Nautical Distractions (3)

A lad for whom I hold infinite affection has just turned 19. When he is precisely 19 years and one month old he will have heard this phrase:

"Your other left you boot sonuvabitch!"

He is pretty well coordinated, so perhaps the tormentor will have screamed it at some other confused youngster taking his first marching steps toward becoming a wave-riding defender of the United States Constitution.

Call it a culture shock beyond the understanding of the twee Yankee tourist distraught at discovering  she can't get a truffle in Pago Pago.

---

Hi. I'm from Grampsington and I'm here to help!"

---

Among the several humiliations the Navy has in store for you is language.  Call it a wall instead of a bulkhead and you will be loudly informed that you are whale-turd low, an arse-pimple afflicting everyone from the Chief of Naval Operations down to Davy Jones, not to mention all of the training petty officers to whom your personal arse now belongs.

Hence a vocabulary primer:

Port is left, that part of the ship left of the center line. (Port and left each have four letters.)

Port is also associated with red -- and with even numbers -- and with a red channel marker called a nun buoy. Hence the mnemonic "Even the red nun drinks port." (Sadly, you have already lost enough innocence to know that port wine is red.)

Starboard is the right-side half of the ship. I never heard a really good memory aid. Maybe "R"(ight)  and "S (tarboard)" are consecutive letters. It is also associated with the color green and odd numbers.

Bow: the front, usually  pointy end of a ship.

Stern: The back end. Usually square, or squarish compared to the bow.

Fore: Toward the bow.

Aft: Toward the stern.

Abaft: Like aft except in reference to some point, such as "abaft the beam."

Beam: The middle of the ship, half-way between bow and stern. Often, not always, the widest part of the vessel.

Deck: What your mom calls a floor.

Overhead: What your dad calls a ceiling.

Passageway:  Generally, what your brother calls a hallway.

A door usually goes though a bulkhead.

A hatch generally goes through a deck.

Salt or Old Salt: A seasoned veteran.

Salty: What you will consider yourself beginning about your sixth week of Boot Camp.

Boot:  A rank beginner. What everyone with one more day in service will consider you -- right up until the day you retire.

Have fun, Pardner. Remember to invite me to the ceremony installing you as Chief of Naval Operations.











  

And BTW, Bruce Braley is an NRA "F"

The big kids in Washington have discovered  Iowa a little early this time around. We're usually invisible flyover matter until the caucuses get going.  But our Senator Harkin is retiring.  With no big-name  Kennedys  left to suck up to, he sees no point in hanging around the Capitol.

Democrat kingmakers tabbed Congresscritter Bruce Braley.  He was a shoo-in until he started screwing up everything his tongue touched  (what I like to call the Romney Coupla-Caddies Ploy.)

Lt. Col. Joni Ernst castrated her way to a GOP primary win, capitalized on Braley's  hoof-in-mouth affliction,  and the general election is in doubt. From down-12 or so in the polls, she's now up a scant point.

This all becomes important in the outside world because some other senate races aren't going quite as the RNC and DNC planned, and senate control might well depend on Ernst-Braley.

There is one certainty.  Iowa media will divvy up more money for spots of sound-bite mindlessness between now and November, and some senior operatives are trying to dope out where to spend it.

Don't know why  I felt the urge to toss them some free advice on Facebook this morning. Maybe a throwback to my own operational (though not very senior) days. To wit:


---

Iowa is cut diagonally, NW-SE, by the Des Moines River. West of the river, Ernst will win, and probably solidly; it is the Bible Belt, family-values, church-potluck half, scarcely differing from rural Nebraska.

The east is more densely populated with our strongest union presence and what, around here, passes for urban sophistication. There, Braley will be competitive, particularly  in the manufacturing cities -- Des Moines, Davenport, Waterloo among others -- and in Iowa City (U of I ,  that is, Obama Country) where he should win big.

Obviously a lot of plus-and-minus goes into this geographic sketch. Just as obviously the main GOP question is where to spend the heaviest resources -- west to try for an unbeatable margin or east to depress the Braley vote margin.

---

I hope no one thinks all this makes me a Republican or a Democrat.  I don't know what it is, come to think of it. Maybe an advertisement, and I suppose I would privately dilate on the theme for money if the prospective client could persuade me he smiles favorably on the Austrian School. Unless, of course, he thinks the AS is a neat operetta about Germans getting drunk in college

George L. Herter: "Do not be mislead by hokum!"

I told you guys she writes The World's Greatest Travel Blog.

http://www.sctimes.com/story/travel/2014/08/16/get-outta-town/14168965/

Name another MSM writer willing to help celebrate the memory of a crazy dude who sold guns by the tens of thousands. It probably helps that she has been warmed by his Model Perfect sleeping bags and kept dry by his famous North Woods Guide Association Approved pyramid tent.

(If George L. failed to claim sleeping in his pyramid tent kept your teeth cleaner and automatically sharpened your knives, it was an oversight.)

The other thing she misses is the Herter's red jelly bean. Calling them Herter's Whiskey River Cherry Candy made them taste better around the camp fire.

Coming right up, Folks: Truth, Justice, and the American Way on a White Horse from Washington

Dear Policeman:

"Speaking in general, you are not allowed to kill people,  even if they are black, even if they annoy you, even if you find them unsavory."

Sincerely,
Jim

---

The Ferguson, Missouri riots result, proximately, from a cop shooting a black man. If and when we get some clarity about what happened, we'll be in position to offer some judgements about whether Black Man Brown earned his own death or whether  he died at the hands of an evil or troubled man in uniform. Fight with wife. Hangover. Just plain bad mood.  A hitherto well-hidden dime-novel desire to kill his man and carve a tinhorn notch on his Glock.

There are numerous killer-cop possibilities. From the information we have, no reason exists to accept any of them. There won't be until we see the results of a professional investigation.

By the greatest good fortune imaginable, that professional clarity is on the way to Ferguson in the person of one Eric Holder, objective, candid,  incorruptible, and fair-minded to a fault. He even  catches something bothering a number of us ordinary schmucks.


Without directly referencing the video revelation, Holder said he was troubled by "the selective release of sensitive information" surrounding Brown's case...

As well he should be, given his own personal history of candid transparency.

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday voted to hold Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt for failing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena. 

The documents Holder hid in that case deal with his own part in the bone-headed Fast and Furious gun-running game that eventually killed an American cop. He kept them secret because he wanted to. He was able to do so because his superior officer, Barack Obama, also likes star-chamber government and just happens to have the presumed authority to invoke "executive privilege" when outsiders inquire, "what happened?"

