Joe Biden to the rescue

Tuesday: No one knows who His Ineptness will put in charge of raping modifying the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Gun maker  stocks plunge.

Wednesday: His Ineptness appoints Joe Biden as national gun control czar. Gun stocks open more than 4 per cent higher.

We can't expect a break like that every day, folks, so march on. Make them prove the blame for murder falls on the people who didn't kill anyone.

---

(Dead-cat bounce remarks cheerfully considered.)

Newtown and Elian Gonzales

If they can try to drive the debate with heart-rending -- if not entirely logical --  visual symbols, so can I.

What debate? Why, the one insisting that only the Only Ones be permitted modern weapons.

Newtown and Roger Ebert

Turk Turon found an apt contribution to the  discussion in an interview of Roger Ebert.

NBC asked the movie critic about the effect of violent movies on things like the Columbine murders:

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.

RTWT.

Newtown and Reuters

I get blue when learning of tyke death, whether singly or in wholesale lots. Under the influence of emotion I offer only poor analyses. So on Newtown, I want to restrict myself to nibbling around the edges for  while.

We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," Obama said in apparent reference to the influence of the National Rifle Association over members of Congress.

Let's parse that into two word-sets -- everything before "Obama said" and everything after.

The president is to be excused. His words are ritual. Both ends of the boat are sinking so we all must bail. We must end the manifestations of evil which are part of Mankind Stew. And we must be bipartisan. The Prominent Class is conditioned to so remark, not unlike the retail clerk's "Have a nice day."  So I leave him alone on that and recognize that he, too, undoubtedly was sad.

The rest of it quietly illustrates an ugliness of journalism. In what was presented as a workaday spot news report, the reporters assume the misty robe of the Oracle. They reveal to us a meaning which only they have the wisdom to discover.  The president used only three operative nouns in his sentence. Not one of them referred to the National Rifle Association, nor weapons of any kind. His sentence would have been perfectly appropriate and pertinent had the tragedy been a fire.

But two decided he meant the NRA and implied he was noble to do so. They wrote it.  Someone copy read it. And at least one senior editor cleared it for world wide distribution on wires of a once-great news service. It was, in fact, Reuters' opening salvo in the war to shift blame from the man who murdered to those who did not.

It would reduce the caterwauling if we could agree that Susan Rice was not opposed as an African-American, nor because she is a woman, nor because she is a combination of the two.

She fell from grace because:

(1)  She knowingly created lies about the events that killed four Americans in Libya, including the ambassador, which is immoral and probably illegal, OR

(2) She knowingly relayed the lies of her bureaucratic seniors, which displays the character flaws mentioned above, OR

(3) She relayed unchecked information from dubious sources, which would include those senior to her in the pecking order or from the nation's intelligence apparatus. This would indicate naivete at best and deep ignorance at worst.

But perhaps I am wrong. If so, it is deeply shameful that racist America still rejects the idea of a chief foreign policy officer who is of African descent, female, and named Rice.

Thursday morning thumbnails

I'm working my way up to some major rants. But on this nice winter day TMR is in a preview mode. So here are the trailers::

--1. We already fell off the fiscal cliff. Pedants will insist on knowing just when we tripped. I'm still working it out. The earliest reasonable date in January 20, 1961, when the poseur John F. Kennedy promised the world that the United States of America would be pleased to bankrupt itself to put a Weber grill and a gaggle of Harvard lawyers in every back yard from Vietnam to Kaphukistan. (bear any burden, pay any price et al. oratorical nonsense).  The latest likely date is around the time Bill boffed Monica to celebrate passage of the revised  Community Reinvestment  Act, requiring banks to lend to people who could not  possibly repay and probably wouldn't if they could.

(The fall was often pleasant in in its early years  --  floaty, you might say, something like riding a very good hang glider, rising in vagrant thermals which mask the sure triumph of gravity.  Updrafts are rarer lately, and the descent accelerates, much like Poe's increasingly frantic prose as the Red Death approaches the ballroom door.)

--2.  We become broker by the day because we continue to do incredibly stupid things, large and small. One of the small ones is roiling my psyche lately because I drive by it daily -- a million-plus worth of "trail." It skirts the edge of my village , relatively harmlessly in the highway ditch for a while, then through a patch of wild land purchased by private citizens a decade ago and turned over to the Iowa DNR in order to save it from a housing development. The federal DOT, Iowa DOT, and local taxpayers are now financing a noticeable rape of that land. Some of the greenery will grow back, of course, but not on the paved strip which, by the way, is built to a standard just shy of that required to support Peterbilts. We wouldn't want a road bed failure to endanger the the strolling mom and her perambulator.  The significant point, however, is that hardly anyone actually uses these things.

--3. Kwee 4. The first one moved me to counsel  accumulating copper pennies; the second to acquiring large stocks of ammunition; the third to laying in pints of whiskey for barter. This latest QE persuades me we might as well just drink the whiskey.

Cory Booker's $33

Here's how you do it next week, Cory:

Ten pounds of rice and beans at a buck a pound. Seven cans of vegetable/meat soup at a buck each. A gallon of milk for four dollars. A one-dollar head of cabbage. Seven apples at fifty cents each.

Bingo. You didn't starve, and you have seven dollars and fifty cents left over for Twinkies, Rollos, and Perrier. If you were a decent human being, however, you would reserve part of that surplus for a thank-you note to the poor freeken  schmuck who paid for it.

Thus endeth our morbid text

Two straight posts on death or near-death?  C'mon, Jim, the TMR worldview  isn't that dependent on inspiration by Edgar Allen Poe. Joy is still to be found, and for some of us, pretty ladies help ease the burden of existence.

Even if you find them in movies like (let the morbidity continue)  Anatomy of a Murder.

Ha! You lechers thought I was going to put up a shot of  Lee Remick's skin falling out of very little, didn't ya? I decided on Our Miss Brooks instead. Me and Hollywood loved her as a semi-frumpy comic and a supremely competent character actress, but she also had her come-hither moments.  

