revealing that shall-issue was a very statesmanlike policy indeed.   We'll see.

Iowa's Own RKBA Amendment and UPDATE: SYG approved

The house debated and passed (60-38) the amendment before getting to the SYG bill. It's just a first step, and the earliest it could go to the electorate for ratification would be 2013.

The operative text is:"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed ." 


The absence of the supposedly qualifying phrase in the federal Constitution stands out, doesn't it?  Go Hawks! :)

There's more wordage, but it's stictly procedural.

---

Timing of the stand-your-ground action isn't clear yet.

---

EDIT:

SYG just passed.

And I've just learned there are dueling sources on the content of the constitutional amendment. The Des Moines Register now says:

Under a tweak to the amendment’s language approved during the debate this evening, it now bars the state from infringing or denying a person’s right to “acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer, and use arms” and would prohibit firearm licensing, registration or special taxation in addition to echoing the language of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


It should all be sorted out by morning. See you then. Tired of damn near live-blogging this.











-

Update: Theeeyyyrrr Back

The Great Democrat  Anti-Gun Skedaddle of '12 is over. The Flighty Forty said they  took their little hike to make a  point  That point being that the conservative/libertarian majority should be forbidden to act like a majority.

The pretext for the argument centers on whether Republicans told Democrats the gun bills would be debated today. He said. She said.

The stand-your-ground bill seems quite reasonable to me and gives cops all the room they need to investigate defensive use of deadly force. What they can't do under it is harass you or slap you in jail while they "investigate" for a few weeks, or months.

Link to the bill text upcoming.
.

The case of the runaway hoplophobes

"Those guns are scary, aren't they, Fauntleroy? We must  run and hide."

Thus spake one Iowa Democrat house member to another this morning, whereupon all 40 Democrats skeddaddled rather than debate reasonable gun control. At this writing they're still missing,  and the 60 Republicans down there are sitting around, twiddling their thumbs.

At issue are one bill and one resolution scheduled for consideration today. The latter would begin the process of amending the state Constitution to guarantee certain firearms rights.

The bill is a stand-your-ground measure permitting the citizen to defend himself anywhere and remove our current "duty to retreat."

May I say a word or two directly to my Democrat friends? Thank you.

"Guys and gals, you weren't elected to pitch hissy fits and hit the mattresses. You're being paid to debate and vote, even on things which require a change of your dainty linen. This point may not be lost on your constituents on a Tuesday about eight months from now."

---

My primary reaction, however, is an uncontrollable giggle. Life in the political monkey house, etc.

Gun theft by convenience

I probably wouldn't have bothered mentioning this one, but just as I was closing the story, an object lesson caught my eye. Note the address of the theft and, in the final paragraph, the home of one of the accused.

Lesson: don't let the stoner kid next door know you have a gun collection.
.

Gun prices

Back in January I noted an internet+live auction of 500 guns in Aurelia -- classics, oddballs, plain junk.

Cleaning up bookmarks this morning I ran across the final sale prices. Some of you may find it interesting.
.

Dear CNN, Fox, and MSNBC

Even devoted political freaks are tired of it. Our tolerance for drama contrived from the flimsiest "analysis" has been exceeded. And we haven't even come  to the big primaries yet.

Why don't you send all your anchors and common taters home for a while? After the votes are counted, tell us who won. Meanwhile put up some old Daffy Duck cartoons. See if we can tell the difference.

How not to use a gun

Taking the report at face value, we have a good little lesson for people just beginning to study the use of firearms for self-defense.

When you stand at your third-story window, high above the belligerent nincompoop yelling and stomping your car,  you are probably well short of the standard that justifies shooting.  This is one of the cases where calling the cops seems more reasonable. You can always keep the 10-22 handy in case the idiot follows through on his threat to kick in your door.

The accused claims he shot to scare, usually  a bad idea, and didn't mean to hit the  deceased in the chest. So maybe it's also an opportunity to sketch for your student  the path of a bullet flying at much of an angle from line of sight horizontal.  "She's gonna throw high, Bro."

The storm of death redux again

This is about the first excuse of the winter for the official mommydotguv weather forecasters to predict death and disaster. So far, I am amazed at the rhetorical restraint the NWS is showing. Reduced to a "takeaway" (what an odious word), the weather guys and gals  seem to be advising me that I have a reasonable chance  of surviving the next 72 hours. Ordinarily their red headlines make me wonder if my will needs changing.

This makes me feel good but also like a citified wuss. I don't really need to do much. Keep a few splits of oak handy to the fireplace.  Kick New Dog Libby out of the soft chair closest to said fireplace. Decide whether to go with chili, spaghetti sauce, or  barbecue pork loin in the crock pot.  Move the more dependable truck out into a clear area of the yard. (The truck is insured but the camper isn't, so the fall of an ice-laden oak branch thereon would be financially inconvenient.)