So we all need to shut up and let Holder take his course, secure in our faith that he will discover truth and publish it for all to read, without fear or favor or even the slightest glance at how well his report covers various political asses.

---

I am again slightly embarrassed at linking "star chamber" to Wiki. It will seem condescending. On the other hand, a guy still never knows when a member of the public teachers' union will stumble on to his writing, and would be unkind to discombobulate them.

Fresh gun porn

So far, so good.

She's at that awkward stage. Too loose to require heavy percussion cycling, too tight to function without severe muscle. Technically, this is what we pistol smiths refer to as the period during which we  root around for our white polishing compound and gird ourselves for several hundred manual cycles.


Note absence of Dremel. Note presence of brass hammer. It makes a guy feel just like P.O. Ackley. (The tactical scissors are for cutting strips of the abrasive cloth.)

Walter does not dream of Windex and Pledge

A cheery note from the Caspian folks is disrupting my plans.  Some family is visiting this weekend, and I vowed to tidy the place in their honor. But the commanderish slide is en route, scheduled to arrive here at Camp Jiggleview, of which I am Commandant,  in about 40 hours.

I feel a distraction coming on, and if any of  my people are looking for housekeeping lapses, I'm afraid they may find them. It seems more urgent to sort through the parts one more time, calibrate the mike, ensure enough 400-grit emery and jewelers rouge are on hand. And so forth.

Commanders are just so studly. All a sophisticated Boomer needed in his glory days was the short 1911 for everyday wear along with a PPk  for strictly formal occasions.  (The Walther rode nicely in our cummerbunds.)  Bring on the Symbionize Liberation Army. Bring on Goldfinger.

The pleasure will be in the build. No matter how well armed, I am unlikely to be summoned to Double-0h-Seven evil-doers. It is enough to know that if I were, I would be equipped to shoot them through in a stylish, yet classic,  fashion.

Pocketa pocketa pocketa.

Awwww, dammit

I wrote and told her I could whistle, but she never wrote back.

Circle the wagons

The Indians are coming!

Senator Pocahontas has scouts in Iowa, you know, the place where we decide who you can vote for. They're beating her tom-tom at the state fair despite -- we'll use her white-eye name here -- Liz Warren's solemn statement that she is not running for president.

Her Massachusetts dog soldiers aren't buying that. Maybe we, also, should be leery of her solemn statements because she once solemnly avowed Cherokee ancestry. She billed  herself as a native American on the Harvard faculty list. That allowed Harvard to  pimp itself out as a diversity bastion.

When it became obvious in her 2012 campaign that she is about as Injun as Martin Luther, she skedaddled back and forth and sideways until she finally came up with a dandy Kumbayah evasion:

Warren said she listed herself as a minority because she wanted to connect with “people for whom native American is part of their heritage and part of their hearts.” 

And she did it for at least 10 years.

About the only question regarding her forked tongue is: "Poky, did you lie about it at first -- when you applied to Harvard -- in order to score heap big affirmative-action hiring points?"

She said no.  Ted Kennedy said he "dived repeatedly" in a heroic effort to rescue Mary Jo.

---

A small political datum lies here. Someone is willing to bet a little time and money that Hillary won't run. Hillary will, according to all present signs, but if she doesn't >big war whoop<.

Zippo side bar (or) Nautical Considerations (2)

Let me tell how it was in the Old Navy, Son.

We all smoked. A few limpies carried Ronsons to illustrate their elevation above the common herd. Most of us, though, real sailors, carried Zippos. And we didn't pay the exorbitant ten or fifteen cents for lighter fluid at the Ship's Store.

Instead we had an irregular series of Zippo parties. We borrowed a Planters Peanuts can half full of gasoline from a friendly snipe. They kept it on hand for the Handy Billy.

We slipped the works from the case and dunked them for a few seconds. Perfect fill and we were good for a week or more of wind-proof (hah)  flame to set our Luckies and Camels alight.

It was all part of military wisdom, midnight requisitioning, the art of cumshaw.

---

Glossary:

Cumshaw: An unauthorized transfer of United States Navy assets from one use to another. The penalties for getting caught ranged from an ostensibly disapproving grin to thirty or forty years in Portsmouth Naval Prison.

Handy Billy: A portable water pump for clearing flooded spaces. An exceptionally talented snipe could often make it run and pump.

Midnight Requisition:  See cumshaw.

Military wisdom: Something of an oxymoron but, at a deeper level, a necessary survival tool.

Snipe: A man in the engineering department, such as an EM.

Hey Ms. Yellin...

I gotchur "2 per cent" inflation hangin' cuz I still still use a dangerous incendiary in a Zippo.

Observe the one on the right first, a gift late last year. The receipt was in the bag, about four bucks,  plus tax.

Now look left,  please, for a couple of pertinent points. The 57-cent price is an obvious hint that something has changed. I find it more compelling that the Ronsonol folks once had enough confidence in price stability to paint the price on the can itself.

!

Leftie has a bar code, dating it no older than the early '80s. It is probably newer.

You can pick your own year, do a little arithmetic, and calculate the depth of the Federal Reserve Board long-standing lie that "inflation is tame."

(The easy way is an adaptation of the  rule of 72;  price divided by  annual price increase equals the number of years necessary for the price to double.  At 2 per cent annual currency devaluation, a few ounces of fluid at 57 cents would, after 36 years, cost $1.14. )

Even easier to digest: The 7 per cent sales tax on the new plastic-pack Ronsonol was about 28 cents. So the tax alone, now,  would have bought a half can of the product then. (The anal who wish to quibble over the odd penny and the 4 or 5 per cent c. 1984  tax on 57 cents are free to do so and will be enthusiastically ignored. Likewise the the additional half-ounce in the new packaging.)

---

Fer cryin' out loud, Jim, how the heck did this tickle your muse on such a  fine Sunday morning?

Glad you asked.

I've spent a couple of days massaging fiberglass to make permanent a "temporary" (read "slapdash and ugly and not too effective") repair on the leaky Texson camper  roof. This sort of thing requires acetone. So I rooted around in the place where I store volatile chemicals. No  acetone.

But I found the Ronsonol can, nearly empty, and noticed the price.  All else followed because I am lately most interested  in the scope and depth of lies by politicians and public-tit economists.