---

What's that? The voices of the lowest of the low ring out in anger? O.K., but I warn that Rick Santorum is quite displeased with you.

Cold Sweats in the Night

I don't know if it is every father's nightmare, but it's mine. I am out shooting  with my children or grandchildren. Something goes wrong, and I  shoot one of them.  No consolation is possible, not from friends, not from the total of the world's priests, preachers, philosophers, and grief counsellors. And it probably wouldn't have helped for a DNR cop to announce to the world what a lucky SOB I am.

It happened a couple of hours south of me Saturday. 

The 18-year-old son is badly hurt but expected to survive what is reported as a partial load of pheasant shot in the back of his head.  Conservation cops don't know what happened but speculate the father "may’ve lost his footing going through cover and in the act of tripping, the gun misfired or fired ...".

Misfired? Come on, Officer. The result of a "misfire" on a pheasant hunt is a frustrating "click," nothing worse.

The same game cop then moves to a safety homily, displaying all the human sensitivity of Genseric turned loose among the daughters of Rome:

" ...the shooting likely would have been fatal if the pair had been deer hunting and he had been hit by a deer slug."

Thank you, officer. Us stupid civilians would never have thought of that, and who gives a damn about adding a little bit to a father's feelings of horrified guilt.

A James Dean - ish happenstance

The older gentleman, 68, has died, and I have no intent of making light of that, but there is a point of interest.  According to local radio:

"The ... Sheriff’s Office says (he) was driving a 1936 Ford eastbound on 190th Street when the vehicle left the road and several times, ejecting (him). (The probable "rolled" was dropped.)

A '36? Like this?

Or more on this order?

To a child of the  '50s.these things were the cat's meow, and we -- a few of us, not including me due to insolvency -- stuffed them with the damnedest monster engines imaginable. No one in my circle ever actually saw it, but there were reports that someone in our area had crammed a LaSalle V-12 into  chopped and channeled tail- dragger version.  If true, he was king of the drive-in picture show.

Anyway, I'm sorry it killed you, Sir. But some in your generation would have saluted the cool  and classic  manner of your demise.

Remembering

"Class, can anyone tell us what happened on this day in 1941. Yes, Sarah?"

'The Japanese kamikazes bombed General MacArthur."

"And can you tell us why?"

"Because we wouldn't sell them any oil or steel because they were yellow people."

Very good, Sarah. Now, pay strict attention class. I have the decorating assignments here for the homecoming dance..." 

Strange signals in the air

New Hampshire Public Radio alleges that the world has only one broadcast station run by criminals and one by psychiatric patients.

Isn't it just like government radio to get its facts all screwed up? They forgot Fox News and MSNBC.

---

Hat tip to Blaine Thompson on Facebook. He's the man who runs Indiana Radio Watch, a must-read for area media types and interesting to radio freaks everywhere.

---

(Oh hush, please. I +know+ cable is technically not "broadcasting.")

Dave Brubeck

The classic four, taking five, c. 1958.  On Sunday afternoons Dave Brubeck and these three jammed at The Black Hawk, in San Francisco, at Turk and Hyde -- introducing a 17-year-old sailor from the corn fields to the absolute delight of "cool" jazz. He made Amerian music less crude.

Paul Desmond, Brubeck, Joe Morello, Gene Wright.

It's Closing Time Blues

RIP, Sir.

The Perils of Pauline

Relax, Pauline. You're not going over the cliff. You are the succulent trough from which our Masters slurp, and they're smart enough -- just barely -- to keep you breathing.  Certainly they'll rip your petticoats and rape you a little bit,  but in due course you'll up and around, fattening yourself for the next episode. Which will end like this one, music at crescendo, another drama under the glaring Kliegs, and the most egregious case of political ham-acting since Marc Antony delivered extemporaneous remarks over the corpse of Caesar.

---

It's fun to watch the posturing, like an evening at Bedlam, but it's too easy to have moments of taking these apes seriously. Resist that. Pay attention to the fine print projected hazily on the scrim:

"What liars these political things be." 

For those lacking time or motivation to follow the link, the historical evidence shows governments as perpetual payday loan clients.  Give them a new dollar and they will spend it, plus some -- $1.04 to $1.80, depending on how you slice and dice the survey data.

Gun porn, incomplete

Too late, after I locked them back up, it occurred to me that that I was one gun shy of hilarious vulgarity.  There's 38 on top, descending to 22. The shot needs another 38 below, but I don't feel like  re-opening the safe.

The Police Positive is sort of a B-cup  D-frame -- in .38 Colt New Police, equal to .38 S & W. There's no real difference, but originally there was an up-front variance. Colt got caught with its pants down in the revolver ammo wars of a century ago, so it stole the .38 Short Wimp. It gave up when no one was fooled by the cosmetic difference, a flat bullet rather than the sensuously curved Smith and Wesson nose. 

It's 1918 vintage. Someone  later dressed it in beautiful Colt OEM walnut bloomers. They would be lovely adorning any of six or eight other D-frame models, just not this one. Anyone with proper hard rubber care to swap?

There's a small stash of .38 SW here, but I'll probably want to shoot  more than that. I can reload with the .38 Special dies (albeit possibly with some crimping challenges). The .357* cast bullets will work well enough,  and in extremis for brass I can trim .38 Special cases to fit. (Probably, anyway.  I haven't looked into the rim-thickness question yet.)

The Hi-Standard Sentinel is one of those comfortable mid-grade guns that just "is" -- not special, no particular history or other distinction, but a kick to shoot. We pulled onto K's personal air strip on the way home and ran a few cylinders offhand just for the pleasure of listening to the noise and watching dirt fly around the only handy target, a corn husk 20 - 25 feet off. I nailed it a time or two double action and figure I scattered the rest over a dinner plate area. A big dinner plate.

But Jim, you damned fool, you already got enough guns and, besides, you ain't made of money.

Quite true, but let me explain it this way: "Bugger off."