A couple-three hundred miles west of me, where the storm is worse,  lives a a better man. This guy -- an obvious  survivalist  --  got ready by positioning  the 4x4  pickup,  prepping his team of horses, getting his cows in a cuddly place, and -- I swear it's true --  hoping his shoulder pain lets up enough so he can go riding his colt through the wintry Armageddon. Ride 'em, Cowboy.

(sigh) Comparatively, Jinglebob makes me feel like I should be wearing white bucks,  lime green slacks, a pink silk shirt, and a yellow ascot, standing around a country club bar,  bitching about the servant problem.

From the days when she merely aspired to maidenhood

Offered in compensaton to readers bored with the previous post on dreary politics:

Or, if you like your girls with guns:

---

And lest female readers feel slighted, a little light porn from a second perspective  is served. 

Ron Paul Weds Mitt Romney, they say

(Caution: Long and political, a reply to my oldest friend, the Iowa kid  now  running the philosophy department of a university in one of the New England SSRs.  Our political discussions go back decades. He cited a Seattle Times article addressing the gossip about a Paul/Romney alliance. The elisions represent strictly personal stuff,  along with a thing or two about your humble scribe which hardly anyone would believe anyway. Using your delete key at his point in time would not offend me.)

---
Hi ....,

Can of worms. 

I'd be surprised to learn  Paul and Romney shook hands in a green room somewhere. (EDIT: meaning shook hands to seal a deal.)  However, I revert (counting coup) to a position I took back around Iowa Caucus time  when  Michele and the others floated the notion that Paul would become a third-party candidate and thus guarantee a second Obama term.  I wrote that it would not happen for a number of reasons, including his desire to keep Rand positioned for greater things in the GOP.  I'm sure  his personal agenda still includes a mighty desire to make his son White-House viable in '16 or beyond.

Paul's alleged kid-gloves treatment of Romney could rest on this premise: "Santorum will NOT become president. Romney MIGHT, though the odds are long. Therefore a non-aggression pact -- however tacit and muted -- with Romney is more likely to keep the Paul family name burnished in Republican circles."

One of the flaws in my reasoning is its assumption that a Romney who loses to Obama would continue to wield useful power in the party.  He might or might not. It depends on how well he can hang on to his support from Wall Street -- the debt industry, the Republican "Establishment"  -- after failing to oust Obama.

More immediately, the Romney perspective  by now must include the possibility of a brokered convention where even a handful of Paul delegates could be decisive. There's no reason for Mitt to further anger anti-statist thinkers and activists prior to the convention,  however much he might fear and detest them. Strange bedfellows, etc.

Even more immediately, analysis of this race won't be any easier after Michigan and Arizona. Absent a large surprise, we won't know a Hell of a lot more about the relative Romney/Santorum prospects than we do now. 

Aside: Rand's comment that he'd be honored to be asked to serve as No. 2 to Romney was stupid.

Elsewhere in the septic tank, Obama probably will win, but he's on thin ice. He might, therefore,  determine it politically unwise to bomb Iran and Syria -- and shit, for all I know,  another sandy draft choice or two to be named later -- before the second week of November.  (What, a closet Muslim bombing professing Muslims!  Why not? Muslims have been killing one another centuries. :) ) 

So have Christians, come to think of it. Maybe others, too, but I'm not too hip on the history of the Buddhist wars.

---

I almost certainly won't go to Tampa. ... but my contacts in the RNC and among the campaigns are by now non-existent, so I couldn't get close enough to the real decision making processes to even hear them clearly.  Why spend three or four thousand or more to mingle with varnished hair and Florsheim wingtips? The better part of wisdom is knowing when one has transitioned from barely-was to complete has-been. Too, my resolve to avoid crowds larger than  50,000 people remains intact.

---

Winter is making a last gasp in your old home land. We're facing a few days of general sky dumps -- snow, sleet, rain, but the long-range forecasters are beginning to remark on the growing power of the sun to usher in our annual hemi-global warming.  Bring it on. I'm tired of wearing socks. I want to go out in the fields and shoot dirt clods.  I want to launch the canoe and sneak up on yellow fluffy goslings  for photographic  purposes. I want to sit on my dock and catch  three perch for lunch. When all this occurs I'm afraid you'll have to stand in for me  as chief watch dog of the peoples' liberties.

...  has just become a National Merit  Scholar, a finalist. He's applying to the ... where he hopes to learn enough physics to explain the cosmos to Stephen Hawking. :)

...

Best,

Jim 

(This might be stripped of some of the personal content  and blogged; don't feel ambitious enough to try to dream up original content)

Hope and Change not having worked too well, His Ineptness desperately  switches to T and A.