Despite everything, however, I am incredibly pleased with myself because among the flammables and explosives I found a long-forgotten sealed gallon of Holiday gas stove fuel and noticed its label claim to be a "naphthalene product."

So is lighter fluid, so I dunked the Zippo in it. Worked fine.  I topped off both Ronsonol cans.

Somewhere in the majestic vastness of American law this simply must be a criminal act, at least an OSHA or hazmat offense. So I apologize for an illegal act of personal inflation amelioration.

Please don't put no choke hold on me, Officer Dan.

Oh that funny, funny White House

Background: The feds are covering their asses for, shall we say, a medieval approach to CIA police work when the shit hit the fan after 9/11.

Say what you like about Barack Obama, but hit-and-run writers looking for a gag line will miss that man. As in this Associated Press scoop about CIA brutality after the 911 debacle.

"...the document, which was circulating this week among White House officials and which the White House accidentally emailed to an Associated Press reporter... "

 No one -- not Mark Twain,  nor Will Rogers, nor P.J. O'Rourke  -- could improve on that, so I'll be  damned if I'll try.

The Thousand-Dollar Morning

There aren't many  days when I blow through $1,000 before breakfast.

It all started with New Dog Libby whose food supply was down to 48 hours. Meaning Walmart. Where I discovered Sam's heirs were out of .22 Long Rifle and Sodastream replacement cartridges.  So I settled for

--a month's worth of Purina in an Ol' Roy bag

--a week's worth of milk and bread

--and one medium-grade party's worth of beer.

Elsewhere in the great commercial centers of the Smugleye-on-Lake SMSA I acquired four gallons of non-ethanated gasoline for the small engines required to maintain the parade fields of Camp Jiggleview, of which I am Commandant.

Math whizzes will  note that even at Ben Bernanke/Janet Yellin prices I am not within spitting distance of a grand, but wait. There's more.

While among the barbarians anyway, I thought, "What the Hell.  The van is already warmed up and there will be a winter this year, Al Gore to the contrary notwithstanding." So I  turned into the local grain elevator which also sells propane, waded through the early-morning farmers and agricultural poseurs loafing over free coffee, and bought

--one year's worth of icky fossil fuel.

Honesty requires admission that even the earth-smarming LP didn't quite get me  to the four-figure threshold which justifies a whining blog entry, so I waffled a hair and have just -- still before breakfast -- transferred the remainder of the balance due the fine (if dilatory) Caspian folks for

--what I hope is a life time's supply of slide for the Commanderish project in .45 ACP. (The promised delivery time, more than 13 weeks ago, was "about 8-10 weeks." At least they're being honest in their pledge not to bill my plastic company until it is shipped.)

That did it, and so to breakfast before seeing if there is air in the bicycle tires so I can once again go can collecting in the country air.

---

Side observations include.

1. The critical shortage of Sodastream cartridges rivals that of .22s. One suspects a conspiracy between Bloomberg and Holder. Each knows compressed carbon dioxide can readily be converted into a weapon of mass destruction with the addition of a few other chemicals commonly found around any well-supplied home -- propane (UH Ohhh), ammonia, Clorox, and/or Ffffg.  Among others. This terrorist threat would certainly make make women, children, and minorities hardest hit.

2.  Since women are supposed to be nicer and more truthful than men, I had hoped to find Janet's dictated "2 per cent" inflation was truth rather than an echo of Ben's long lie. It was saddening, therefore, to find smoked picnics (the cheap parts of pigs) at $2.38 a pound against against an historical (c. 2009) under a buck. Perhaps worse,  Smucker's all-natural peanut butter has advanced from $2.49 to $2.98  in just a few months, a clear inflationary rate of 19.67 per cent.

And if all that ain't as true and sincere as a Jimmy Swaggert apology I'll kiss your picnic on the steps of the Federal Reserve Board and pay you to hire Hillary Clinton's booking agent for the running commentary.

Let us remark the centenary of a watershed event in human evolutionary possibilities.  In 1914, one hundred years ago, the brassiere was patented.

This lead to the first known master's thesis containing a title colon, to wit:

Dexterity in Manipulation of Small Fasteners Under Tension:  A New Determinant of  Reproductive Success?

Klem Kadiddlehopper gets a new car.

And he doesn't even have to drive it when he's takin' Alice out to see the submarine races in her frilly blue gown.

My native state is pretty well known for over-reaching, but historically that has been mostly by Klem and his fellow agrarians over-reaching for green government checks.*

Lately we have expanded our ambition and decided to lead the world in high-tech endeavor, and Johnson County wants to be in the forefront. It is Iowa City, the University of Iowa, the place that gave one Barack Obama his start back in '08 and turned out 67 per cent for him in 2012.

I mean, that is one progressive cow-pasture, so in a way I endorse its lust to be home to the driverless car. Any populace that loony should be relieved of all possible adult-like responsibility.

The cheerleaders, however, overstate their case.  Here's a guy named Nolte:

“We as humans overestimate our competency for safety behind the wheel,” according to Nolte. “When you compare us to these (driver-free) systems — we are going to have 360 degree vision, they’ll never get tired, they’ll never get distracted, they’ll be able to communicate with other vehicles with the infrastructure — they are vastly superior from a safety standpoint than humans ever will be.”

Okay, maybe it is more like hyperventilation than simple overstatement.

And I wonder if Johnson County will invite General Motors to plunk its miracle cars down on campus streets. If it does, I wonder if it will be before or after GM learns how to build an ignition switch that doesn't kill you.

Just, y'know, to sort of demonstrate that the company is really getting the hang of this electrical computer thing.

---

*I'm going to try it myself. The horseradish out back is flourishing. So I'm gonna go see the county extension agent to see how much the gummint will pay me to grow less next year.  It he says no I'll have to settle for you guys paying for my horseradish crop insurance.

Sky blue; grass a shining green; birds melodic; mood sad

The morning is too beautiful to waste with worry, but it's too late for me, and I invite you to share my misery.

During coffee cup #2 I was wandering through the bizarre world of political journalism, sort of getting ready to plan my contribution to the art with periodic reports on the state of Iowa's caucus  circus. That's where we tell you the names of acceptable presidential nominees.

The brute demographic ugliness engenders the worry.

The resulting practical advice is this: Keep buying .22s, even at $50 a brick. Don't be afraid of stressing out your Visa account, even to the point of using plastic to buy plastic, Glockenpoppers,  LCPs, SR9s in recall-often calibers.