Alternatively, take the $xxx Federal Reserve Cartoon  price and calculate how few zillionths of a nanosecond it will take Ben to create xxx new ones out of thin air.  He can't make Colts or even Hi Standards at all, even if we give him a 3D printer.

---

*The .38 SW caliber spec is .361.  The Brits designated the round .38-200. It used a 200-grain bullet which gave Tommy's leftenant leisure for a spot of tea before it became time to see if his projectile had yet struck the Hun.

The latest gun market report

At a small country auction this morning in Northwest Iowa:

 Mossberg Model 185D-B 20 ga. bolt action, 2 3/4" chamber;  $160

Winchester 3030 Model 94, used very little; $900 and note that this was recent production, routinely available NIB at near half the hammer price.

Marlin Model 19G, 12 ga. pump shot gun w/long barrel;    c. $125

Marlin Model #37 -22 pump rifle; $210.  I dropped out  at $150 due to condition; the butt stock was too trashy.

Colt DA 32  (sic) w/case & US issue holster, was Jim's dad's WWI issue;  $500.  My "sic" was sic.  It was a .32 Colt, an old 4-inch Police Positive,  and undoubtedly a POW rather than an "issue" revolver. The holster was issue but too long for this piece and likely intended for the earlier GI Colt .38.

Colt Huntsman 22 long rifle, auto;  $500. Arguably reasonable, but I considered the condition to be low-average and the price too high for a shooter.

Rohm 22 Magnum Model 66;  $160. Junk in any condition, and this one was about average.

Ruger .22 auto .22 long; $310. A routine Ruger Standard, 6-inch, which are all over the loopholes here at c. $210-220.

---

I believe I mentioned that our agripersons stagger under the load of Obama/Bernanke/Congressslug cash and tend to get somewhat "excitable" when  under the thrall of a good auctioneer offering blue steel. I apologize for the poor characterization and should have written that they get galactically freeken hysterical.  

Incoming!

This is what happens when a guy yields to his tender feelings and starts pandering to an orphan. (And also when the auto-fuzz feature on his new three-volt Nikon Cockroach goes into action.)

And this is what happens when her yowling snaps the patience of visiting Hungarian Royalty, to wit, Her Royal Visla-ness, Buda.

The delinquent cat disappeared for a while. The dog was unhurt. I assured Buda's retainers, my heir the Lady-in-Waiting and and her esteemed husband, the  Footman, that no mentionable harm was done and that I, myself, had not totally lacked a similar impulse.

---

All in all it was something of a favor. That was the last truly ugly window in the Great Room of the Commandant's Quarters here at Camp J, headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Force. The incident will move me to direct the Base Maintenance Section of my G-4 to redesign it.

Meanwhile, a little more Gorilla tape stays the winter gales. 

Castle Doctrine; How Many Times Can I Shoot?

You'll never meet two cuter kids than Haile Kifer, 18, and Nicholas Brady Schaeffel, 17, cousins who personify the American ideal of wholesome good looks. They could do Pepsodent ads.

You'll also never meet a 64-year-old retired government security geek who looks more ominous than Byron Smith. He's the guy who shot them. And shot and shot.

Haile and Nick could easily have been featured in a happy 1940s Ronald Reagan/June Allyson movie. Unfortunately, they seemed to enjoy burglarizing other folks' homes.

Every media outlet in America lusts for a piece of this story, lots of drama plus a segue into another Castle Doctrine shouting match.

It happened Thanksgiving Day. Byron says he was tinkering in his basement shop when Nick came down the stairs, either unarmed or carrying a piece of pipe.  So Byron shot him, dropped, him, and fired a finisher.

Then came Haile. And the second most bizarre fact -- if fact it be -- of the tale.

Smith said he sat down in a chair when Kifer started walking down the steps. Smith shot her and she also fell down the stairs. He tried to shoot her a second time, but his rifle* jammed. When the gun jammed, Kifer laughed at him, fueling his anger...

(He then used his  ".22 revolver" to silence her misplaced sense of humor.)

"If you're trying to shoot somebody and they laugh at you, you go again," he told police.

Most bizarre: He let the bodies season for 24 hours before deciding to ask a neighbor to call the cops who booked him for Murder Two.

It's going to be hard to find a hero in this one.

---

The dead thugs made the overriding error.  All they had to do to stay alive on Thanksgiving Day was to decline to invade that home.   No burglary, no funeral,  no anguished families.

And Shooter Smith is not destined to become the poster boy for libertarian self-defense principles. He was conceptually within that framework when he raised the rifle against threat  and shot until the young man fell helpless.  Likewise, there's no argument against his stopping the girl's advance. But:

Smith told police he then shot Kifer "more times than I needed to" in the chest, leaving her gasping for air. He ended her suffering with a "good, clean finishing shot" under her chin. 

He probably blew his Castle Doctrine protections somewhere amidst the gunfire, but if not then, later when he told the authorities he "wanted them dead."

Good gawdamighty.  Was there ever a more compelling example of the need to shut your stupid mouth and hire a lawyer to do your talking for you?

There's a lot more to be sorted out, and the accused finally got a lawyer, a man we rather assume is trying hard to recall everything he ever read about the diminished responsibility defense.

---

*A Mini-14, according to my private spook in the MSM.

The outsider

Nature made her to be an outside cat -- and me to inhabit a catless house. Who am I to dispute Nature no matter how pathetically she gazes in?

She's getting fat. Needs a name. Also needs a heated cat house for the coming cold.

Yes, I'm well aware that the window could stand washing, recaulking, and painting. This will be done when I am finished with the cat house, unless I'm too tired or something.

Arab Spring, Act II

The AP tells us:

A widening dispute between the president and the nation's judiciary is at the center of the uproar over a constitutional declaration placing Morsi above oversight of any kind, including by the courts.

Dang. Democracy in the Middle East fails again, and we are all astounded.

I hate radical solutions, but I fear we must send Susan Rice to Cairo with a page  of talking points.

Personally, I blame the video.