Hello Eva. (This one is for you political freaks.)

And Hello again. (And this for all other leering old leches.)

(Waiting for our crack media to secure a reaction from Michelle.)

A new use for Labrador retrievers: Catching exotic pythons in the Everglades. Very cool.

The dogs can detect pythons from a distance and when they spot one they stop in their tracks and crouch. The pythons’ reaction is strangely poignant. Rather than striking when discovered, they curl up and hide.

But there are labs and then there are labs. The foundling under foot here, New Dog Libby, might be poignanter than the snakes. I can easily imagine her  stumbling over one, curling up and hiding.

(I tried to squeeze a pun in here but couldn't think one up.)

Sidebar cleanup

Breda (The Breda Fallacy) seems to have retired from blogging.

So has the always interesting Abby of Bad Dogs and Such. I miss her work as much as I do the hilarious Cranky Lit Prof, and if either of them is working under a new aka, I'd like to hear of it.

A guy hates trimming the blog list, but ...

Blog Birthday

You might want to slip over to Kead's place and wish his graceful blog a happy birthday. If you do you'll also be treated to a nice little piece of vintage gun porn.

(Kead's also goes on theTMR blog list with my apologies for not putting it there much sooner.)

Memo, Prime Minister to Minister of Colonies

I say, Cyril. Does this not verify our view on the inadvisability of  self-government by  colonials obviously unready to accept mature resonsibility?  Bearing in mind of course that our own English youth may sometimes over-enthuse about a sporting event. But further bearing in mind that they only rarely riot over shoes which might be worn at sporting venues. 


---


More than 100 officers in riot gear were needed to disperse several hundred people who law enforcement officials said became unruly as they waited for the $220 Nike Galaxy Air Foamposite Ones to go on sale.

Vote for Larry Correia

It's a fearful confession to make on this Blogovia street corner, but I rarely read science fiction. Even Heinlein. (If you catch me quoting him, it just means I clicked over to BrainyQuotes to cherry pick a piquancy in support of a point I made lamely.)

I have nothing against the art form, and I may be the poorer for not liking it.  But to me it's like goat milk; however lovely it may be, I am sufficiently pleased to know others enjoy it.

Nevertheless, I'm more than than okay with Larry simply from reading about him and sometimes visiting his blog. He's one of us and quite capable of penning any one's quote of the day, e.g:

Every day, over a thousand writers of explody, action-adventure, gun-nut, monster-killin’, novels are maligned on the internet by stuffy literati critics for not being “real” novelists who write ham-fisted, navel gazing, message-fic about starving polar bears or some crap.  

You can click that for guidance on how you, too, may  "tell stuffy literati types to go screw themselves."


H/T Tam

Gas is cheap

You just put $75 worth of unleaded in your little car. You cussed the Arabs and the Africans and the Venezuelans and the Texans. When we get the pipeline from Athabasca you'll cuss the Canadians, too, eh?

Wrong targets, Bunkie. Your enemy isn't wearing a turban, a sombrero,  or a Stetson. He's wearing an Armani with real button holes in the sleeves. He's  carrying an alumni card from a great university and impressive  government identification documents.

He and his forebears arranged this fiasco more than 40 years ago when our masters thought it would fun to divorce currency from any objective standard. It happened to be gold, mostly for reasons traditional and sentimental. It could just as easily have been copper, lead, bauxite, or any other useful physical substance which is more or less scarce.

It isn't like we absolutely need another reminder of this, but it can't hurt.

Forbes writer Louis Woodhill offers some mathematical evidence. It's worth a look even if your eyes glaze over at a sequence of funny little symbols and more zeros right of the decimal point than you care to deal with.  Because? Because he arrives at a conclusion which has been pretty plain to libertarian types since we all decided that the difference between  Republicans and Democrats was about the same as that separating Gotti and Castellero.

"At this point, we can be certain that, unless gold prices come down, gasoline prices are going to go up—by a lot. And, because the dollar (and virtually all other currencies. J.) is currently a floating, undefined, fiat currency, there is no inherent limit to how far the price of gold in dollars can rise, and therefore no ultimate ceiling on gasoline prices..."


And gold prices aren't going to come down, are they? At least as long as our presidents and our congress are so gleefully in love with fiat money, the world's most overwhelming SuperPac.  Bridge to no where? Great idea, Senator. How much do you need?  

Right now, the threat posed by rising gasoline prices is not just to family budgets. An even greater danger is that the government will use escalating oil prices as an excuse to do something stupid.

That constitutes my major quibble with you, Mr. Woodhill.  The correct phrase would be, "as an excuse to keep doing something stupid."