Because she's the Queen Apparent. Hillary, of course, the pants suit who promises to take things away from everyone except successful Arkansas cattle-futures traders for the common good. I personally believe that to be the only political promise of the century which she will strive mightily to fulfill.

In a walk Hillary Rodham Clinton beats every Democratic name the pollsters can fish out of the slimy rain barrel. Nominated, she beats one Republican after another, though by an apparent fluke Rand Paul betters her by a point in one poll.

So tell me it's too early to make judgments like that. You say that in politics, anything can happen? Thank you. I didn't know.

However, let's add one more sad molecule to the festering mix. At this moment, more than four out of every ten polled Americans believe that another Chicago  ("You didn't build that!")  pol is doing a great job of administering American affairs.

Could be you could go to $75 a brick and still find relative future happiness, 2017 through 2025.

Taking a selfie? Put your pants on.

Ed Snowden has told the Guardian that your Officer Friendlies in the NSA just love your private parts and spreading them.

All day they whiz through your emails and PMs and Facebook offerings. Mostly boring stuff like your bank account, potitical contributions, stock investments, family troubles and so forth. Sometimes, though, they find something risible.

Snowden: During the course of their work, (NSA employees) stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense, for example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation. But they’re extremely attractive.

So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and show a coworker who says, ‘Hey that’s great. Send that to Bill down the way.’ Then Bill sends it to George, who sends it to Tom, and sooner or later this persons whole life has been seen by all of these other people.

The NSA denies such a thing is possible because all their thousands of snoopers are Eagle Scouts who sing in the church choir,

James. Clean Up Your Room RIGHT NOW

.. .and do a good job!

The threatened punishment for outright disobedience or a slap-dash effort was severe and credible.

"Or I won't buy bananas this week. "

(Can nine-year-olds today imagine a time when a banana was a special luxury? Of course not. It would come as a shock even to their parents that once upon a time all the United Fruit Company ships were commandeered by Roosevelt to carry war stuff to Churchill and Stalin.   The bananas were left to rot in the jungles, and the supply didn't become dependable until a couple years after the war.)

So I cleaned my room. In the process came joy. Under a  big pile of something in the closet I found my almost-new first baseman's glove, a treasure lost weeks before.

That didn't change my casual attitude toward housekeeping, but it implanted a valuable lesson. When you notice you've lost a few important things, start tidying your place.

Like yesterday. I noticed I was missing my Buck 501, a favorite little flashlight, the check book, and the old "Eversharp" pencil which, somehow, seems to improve my spelling.  (I do not fully reject either animism or a more generalized magic. That pencil harbors a spirit.)

I recalled the results of Mom's banana threat and set out to act like a normal, responsible adult human being. An hour or so later these things were neat and well-organized: The truck cab. A butt  pack, nerdy looking but useful as a go bag. The computer bag. The hard-side brief case. Two drawers.  All was found, and as a bonus the Ruger RST4 is back where it belongs, locked in the everyday van in case of an irresistible urge to do a little plinking on my way home from town.

This is the place where a guy should specify the moral of his story, which I suppose is "a place for everything and everything in its place, every hour of every day."

But screw it. Compulsiveness is for nerds who think butt packs look cool.

The Guns We Need

By "we" I mean Dick Sommers, my grandpa's Uncle George, and me. Maybe you, too, but not necessarily. As Dick told the preacher, some thinks one way, some another.

---

Dick went early to the upper Missouri and crossed the Divide to the Seed-skee-dee and beyond. He trapped his plews, bedded his squaws, and drank his whiskey until he began to gray. He returned to Missouri, married up white, and farmed his plot until he buried her. Then he allowed himself to be talked into guiding an early emigrant train to the Oregon Country.

Except for the kitless preacher,  who mooched, Dick's plunder was the slimmest of the lot, barely a burden for two pack horses on the six-month trek. Indian trade truck, kettle, a robe or two, and "a couple of knives, his Hawken, and an over-and-under  double with one barrel big enough for bird shot." And a small keg of whiskey.

The best modern analogue is found elsewhere, in good writing about equipping for a serious north woods canoe trip. The better authors remark the primitive red man who set out for a season with his bow, quiver, knife, and maybe a sack of pemmican. "Our equipment is a substitute for his knowledge," they write.

 Dick Sommers knew; his main arsenal lived in his head.

---

"Uncle" George lived and killed about a century later. He is my only known ancestor to fall low, a lawyer and incessant  office seeker who got hisself elected mayor of Madison, Missouri, twice, and justice of the peace in his old age, a time when he got an idea. He would sue a passel of his relatives to get his legal paws on a small dirt farm northwest of Madison.

The merits of the case are murky, probably lost forever. The larger points are that Leslie, 40, died, George took poison in prison,  and the large extended family -- a whole raft of us infested those parts then -- factionated itself  like a pack of Sunnis and Shi-ites. All over 111 acres of miserable ground which wouldn't have brought $25 an acre.

Leslie shared a surname with  George and was probably a nephew, maybe with some "removeds" and "greats" tossed in. He was 40 to George's 68.  He was on the other side of the law suit and pissed off, and aggressive, and, family lore holds,  on familiar terms with strong spirits.

On November 13, 1926, they met in downtown Madison.  A scuffle happened. George told the jury that being old and weak he was forced to shoot.  Two quickies and finisher.

 Within a month George was convicted of manslaughter. He appealed, lost, and in 1928 went to prison. Two years or so later, in the infirmary, he found a jar of potassium-something and drank.

So, back to the point. Then as now the media were awful light on interesting details but did report the gun George needed was

"a .32 revolver of the blue steel variety."

Therefore we are certain that whatever his other character flaws, my  ancestor George wouldn't be caught dead carrying no whore-house special colored chrome or nickel or some two-tone Brucie gun. A sure-nuf man's man. That's always been a great comfort to me.

---

Me? I figure that the only guns I actually need to face the wild world, including the wild civilized world called cities, are two: A 1911 out of John Moses Browning for carry and an old Savage .22LR over and 20-gauge under for pot meat and general pest control. With an especially sturdy pack mule I'd add a .30-06 to reduce the need for careful stalking, but we're getting pretty close to effete foo-foo-raw here.

I have other stuff, of course, but they're mostly fashion statements, unless I miss my guess.

Ain't no harm in that, I reckon, but, as I may have mentioned, some thinks one way, some another.

---

(Dick will be familiar to A.B. Guthrie readers.)