A little gun lust

Next Saturday morning is reserved for a lethal weapons bazaar out in the country, a backwash farm not from from the head waters of Stony Creek where Inkpadutah's band of Wahpekute Dakotas liked to hunt elk when they were not busy killing white people for stealing their land.

Nothing on the auction goes back as far as the ~ 1855 to 1865 period when old Inky was making a pest of himself in these parts. Only the Colt D.A. .38 comes within a long generation of being contemporary. It could be a model as early as 1892 or as late as 1905, the latter only as a USMC variant. It took Colt a long time to get this one right, especially to make the cylinder turn the right way. I owned one decades ago, flimsy lockwork, impossible trigger, and all.

The lineup, with the three that interest me in bold:


GUNS: Mossberg Model 185D-B 20 ga. bolt action, 2 3/4" chamber; Winchester 3030 Model 94, used very little; Marlin Model 19G, 12 ga. pump shot gun w/long barrel; Marlin Model #37 -22 pump rifle; Colt DA 32  (sic) w/case & US issue holster, was Jim's dad's WWI issue; Rohm 22 Magnum Model 66; Ruger 22 long, auto.; Colt Huntsman 22 long rifle, auto; WWI steel helmet; WWI gas mask; 1917 Camp Dodge pic.; 1917 Soldier's Handbook; lrg. military shell

World War 1 is a bit outside my interest, probably because I have never fully shaken the vague notion that Mrs. Wilson may have chosen the wrong side.  Kaiser Bill wasn't really an evil dude, and it might have been useful to have a bunch of snobbish Prussian junkers between us and Joe Stalin in the middle third of the 20th Century.  God knows the Frogs and the Brits weren't all that useful.

Still, the Colt is a bona fide U.S. Military relic, so maybe I'll bid even though it was a miserable design first built for a pipsqueak cartridge. Also, this example is rough.

So is the Colt Huntsman, but I'll try for it anyway. In the first place the one already resident in the local vault is lonely. In the second, it will make my friend K grit his teeth in jealousy again, and that's worth something. :)

The Marlin Model 37 would likewise make good company for the M-38 already in hand. They're fraternal if not identical twins,  and a sweeter little rabbit gun/plinker never existed.

So, we'll see, but I'll show up at Dick's auction prepared to be disappointed. Our agrarians are flush this fall with crop money, drought disaster money, ethanol mandate money and Lord knows what else from the generous hands of His Ineptness and master gardener Tom Vilsack.  This tends to make them excitable at auctions.

Thanksgiving

There's nothing like a Thanksgiving Dinner  with old friends to make a fellow thankful to live in a time and place where, on one day each year, wretched excess feels  just right.

Quote of the Day: Tam on the Flippy Lindsay Stone

Why do we "blog," people?

For attention, of course. Is it possible to find a "post" -- or, for that matter, any piece of writing, anywhere, in any medium -- which doesn't announce in one way or another, "See how cool I am?" Not to worry, fellow writers.  A sin so universal is no sin at all; like gravity, it is a natural fact, something to which we  accommodate ourselves.

But we use and abuse our keyboards for other reasons, causes beyond the human desire for one 15-minute period of personal fame after another.

In this libertarian-ish corner we emphasize mocking authoritarians. Strip the pretentious bastards bare.  Lock them in stocks on the village green. Joyfully invite public attention to their warty morals. It is a vital public service.

We have the good fortune to exist under a Constitution which protects our rights to the most forceful speech and gesture from criminal prosecution. This includes you and me calling President Obama ugly names, and it includes Lindsay Stone.

She's the thoughtless bitch who deemed it harmlessly cute to be photographed at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, flipping  off something or someone.  The internet made her famous, then infamous, and she slithered under the First Amendment blankie. That's her defense against being arrested, and I glory in the fact that she has it.

At the same time, I would shed no tears if Fortune punished her with a loathsome disease, perhaps severe adult-onset acne. Her attention must be engaged with the notion that some things, however legal, mark her as a thickhead whose taste and judgement ceased developing about the time she was potty trained.

Now, we can do only a little to alter the fact that obnoxious numbskulls exist among us and that the internet gives them power, or at least wide exposure.  But we should try. That's where discerning writers come in, encapsulating the concept in a couple dozen words which even Lindsay might one day understand.


It's the difference between lighting up next to a "NO SMOKING" sign, and lighting up next to a "NO SMOKING" sign in a pediatric lung cancer ward. One's rebellious, the other's reprehensible.

.

As a public service...

...I post the following because the internet is desperately short of cute kitty pictures.

I think this is the sole survivor of a litter thrown by a now-missing black mama in my wildflower/weed patch. It took up residence in the bilge of the long-drydocked pocket cruiser where my daughter found and fed it a few days ago. I continue to subsidize its nutritional needs. Since last night it's been rooted where you see it, near the commandant's quarters deck.

New Dog Libby hissy-fits but is willing, upon command, to stop trying to turn it into lunch.

I'm no cat man, but a good hard-working outside, repeat outside, feline would have some pest control advantages around here so I'll continue the St. Francis routine.


----

And just so no one thinks I've gone completely softheaded and barmy, I still concentrate on more important stuff than cats.

It's another rebuilt 1903 Springfield, someone else's good work from many years ago in the excellent .257 Roberts. it's too seldom shot around here, but Grandson and I blew the cobwebs from the barrel Saturday. Great fun, and it will be worked a little harder in the future.

Lyman. Real men don't have no truck with tilliescopes and laserites.

(Actually, I'm kind of proud of the bench. It's a retired oak entertainment unit banished from the living room when the flat screen electric teevee set arrived. An hour with the saws and drills turned it into a good rifle cleaning and tinkering stand.)

The Yellow Man's Burden

His Ineptness continues his mission to Asia, and we all praise the wider application of the skills which have brought him -- and the nation -- such acclaim for peacemaking in places like Benghazi and Gaza.

Banging with Gramps

The Great Annual Clan Pheasant Shoot-At is history, and Camp Jiggleview has reverted to its genteel semi-squalid quietude.  It is  now inhabited by a mere six legs (one biped plus New Dog Libby) compared to about 40 at the peak.