New Yahk New Yahk

"Only there," a guy is tempted to say. But who the Hell knows what might be lurking in the pointy little political hackheads of, say,  San Francisco?

---

The bill would require that the costumed  (street) performers be licensed and go through a background check.

I once endured a long layover at La Guardia and took a shuttle into Manhattan for a looksee.  On my way from a lengthy Montana political gig,  I wore Levis, a largish buckle on the tooled leather, a snap-button ranch shirt, and "cowboy" boots. (You learn to dress local in that racket.) If, God forbid, I should do it again, "You're busted. You have the right to remain .... The charge is imitating Walt Coogan without a license." 

The wit-free councilman ramrodding the dress-code decree is Mickey Mouse.  No. Wait. I mean Dan Garodnick. Dan frets because. "There have been a number of troublesome incidents involving costumed figures who try to make a living by charming tourists."

And just what are these egregious acts requiring suspension of  probably a half-dozen basic human and Constitutional rights?

As AP has it,  "They include a person dressed as Super Mario who was accused of groping a woman. This criminalizes walking Gotham streets  dressed up as Joe Biden.

"And an Elmo figure pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after unleashing an anti-Semitic tirade."

Or,  in other words, pretending  to be the Rev. Mr. Jesse (Hymietown) Jackson.

The New Caliphate

A tragic thing.  Over all these years of  desert war, none of us has ever thought to remind our American government that spending young blood and vast treasure in the Middle East was merely another stupid attempt to police religious wars and tribal spats of 1,500 years standing.

Perhaps our leaders in Washington might re-deliver their inspirational Arab Spring speeches of a couple years back. Just, you know, to make certain we don't lose confidence in their wisdom and foresight.

Out of Africa

Our friend Wouter down in Cape Town offers as cogent a take on World War 1 in 300 words or less as you are likely to find anywhere. Besides, if you click his link "gun" you'll get nice little assortment of vintage eye candy in various calibers.

No, it is economics where truth is the first casualty

Here's a good place to expose the fairy tale tellers  such as Janet Yellin, Barack Obama, and most every politician and professional economist in thrall to government in one way or another.

It is a daily Wall Street Journal feature reporting cash prices for about every basic item that folks buy and sell.  They are not futures, not speculation about what a thing might be worth next month; they are cash-on-the-barrel-head wholesale prices representing actual sales, actual deliveries in return for a handful of Federal Reserve Cartoons.


Edible tallow was 39 cents a pound yesterday, nice white grease the same. Gold bullion at $1324.60 per troy ounce. A nice young chicken carcass,  ready for  your broiler,  was $1.114 a pound.

And to get to life's basic necessities, lead solder traded hands at $1.31 a pound.  (Which, for you non-reloaders,  is about 7000 grains or roughly 35 200-grain semi-wadcutters for your 1911A1.)

This isn't pure lead. It is some sort of solder alloy, but that is beside the point because it is decidedly leadish and we're interested only in comparing real prices with government fairy tales, the chief of which are its "tame" inflation nonsense and Fed promises that it will continue to regulate its printing presses to max out inflation at 2 per cent.

Back to the WSJ chart. That lead sold one year ago yesterday for $1.22 a pound. Subtract and divide and discover that lead is up 7 per cent in 12 months.

I'm cherry picking only slightly. Grains are down substantially, for instance, but that probably reflects the decline of the ethanol-thug subsidies more than any real market force.

The chicken? Up about 6 per cent. Butter up 56 per cent. And let's not depress ourselves with pork and beef. If you're looking for stability and "affordability," I can recommend only the tallow and grease which are actually a penny or two cheaper over the year. And burlap, down from about 41 cents a yard to 39.  Chow down. Get yourself a nice new wardrobe.

Ma Joad, in the box car East of Eden where survival was measured in the ounces of fried dough still possible:  We got enough grease for two more days.

Two per cent inflation?  It is Grimm, a yarn with  all the credibility and integrity of  Bush II in 2003, under the Abe Lincoln banner, about Iraq's glorious future as the Peoria of the Middle East: "Mission Accomplished."

See? Saw

"Hitachi,'  I believe, transliterates as "rice hulls with a dragon-shit binder, carefully injection molded." But perhaps I err.  Hope so.

The DeWalt 12-inch mitre saw buzzed off after two decades of hard use and nonexistent maintenance.  I was sad, but she'd earned her rest after cutting untold thousands of kerfs in everything from from fine cocobolo to junk oak kindling, bark on, at an ownership cost of something like a buck-ten a month.

There was no identical replacement at any of the usual suspect retailers around here, so I hied me to Menards which was advertising an epitcanthicly enhanced  $300 version on sale for $200. Wrote the check this morning, hauled her home, plugged her in,  and made a few cuts before reading the instruction manual, just to prove my libertarian manhood..

The garish green appears identical to some day-glo sneakers I saw  on a girl jogger yesterday, so maybe I'm at last riding the fashion wave.

She works fine and feels okay, even the laser beam that magically predicts the kerf center.  I should not like that sort of modernistic gimcrackery. But, dammit, I do.

As to her ultimate place in my affections, ask me in 20 years.

Nautical Distractions (1)

Ahoy.

A personal event directs my thoughts back many years, to boot camp where a lad's exposure to sea stories begins. He learns almost immediately the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story. One begins with "Once upon a time," the other with "Listen you guys, this is no s--t."

A kernel of truth embellished with all the literary art forms makes up the best of the sea stories, satire, parody,  mockery, (especially self mockery), mild fantasy, wish fulfillment, and so forth.

Literal minded people are too quick to scorn the sea tale as just so much bull s--t.  Winfred Blevins* had it right even if  in a different context.  Referring to the tall tales of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers (about 1820-1845) he observed: "What was wanted here was not fact but entertainment."  He also notes that the yarn is a form of journalism even though a detail here and there requires heavy discounting.

The young sailor is well advised to listen with patience and appreciation  -- or the best approximation thereof he can muster -- even to the banal ones he's heard before. It will make him a better ship mate  in the eyes of his fellows,  and that is one of the pillars of a happy cruise.

Of course, he may absorb so much that he'll wind up as an aging blogger. Never mind. That's just another one of the perils of the sea.

---

*Give Your Heart to the Hawks  ISBN  0-380 - 00694 -4, p. 76

Another junk post -- Winchester 97 junk

Poor man that I am, when someone offers me a Winchester 97 for $25,  I'll find a way.  Maybe borrow a bicycle and go can collecting along the highway.

She's seen here somewhere between before and after. The masking tape that held her wood together is gone, along with some of its gummy residue.  Some of the patina is missing.  But she's still jammed open and will probably stay that way. I hate tearing down Model 97s.

If I got enough of the gunk from the oil-soaked chip and butt stock wrist,  I'll epoxy them back together, reattach  the wood, steel-wool the rest of the tape crap off, and offer her up as a "parts" gun or decorator. If the glue won't hold, I'll push her as one of the few Model 97 three-piece takedowns in existence. Or maybe a rawhide wrap. Add a few brass tacks and she becomes a genuine Injun gun.

It's something to do in my dedicated gun-tinkering time while I'm waiting for the Commander slide. If the nice folks at Caspian meet their promised schedule, it's due in three weeks.

---

Sure I know the old Corn Shucker's provenance, all the way from the night Private Alvin C. Blatnik (ret.) of Strawberry Point, Iowa, won her from Teddy Roosevelt in a five-card stud session at the 10th annual Rough Riders reunion.  But you guys wouldn't be interested.

The Brave Squaw Battle

About this time of evening 138 years ago, Crazy Horse led his triumphant Sioux and Cheyenne light cavalry northward to the Great Camp on the Little Big Horn. Behind him, General George Crook retreated southward from the valley of Rosebud Creek.

The prelude to Little Big Horn was  over, final score Indians 53 kills, Blue Coats 8, a lopsided upset of the White Eyes and personal victory for the man who has come down to us as Crazy Horse (nee Curly and, later, Strange Man).

We remember it (if at all)  as the the Rosebud Battle. The Indians recall it as the Fight Where Buffalo Calf  Woman Saved Her Brother.

Warrior "chief" Comes-in Sight was shot from his horse. She batted her own mount into action, charged no-man's-land, and whisked him to safety as the Blue Coats lobbed big .45-70 bullets all around her.  Nine days later, Indian legend has it, she was fighting alongside her husband some 30 miles to the north and was perhaps the warrior queen who knocked Custer from his horse.

(So, a century before Ms. Magazine, women of the Horse Indians were welcome to combat  duty if they wished. It was no big deal. Certainly it was something other than a social experiment in gender politics.)

---

The airy, opinionated,  and semi-dependable Mari Sandoz wrote briefly of Rosebud in her biography,  Crazy Horse.* She credits him with the same decoy tactics he used in the 1868 Fetterman slaughter.  More interestingly, she somehow knows his private thoughts as he overlooked the creek valley where Crook's mule-mounted infantry rested  in marching order.  (Flop where you stop and don't get too worried about guards and pickets.)  Crazy Horse wished for better guns, she wrote, and for braves who would fight cooperatively and win rather than made mad rushes for coups and die.

It didn't matter much at Rosebud, nor later at the Custer fight. The Indian alliance mixed up some sound unit tactics with their traditional lust for individual glory and won. Both times.

---

Crook's order of battle is fairly clear, about 960 of the mule-riding infantry,  some 250 civilian employees and hangers-on, and up to 300 Shoshone and Crow "scouts." It may be telling that he ordered  an ammunition allowance of just 100 rounds per man for their 1873 Springfield single shots.

Crazy Horse didn't have an orderly to write up nice neat daily morning reports.  So the Indian TOE that day isn't clear, although the weaponry ranged from war clubs and bows to a few modern rifles and revolvers taken from the enemy dead in earlier battles. He appears to have been one of the leaders of something like 1,000 fighting men. And one valiant woman.

---


Travel note: It is a middling-hard slog into the actual battle site, and I was glad for high ground clearance. In wet weather the four-wheel-drive would have been a necessity rather than my macho manhood symbol. Still, it's an interesting and beautiful site, and if you're in the neighborhood I suggest you pop in. Carry a snake stick for sure, and a sidearm may make you feel a little more secure in the well-ravined isolation.

---

*ISBN 978-0803292116, pp. 317-322

The federal government has learned that Marshalltown, Iowa, is full of lazy, flabby kids, a crisis of deep national concern, so:

Last fall, the Marshalltown School District ... (landed a $1. 4 million DOE grant)  to focus on getting kids active. The district purchased 4,000 pedometers with the grant money and found many students weren’t reaching a recommended goal of 9,100 steps a day.

---

Physical fitness in the 1950s:

Scene: The breakfast table.

Dad: Cut the grass this morning.

Jim: But I was going to hike down to Kalo with Richie and Ron. 

Dad: Cut the grass first.

So it was spoken. And done.

---

Free pedometers for layabout kids? ? You have to sh*tting me.

The Youth Physical Fitness plank in my 2016 presidential campaign platform.:

"Cut the grass you lazy little creeps."

Do I need glasses or is truth really getting even fuzzier?

Three days ago our Commander-in-Chief stood on the White House lawn and told America: No combat troops to Iraq.  That was pleasant to hear given that American warriors are relatively untrained in adjudicating disputes between rival religious sects.

This afternoon we learn that he has told congress he's sending "up to"  275 special forces troops to Iraq.

If I know government flackery correctly, the Ministry of Truth is warp-speed keyboarding the logical explanation that these forces are not "combat"  troops. While "equipped for direct fighting," they're really some other kind of troops. Therefore the White House/State Department complex is not nearly as schizoid as any intelligent observer would first believe.

If so -- if they are other than active warriors -- then WTF are we directing them to do? Organize block parties? Hold knitting bees? Help the Jihad reduce its carbon foot print?

When we learn to our amazement that none of this works, we can surge in some more people. Why not? It is certainly a vital national interest to promote a reasoned dialog about who gets first crack at the afterlife virgins, not to mention the lion's share of oil loot; well worth all the young American blood it takes.

Storms, then and now and leggy

I fell asleep reading about one storm, 160,000 years ago,  and woke up in time to experience another one, still going on.

As my body succumbed to the fatigue of more work (actual work; moving matter) than I'm accustomed to lately, Donald Goldsmith* was telling me about Supernova 1987A. It actually happened sometime around the era when homo sapiens was killing off, and perhaps eating, competing bi-pedals, but it was far away.  So far that the radiation didn't knock on our door until February 23, 1987.

And, rude Earthlings that we are, we turned out the lights, drew the drapes, and pretended not to be home.  The neutrinos were left to their wanderings.