This gathering of armed citizens and their aristocratic dogs has been going on for close to 20 years. Its motto is something like search and destroy prior to grins over unhealthy food and a certain small ration of good whiskey. 

Every annual session leaves a special memory. This year it came from our friend Dan who shared the Camp J Transient Officers Quarters with my son, grandson, and four-leggers Ruby and  Storm. Dan suffered a minor thumb cut Thursday -- something about a small mishap with the action of his OU gun. Over Friday morning coffee he told me he would be leaving early because the wound had been badly exacerbated. I asked for details. 

Well, I was rearranging dogs in the sleeping bag and ...

And if that doesn't  perfectly capture the flavor of these things, nothing does.

---

One more, almost as good.

I have an intricate range  box, the product of my late father's creative mind and careful workmanship. When my youngest heir and assign, age 17,  opened it he found a three-screw Ruger Single-Six, a Colt Huntsman, and a GI Colt 1911A1.

I allowed as how we still had enough daylight to run back out to the countryside for a spot of handgun practice and asked him to pick a pistol. Whereupon: "Let's just take the whole box." 

Is that a well-trained lad or what?

And yet another crisis in the our current Age of Ineptitude:

The Senate has scheduled an early evening procedural vote Tuesday for a sportsmen's bill that will decide the fate of 41 polar bear carcasses that hunters want to bring home from Canada as big-game trophies. Hunters killed the bears just before a 2008 ban on polar bear trophy imports took effect, but were not able to bring them home before the Fish and Wildlife Services listed them as a threatened species.

A small suggestion: Whenever an issue of this magnitude rises above the decision-making capacity of a clerk-typist, turn it over to a smart GS7.  Give him or her 30 seconds to say yes or no, or to order a coin toss.

Fer krissakes.

---

AP characterizes the bill as 19 measures "favorable to sportsmen." Okay, but I'll bet my second-best rifle that at least 17 of them -- including the bears -- do nothing more than fix idiocies previously created by by presidents, congresspeople, or the unelected regulators of national life.

The Second Four-Year Plan

TMR has been politics free since the Tuesday sadness, and it's still not quite ready to add it's mite to the national noise except in a brief and general way. The election left the TMR feeling like a different Travis McGee, suffering from  "...a bad burger, too quickly eaten."

Freedom lost ground. We can look forward to new dictates which will have the primary effect of making us apply for more permission ships and hall passes as we try to go about our productive -- or at worst harmless -- daily business. The de facto devaluation of our currency will continue and probably accelerate.

it is quite discouraging.

Prepping for a Sandy

There's nothing contrived for a  photograph here. That's where and how the lanterns and the atlas live. It's a corner of the big, libertarian bay window installed some years ago.

( Libertarian" in the sense that the project required, but was built without, a permission slip from the Regulators of the village of Smugleye-on-Lake. The sheriff has not been around with a warrant yet, illustrating that you sometimes get away with egregious anti-social behavior.  Part of the secret is just doing it while keeping your mouth shut until the statute of limitations runs out.)

Our power grid is quite dependable out here, even in the land of the tornado and the fierce blizzard. But sometimes the lights do go out, and when that happens at night I am in Room 101. The Worst Thing in the World is boredom.

Here in just a couple of square feet is an escape, illumination and information.

It isn't everything a fellow needs for survival, just a start. But, funny, it just seems to lead to other units of self-sufficiency. A few more lanterns, several feet of books, candles, LED flashlights, stashed lentils, rice, canned food, and so forth.

I tend to identify this attitude as "country," but I'm probably wrong. Even in Manhattan, Hoboken, there must be thousands of citizens of common sense and the ability to think ahead. We're led to an opposite view largely by the electric television industry which finds it more dramatic, and hence better for the Neilsons, to point their cameras exclusively at the bleaters.

"Don't nobody come to help me yet. Whattem I gonna do?"

I dunno  for sure. I suppose you could try hanging another picture of President Obama or Governor Chris your wall.

Values

On election-eve  morning I watched The Fountainhead and thought deeply about  libertarian/objectivist values.

"You lie, James. You just leered at Patricia."

Dang. You ketcha me up, amigo.

Travis McGee votes

I am Travis McGee today and a committed, decided voter, convinced that the oval I blacken makes a difference.

It is vainglorious, but it is good for the soul to scour the rust from the tin-plate  armour, adjust the cookpot helmet, mount my pathetic Rocinante, swaybacked, galled  and, like me I fear, something of a redundancy in this Brave New World.

I am off to tilt me the Hell out of a quasi-American Windmill. May my bent lance lodge between the blades -- stopping them cold -- of narcissism, revenge, contrived drama, and a lust for those glorious days when Lenin was still respectable, the days when all that was deemed good was deemed collective. Collective planning. Collective work. Collective reward. Collective guilt. Or, as the Windmill huffs it: "Forward." Or, sometimes, "You didn't build this."

Which is to say that I take my little vote seriously, almost ceremoniously.  I will shower and closely shave, dress neatly, and enter the polling place as a first sergeant enters the company barracks.

But sadly I will still be thinking of the corollary decision. Against the sitting ruler, certainly, but for whom?

My state is close. The historically best poll calls it His Ineptness by five, meaning I should feel free to cast an honest libertarian vote. Other polls have it closer. Meaning that I should choose the quasi-Republican.

I suspect the decision won't come until the pencil hovers over the paper. I may or may not report it, but you'll be able to figure it out if you happen to be around  Smugleye-on-Lake voting central.

If for Mr. Johnson, I'll walk out whistling a happy tune as I stride off to round up a few election-gathering supplies for this evening.

If for Mr. Romney, I'll slink home, futilely trying to persuade myself  that I am a hero of the fighting retreat, but feeling badly in need of another shower.

The wisest of the wise

Lindsey Graham just told MSNBC that if Romney loses it is for "just one reason -- demographics."