Of course, everyone these days knows something about neutrinos, a product of exploding stars. They are notable for being almost non-existent in a material sense. No gravitas. But they are blessed with a blind and driving energy, and if you want to explain this to your kids by an analogy involving Barack Obama, it's okay with me.

A few days later the rest of the rays and particles from the explosion started calling. This time we were paying attention. The most noticeable result? Hundreds of ambitious astronomers and physicists rushing about and tripping over one another in a mad dash for research grants.

That part of Space Storm 1987A is calming down, as is the great Camp Jiggleview Deluge of June 16, 2014. The most noticeable result of this one will be the Commandant's activities tomorrow. Moving matter, downed burr oak branches and assorted small debris blown around here and there.

There's no real damage, just a certain annoyance that my recovery day will be delayed. I'll entertain myself by photographing the foot of so of water standing in the shallow ditch in front of the private Camp Jiggleview Forest. It's happened before, a great big puddle that goes way in a day or two.  Of course when I'm telling my Green Party friends about it I use the term "rain garden."

All that done, I'll start getting ready to replace some blown roofing on the shop-office-guest room building.  So (sigh) If I seem a little surly for the next few days, please be understanding and kind.

---

I'd have preferred this one, but not even exalted Commandants get everything they want.

---

*In "The Astronomers" 1991, ISBN 0-312-05380-0. (It's a little dated, of course, but still a rather useful explanation of cosmology for lay folk, especially when read with Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." If I'd read it before Hawking's two popular books I might have understood more of what he said in fewer than three readings.)

Third Reich Gun Porn, gratuitous, of course

You don't see this one often. A nice kid from nearby  Titonka captured it from one of Hitler's officers in  the North African campaign.*  His heirs donated it to the Algona POW museum where I stopped a few days ago on a long and lazy road trip.

The glass had too many weird reflections and I just glanced. Ho-hum, another souvenir PPk. I'm glad I looked twice. It's a SIG P38h, a substitute standard for the Walther .32.

You see so few because production topped out around 200,000 compared to some 5 million PPks. It is somewhat clunkier looking than the Walther.

The "h" stands for "hammerless"** to avoid, we're told, having Lt. Heinie confuse it with the big Walther 9mm. My friend Ken observed "h" could just as easily stand for "hammer." True enough, maybe. There's just no understanding the Nazis, maybe helping us understand why we killed them at every opportunity.

---

*Mr. President and CinC Obama:  North Africa came before D-Day, and Patton was there,  just like in the movie you saw.  But he didn't command an army yet. That happened a little later when he "unleashed" his 7th Army on Sicily.  To make sure I'm putting this complicated chronology clearly enough for your Teleprompter, it was North Africa, then Sicily/Italy, then D-Day at Normandy, then General Patton at the head of the 3rd Army. Just in case you ever need to make another warrior speech or something.

---

**Shrouded hammer, actually.

Won One

No matter how potentially evil a thing,  by itself  it is a neuter.  So next time you're in your head shop and feel like getting a glass pipe to blow bubbles with or something, y'all just go right ahead in these parts.

Keep the idea of your gun in the back of your head while you digest this. Some Des Moines cops decided to bust a store and confiscate glass pipes as drug paraphernalia. The owner sued to get them back, lost in district court, but won at the Iowa Court of Appeals.

The report from Radio Iowa says: "The Appeals Court ruling says the law requires the pipes to be used to ingest drugs to be considered illegal. The court says no drugs were found in the store and there was no evidence to conclude the pipes had been used."

There you go. Drugs are evil but glass pipes for smoking them are not, so...

Hold it Jim!

Yes, stupid of me to lose the distinction, even momentarily.

Drugs and pipes share no moral qualities. They are ethical castrati at least unless some mysterious happenstance empowers a smoky hemp plant to vote in congress.  (Tempting as it is, I won't go further in that direction today.)

People who use them are possibly evil and  probably stupid to begin with; certainly they become dumber by the puff.  Or the guzzle in the case of ethanol based drugs.

Now, about all those "illegal" guns the politicians and journos keep yakking about:  Wouldn't it be nice if a senior court hearing an appeal from an innocuous, law-abiding fellow charged only with possession of a weapon heard about the Iowa pipe case and got to thinking along the same lines?

The Longest Wind

Good Lord. Can it be that long since President Obama first showed his arse to the world in a D-Day speech?

He's still fumbling for his Commander-in-Chief britches,  but in all fairness he has improved since the rhetorical embarrassment he uttered five years ago today when he proclaimed that the Normandy invasion was launched by generals who planned to fail.

Today's 2014 edition is less laughable, pretty good, in fact for His Ineptness. If you want to think he ordered his speech writers to study up on Peggy Noonan's  the boys of Pointe du Hoc gem I won't argue with you.

On the other hand, he forgot to remind his staff that maybe they might want to think about consulting someone who is at least casually acquainted with the summer of '44.

By the end of that longest day, this beach had been fought, lost, refought and won -- a piece of Europe once again liberated and free. Hitler's Wall was breached, letting loose Patton's Army to pour into France.

All I can figure is that his pollster told him Patton is a supremely recognizable name while Omar Bradley is  by now a whoduhhellizzat?  I mean,  George even had a movie made about him, and it is still getting decent numbers on teevee reruns.

On D-Day, Patton was giving speeches in England and commanding a ghost army of rubber tanks and plywood trucks to fool Nazis into believing in a main attack later across the Dover Straits. He was quietly training his real army -- the Third -- which went operational more than a month later, long after the first Normandy beach breakouts.

The point isn't Patton. It is a president who commands resources vast enough to inform him -- assuming he gives a damn --  that, among the Americans, Bradley and his First Army carried the load for weeks beyond "The Longest Day." It's basic stuff.

But maybe it is important only to old cranks who cling bitterly to the notion that when presidents speak their stuff gets written down in books and, therefore, the lower the nonsense quotient the better.

---

And then he read off his Teleprompter:

To the East, the British tore through the coast, fueled by the fury of five years of bombs over London, and a solemn vow to "fight them on the beaches." 

Just for the record, the quote is from Churchill in 1940 and had nothing to do with Overlord. Winston was rallying the home army -- and the home folks with shotguns and cricket bats -- to hold fast on the beaches of Britain.

Oh well. What difference does it make, anyway?

The unmasking of a president

In The Unmaking of a Mayor, William F. Buckley, knowing full well he would lose his race,  reflected:

I am running to advance certain ideas. It makes no difference to me who implements these ideas so long as he is a good administrator.  (Paraphrase)

Barack Obama's nervous jitterbugging on the five-for-one swap with Taliban terrorists illustrates the value of Buckley's words.