Man, you just can't fool a United States senator. Or a crack political analyst like Chuck Todd who treated the Lindsey revelation as a profound, eerrrrr, revelation, like, y'know, from Mount Sinai.

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Richard J. Daley of Chicago: When people are out of work unemployment results.

The cost of Sandy: zero or so

The cabal news networks on the electric teevee are running out of human interest stories. (Tell me, Elizabeth, did it make you cry when you lost your dolly and saw your pretty little kitty drown right in front of you?)

So they're forced to move on to higher-IQ journalism --- Cost of Sandy $50 billion, OMG!!!

Of course it won't be $50 billion. That's a number plucked from bureaucratic butts in order to persuade us proles that our leaders are on top of things and have some foggy notion of what they're talking about. It will be higher, much higher with Obama's promise to "ignore red tape" and give every New Jersey tax-sucker everything he asks for.

Just for giggles, let's pretend the actual Sandy loss is $85 billion. So what? That's just what Ben Bernanke and the Feds spend every thirty days in buying debt that even a Lehman Brothers trader wouldn't have touched. Kwee 1, Kwee 2, Kwee 3 et seq.

You argue back that the Fed doesn't have any money to buy anything, not even enough to replace a single tassel on its Guccis? You forget. The Fed is allowed to make money. And we mean "make," not "earn."

It works like this. Every 30 days Ben strolls into his office about 9 o'clock. He rings for his administrative assistant who wheels in the cart with his fresh-squeezed orange juice in a silver server. He smiles at the first sip, starts humming zippity doo dah zippity day what a wonderful job. The he turns to his Cray and taps a few keys. Presto, $85 billion in nice new money.

The only difference this month is that he'll have to do it twice. Once to routinely buy the unrepayable debt. Once more for New Jersey pols and their neighbors.

So he puts in for overtime?

CNN has just made the Walking Dead zombies look compassionate and tasteful. A producer who missed a fine career as a ghoul sicced his film crew on the woman whose sons were "swept from her arms" and on the man who refused to take her and the boys in. Or who did not.

J---- H. C----- on a pogo stick.

Marry me, Peggy?

Every now and then I forget that Peggy Noonan likes the concept of government a little too much. Usually, I forget it when she writes about the pretensions of its posturing nabobs.  Lately, of course, the poseur-in-chief  has most suffered her graceful sting.

It is one thing to think you're Lebron. Its another thing to keep missing the basket and losing games and still think you're Lebron.

And that really was the problem: (Obama)  had the confidence without the full capability. And he gathered around him friends and associates who adored him, who were themselves talented but maybe not quite big enough for the game they were in. 

What an elegant way to say His Ineptness is in over his swollen head and should stick to rousing the rabble  south of the Blackstone Hotel. 

I recommend reading the whole thing. And if you happen to run across Ms. Noonan, please tell her I was just kidding about getting hitched. On the other hand, if she would settle for a couple of picnic hours with wine and a basket of cold chicken, I'm hers.

Tamara

Tam is sweating (and joking; after all, she is Tam)  her way through  a darkness, waiting on laboratory tests to say yea or nay about a condition no one wants. Drop on over to wish her well.

Sandy note

Mayor-Against-Guns Bloomberg touts a "couple of murder-free days" in post-Sandy Manhattan. He can't say why, but he hints it's because of his brilliant municipal leadership.

Could be, but more likely:

"Hey, Bro, lets go down to Virginia and buy some assault rifles and come back and  shoot some mofos and take their stuff."

"Can't do it Homie. Ain't no way to get across the bridges and da tunnels is flooded."

"Well, sheeeee-it then. If  I can't get no gun guess I'll just go on up to the church and help Father Flanagan feed nuns and orphans."

.

Nice Sandy. (Arfing for votes)

Hurricane Sandy is one for the books, History will recall it as the photo op that saved a president's seat. Also the seat widely expected to seek re-election as boss politician of New Jersey.

MSNBC is having the most fun. The Channel of the Left is cutting programming costs in half by just putting up still shots of Christie and Obama staring deeply and lovingly into one another's eyes.  Over and over, concentrating on the images suggesting they need a room.

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On some level His Ineptness may give a tiny Jack Schidtt about the the human unpleasantness in the Middle Atlantic states. As a politician, which he is above all else, you have to believe he delights in this October surprise. At a cost no greater than that of composing the right touchy-feely sentences he wins the Battle of the "Earned" Media  in the final seven days.  It wouldn't work so well for him if voters listened to him with their reasoning facilities in the "on" mode. For instance:

Yesterday he provided a detail of his relief program. He has ordered all federal bureaucrats to return all New Jersey calls "within 15  minutes," to ignore  "red tape" and to "find a way to say yes" to any state, county, municipal, or township nabob who figures the nation owes him something. That sort of open-trough policy would corrupt even the nation's most honestly governed state. (South Dakota, probably.).

In the days of free-range hogs in Iowa, we had a similar battle cry. "SOOO-EEEEE. Come pig pig pig."  

(cf .Katrina, Irene)

The resurrection and the knife

A nice thing about good little loopholes is that they feature all sorts of easy and mindless blog food at trifling cost, in this case a five-dollar bill.

There is no official relic-condition category called "hideous to the max," but there should be. What else do you call a (probable) M1 bayonet variation -- greatly shrunken -- like this?

The first incorrect impulse is to ID it as some sort of M1 carbine blade. Among other things, the muzzle hole is too big.  So, Garand? Maybe. Also maybe a foreign adaptation of the M1 bayonet for something else. (The key to M1ish identification is the complicated birds-head pommel.) It's 11 inches overall with a 6 1/2 -inch blade.

The other faulty impulse is to curse the Bubba who maimed it beyond any wild dream of restoration: all markings obliterated, lug catch ground off, hilt metal and pommel deeply pitted, and a fuller showing the endeavors of a guy who had a Dreml but shouldn't have. The finishing touch is a set of grips crafted from salvaged orange crate lumber and Elmer's glue.

I'll take a short-odds bet that this one is a dugup and spent a long time under damp earth before someone kicked it up and decided to see if he could turn it into a knife.  So it's a well-motivated resurrection, sort of like Stephen King's risen cat; it didn't walk too well, but it was still  reconizable as a cat-like object.

Actually, it is kind of a porn gun.

But please keep it under your hat. This is being written in the wee hours when my compatriots are sleeping and won't find out somebody snuck back to the loophole for:

Provenance? You demand provenance? I got your provenance right here:

Corporal Styng of the 101st Airborne took it from a particularly thuggish SS Oberstleutnant on the Cotentin Peninsula about sunrise, June 6, 1944. For 11 months it was a comforting presence in his pocket, loaded with 7.65 rounds also liberated from the German supply chain.

Then, in early May on the Elbe, victory won, his artistic side appeared. The battalion armorer made up the grips from the wind screen of a downed Stuka, and S/Sgt. Styng lovingly fitted the photo of the Girl Back Home.  (A more sedate picture of the future Mrs. Styng is under the right grip panel.)

Geeking it out: FN Browning Model 1922, .32ACP, Nazi proofed, made in the captured FN factory in Liege, Belgium, probably in 1941 or '42, although it bears a batch serial number (with a letter suffix), making dating somewhat tricky. The slide is well polished and blued. The number-matched frame shows more hasty manufacturing. Insofar as the Luftwaffe had an official pistol, this was it, but the 1922 was widely carried by Master Race officers of all services.

The 1922 is a stretched version of John M. Browning's , PBUH, Model 1910 which Colt didn't want. So he had it built by the Walloons who showed it to the picky damned Yugoslavs who wanted a longer barrel and greater capacity.

Most guys would probably grade this one at very good, maybe a little better. 85 per cent? I expect it to shoot well enough -- minute-of-Nazi thorax  across a small courtyard. But that's secondary. What it is is foxhole art and the one of the most intimate possible pieces of history.  What is war if it isn't the story of a lonesome warrior, too far from Her?

 

Just maybe some piddly little Sandy deaths

I know a lot of Virginians,  and they don't talk this way. Just the politicians.

"...  no injuries so far and no fatalities of any significance," Governor Bob McDonnell told the electric teevee this morning.

Try it like this, Governor Bob. "No one hurt or killed yet."  You're just not ready for words of two or more syllables.

Other gun show spawn

That's it, the entire result of a couple of aisle-wandering hours up in Windom. Materially it doesn't  justify the fuel cost, So you have to look at it spiritually. Then the laughs and general bs-ing yield a rich profit.

But back to things. The items represent an expenditure of eleven Federal Reserve Cartoons, each humorously labeled one "dollar."

The booklets came at one FRC each, no negotiation involved. The taper crimp die traded for $7.50, a 25 per cent reduction in the ask. That's especially sweet because I've been wanting one against the likelihood that I may need to start rolling  9 mm.

The mink oil is even better, half off the tag price, or $1.50 and NIB.  Did you know that mink oil really comes from minks, usually Chinese ones in today's market? I didn't until I wikied it. Like you, I love it the stuff to soften certain leather  -- slings, dress belts, gloves that got wet, and so forth. (Never holsters.)  But it took the internet to teach me it will make my skin soft, smooth, and radiant.  I think I'll pass. My hide is none of those sexy things, but there are occidental mink all around Camp J, and that makes me fearful. Certainly among the locals there may be a bull mink who fantasizes Asian, and I'll bet a randy mink jumping my face would sting.

Lessee. What else? Oh yeah, the Fort William book was sort of a mistake. I stupidly assumed it was a history of Fort Laramie which began life as Fort William -- named Fort William by Mr. Sublette whose first name was William.  S'okay. After years of studying Rocky Mountain trappers, I need to know more about the Frenchies and their eastern fur trade.

One more thing. I'm diddling with the idea of going back today. If Wehrmacht Browning 1922 and the Remington 760 (another one of those damned things?) are still on the tables, I could re-open negotiations. If that happens, and if my pals find out about it, they will  snicker and smirk and point rude fingers at me and make  stupid cracks about a guy who can't make up his mind. Scroom. I mean, were they clever enough to get half-off on a cask of mink oil?

A social history of the United States

In microcosm. Really micro, as deduced from the literary spawn of a fine loophole up in Windom yesterday.

Some time in the last one-fifth of the 20th Century an American patriot went on vacation; "patriot" because he chose to see America first by sightseeing in Duluth before skirting the Lake Superior coast and crossing into exotic Ontario, destination Fort William on the storied Kaministiquia River.

There he purchased a chapbook -- a guide to the post and superficial history of the Great Lakes fur trade. The booklet was interesting enough, though written in the see how cute I write style. But more intriguing is the single sheet of scratch paper our traveler stuck in it, his to-do-before-leaving list and his itinerary. It's easy to quote in full. He would be ready to roll after:

--Move state park sticker. This pegs him as a probable Minnesotan. Even then that SSR required a permit for damned near everything.

--Lay out route.  We have here a prudent middle American; leave nothing to chance on wilderness roads or sinister urban concentrations. We can safely suggest that he remembered his Boy Scout motto and was prepared.

--PVC.  PCV  He knew his engine sported such a thing and, probably, what it did and how to replace it, representing a significant difference between than and now.

--Bug Spray. This was not  this ol' boy's first time in the woods.

--Clean garage. No respectable man wants to come home to a mess. Besides, he might come upon a forgotten can of bug spray, saving a bit of money as well as a special trip to town.

--Write Instructions For Shooting & ; lodge I.D. This is the most enigmatic entry. So he was an Elk, a Moose, or an Odd Fellow and wanted to make sure he would be welcomed as a brother in the towns he visited? But shooting instructions for what? This actually is wonderful. Without mystery, history would  be a bore.

And finally on this side of the paper:

--Money Box.  See? I told you this was a competent American who knew the ultimate requirement of travel, foreign and domestic.

The other side was even briefer, five penciled blocks representing the calendar of his vacation.

Tues Duluth late

Wed Sight see Duluth etc. That "etc." raises questions. Duluth was even then a seaport, and things can get racy down on the waterfront. But what the Hell. It's your vacation and these days it's no worse than a bad cold.

Thurs Ft. Williams & Grand Pro(???) -- Look, I didn't  claim he was a careful speller or skilled penman. He meant Grand Portage.

Fri Finish Dulht (Duluth?) Head to L.F. 

Sat Head Home.

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I wish you had had  more vacation time,  Friend.  Having to punch the clock on Monday morning was a bitch, wasn't it? Still is.

And I hope you are still alive, in good health, living among people who love you, and entertaining  grandchildren with tales of your expedition to the great northern forests.

The gun market

Mid-October , 2012, guns-only auction in northwest Iowa; all from one owner; all in excellent to NIB condition.

Porn update

A guy is lucky to have a friend like John, a liberrian in the GMA. He was understandably upset at the blurry Venus/Susan cheesecake I posted. (Honest, it was the best one I could find.) so he sought out a much better reproduction, and it now appears in the original post. Lechers of the world, rejoice! Go look and pant.

Junk on my bunk

Six pieces of it, sent my way through a friend for a value opinion and an offer. The friend will buy the scabby but working Remington 11-48  as a spare gun.

Leaving a neglected and butchered Remington 31, dinged, rusty, and with a receiver gouge that could only have been done with a grinder. It sports one of those old Lyman screw-on choke tubes, likely frozen in place. Too bad. It was a graceful gun from John Pederson who undoubtedly tipped his hat to Mr. Browning (PBUH) for some of the basic design.

Leaving also a J.C. Higgins bolt-action 12 gauge, a Stevens 16-gauge single, an Ithaca 72 (by Erma of West Germany)  lever .22,

And the heartbreaker, a Winchester 37 in .410,  bad enough to require butchering -- like this -- nearly unthinkable for an old Winchester.  Stock cracks and chips. Battered butt plate. Hints of blue highlight a motif of rust. It just spent too much time rattling around in the leaky rumble seat of a Model A.

My offer for all five is on the table, probably so low as to insult the owner, but high enough I really hope he declines. It isn't as though there are too few projects cluttering up evey damned horizontal surface I own.

(The cheap Ithaca is somewhat presentable and probably works. Having a little experience with Ermaverksjerks, I'd just shoot it until something breaks -- more likely sooner than later --  then screw it to a barn board and sell it to some older party who needs to decorate his rumpus room.)

A reporter discovers irony

In the village of Haverhill in the commune of Massachusetts,  police arrested a drug dealer. The local newspaper covered the bust in exhaustive detail -- really more than most folks would want to know about a hulking ex-con who discovered prosperity in peddling Oxycodone.

Hmmm.  Why the journalistic opus? It couldn't have been his $15,247 in cash the cops found. That's a pittance in his business. it must have been his EBT card (translation: food stamps) which he had used at a convenience store an hour before the bust.

Actually, I understand his viewpoint in not going home to pick up a little green to pay for his beer and Frito-Lays. Things just aren't safe in Massachusetts these days, and a  guy doesn't want to be carrying cash out on the mean streets. Too many druggies and ex-cons lurking the alleyways.

Ammunition shortage, politics, and other Mad Monday mIscellenia

1. I cleaned out the local WalMart supply of bulk-pack .22 long rifle hollow points yesterday. Which is to say I bought one pack, Federals, at $19.97 plus tax, and consider myself lucky to get that. My WalMart has hired a rarity, a personable sporting goods clerk.  I asked about the dearth of .22s. She said there's a run on the stuff, that when she re-orders it can take three weeks to get any at all, and it disappears in a day or two.

(This large, pretty woman is especially treasurable compared to the usual Wally munchkins  whose default response to any question is a shrug and a grunt. I came perilously close to proposing marriage.)

The mania to buy ammunition is, of course, a vox pop phenomena, better than any other poll.The people say His Ineptness will be swept into power again, carrying a valise full of greater flexibility.

2. Joe Scarborough and his supporting cast are having quite a party down in a Florida cafe this morning, setting the scene for the debate-like teevee program tonight.  A lot of parents were in the place,  getting their existence validated by waving their hands and babies at the teevee cameras. Joe and Mika each held some racially balanced kids. It was cute for a couple-three minutes, then not. I  knelt before the porcelain throne, brushed my teeth, and switched to a C-Span channel where...

3. C-Span was interviewing college kids about the great issues to be decided this evening. Back to the throne. Look, dammit, kids are in college to learn something about grown-up life. By definition they're a few years shy of knowing what the Hell they're talking about . Giving them teevee time to advise adults on adult topics is presumptuous at best, but "stupid" is a more accurate term.  (There are a few exceptions, of course, but I've already talked too much about my grandsons.)

4.  The Sunday gun auction was astounding. Fine classic handguns at prices phenomenally greater than I and my comrades are willing to pay, even in Bernanke's Federal Reserve Cartoons. (More anon, assuming  any ambition remains after my light-heavyweight bout with leaves. Damn, I love trees,  but my adoration fades every October when I rediscover the annoyance of living downwind from 400 acres of them.

Meanwhile

if there's no good gun auction or loophole handy to your digs, I offer a pair of  time-passers, one armed, one otherwise.

Guns galore

...and some nice ones. They go to auction this afternoon, so if you need me for emergency political or philosophical consultation I'm afraid I won't be here.

The queen of the hop is an apparently original Rem-Rand 1911A1.  The joker of sadness is a Colt GI issue .45. Chromed.  Add some Pythons to the mix and you at least have plenty of eye candy.

I seriously doubt I'll bring anything home. Auction prices around here have been astounding recently -- not just over the market, but off into the realm of stratobucks (thanks in part, of course, to Ben Bernanke's starship Kwee* Three Et Seq.)

I'll be leaving in about 90 minutes, so if you want to place a proxy bid...

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*Q.E., quantitative easing, i.e. the Charminization of the Greenback.