Obama says he told congress; then he apologizes for not telling congress; then he remembers that he really did tell congress but it was three years ago; and, besides, Bergdahl is a hero, or if not a hero at least another deserving American boy. Or. Maybe. I said. I meant. He's glad the hometown would celebrate the return. He understands why they canceled the party.

Proving that this guy is to the presidency as Barney Fife is to police work. Praying folks should petition their gods that the coming 31 months bring the nation no crisis requiring clear thought and administrative competence.

But .. but ... sputter ... sputter

You guys told me the world was getting hotter and that would make me colder up here in the north plains and, besides, all my buddies on the gulf and east coasts would get smooshed by dozens of giant killer hurricanes. I mean really whacked, bad enough to get lots of free stuff from FEMA.

And now you tell me it ain't so Joe?  Cooler Atlantic Ocean this year and a "slow" hurricane season?

My deep faith in the infallible accuracy of government and its climate scientists is beginning to weaken.

The Smokey Bear Gun Library ("adult" language)

It probably isn't as Mark Trail-twee as the Cabela's shrines, but the inventory came cheaper.

This guy in Wisconsin was a career game cop for the DNR. Over the years he busted hunters and took their guns, not because anyone had found them guilty of anything but because he accused them. This conforms to the letter of our tyrannical civil forfeiture laws, and Smokey would probably have endured to collect his pension except for one thing.

He kept them, if you believe the prosecutors. His excuse is that Wisconsin required him to have a home office, and that's where he stashed citizens' guns -- beginning in 2003, apparently.

I'm not going to take time to dig them out, but there are a number of TMR posts on the subject.  The general idea is that cops often have very nice gun collections assembled at astonishingly low costs.
---
And even if this guy had turned them in to his boss cops, there's that annoying Constitutional mumbo jumbo:

"...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
---
It just so happens that I'm working on position statements for my 2016 presidential campaign and decided to focus on crap like this after reading about government agents' lust for free stuff.  The platform plank is brief and applies also to the more formal confiscations by regular cops, game cops,  the IRS and its 50 state affiliates, and God knows who else in our multi-million corps of bureaucrats with badges. To wit:

CIVIL FORFEITURE:  Fuck no. If you want to take a citizen's stuff, convict him of something first.

When in doubt, Mr. Republican, channel Joe Biden?

A regal barbecue is laid on. Above the pit turns a fatted calf, USDA certified prime, dripping succulent juices into glowing hickory to the delight of the Republican crowd rallying in the Arizona ranch lands.

The guest of honor appears. He smiles, unzips, and sticks his man part into the white coals.

No, Mr. Candidate. It is probably untrue that 99 per cent of mass murderers are Democrats.

It is likely true that you arose in morning and decided it would be a good day to  advance the notion that the The Stupid Party really is.

---

If my Republican friends feel raped by this little offering: Please try to relax. It is a legitimate rape, so you can't get pregnant. Todd Akin told me so.

If I'm wrong Christine O'Donnell can chant a special incantation of joy as she casts me into the coven cauldron.

Sarah Palin can waterboard me.

...And continuing our theme of ancient Mideast culture, I am reminded that there were two Salomes.

The one mentioned in the cave scrolls was a politician. This is the other -- the one who charged  quite a little more than a shekel bill in her garter to take something else off.

Excuse me. I've been spending my time lately with a bunch of Jews, whatever sect was responsible for squirreling away the Qumran scrolls by the Dead Sea somewhere around 2,000 years ago.

How can anyone be anti-Semitic? Those poor guys suffered under the same drippy rulers and laws we waspy Gentiles endure to this day..

"Whoever lays down and sleeps in the general meeting shall be expelled for 30 days and suffer reduced rations ten days."*

Suggesting that their rulers were capable of long, boring, meaningless assemblages  not surpassed until New England Congregationalists got going 17 centuries  later. Or, a little further along yet, about any U.S. congressional committee you care to name.

The sex laws are pretty interesting, too, but, after all, this is a family oriented blog. I limit myself to noting that if you married a woman whom you discovered to be unchaste, you were required to keep your mouth shut about it.

---

*It's 4Q66, Fragment 10, quoted p.76, "The Dead Sea Scrolls,"  Michael
Wise et al, 2005, ISBN 978-0-06-07662-7

Junk post

Old Faithful, my  c. 2006 MacBook, has become a slattern. No longer elegant, she's doomed to the scullery of internet  endeavor. In her place comes a sleek Mac Airhead 13-incher.

Apple people are adept at helping you spend your money. I've hardly ever had a quicker or more efficient ordering process, and within a couple-three hours an email announced the new lady had already been dispatched and was due to arrive in eight days  (standard transport, for free).

From Shanghai.

As the ancient Polynesian sailing chant goes:  Aiiiiiii-eeeeeee! Pray for a west wind.

A post to die by

You might as well read it; it's as good a way as any to while away your last moments on tortured Earth, a planet which is, like you, perishing from climate change.

As an added advantage, assuming a Hereafter exits and is blessed with a mass media component, you'll be better prepared to become a media critic in Heaven.

Our text comes from Radio Iowa:

"The looming impacts of climate change on the State of Iowa was the subject of a meeting in Des Moines today."*

That is the lede, the key fact the reporter and editor think you should know.  Of course we all agree with the assumptions it capsulizes:

--Climate change is happening with the unstated subtext that it is your fault and mine.

--Climate change will have an "impact," a much more serious thing than a simple "effect."

--The impact is "looming," again a word of sufficient drama to make us all fall to our knees in repentance for not driving a Volt and subsisting on dandelion greens and  stewed cottonwood bark.

---

The body of the piece is somewhat cute in the same sense that a kitty tangled in Aunt Priscilla's yarn is cute. The analogy breaks down, however, with the realization that little pussy is not contorting in lust for camera, microphone, and above-the-fold headline attention. She is just having fun or, perhaps, trying to  get free.

The story might not have impacted my attention in such a rilly awesome manner if it had stuck with the usual horrific predictions settled scientific facts that logically follow your earth-hating decision to use a reading light this evening. Flooded cities. Continental droughts. Displaced polar bears. Al Gore gasping for a final breath from the unburned hydrocarbons emitted by everything except, of course, his private jets.

But Iowa is not to be constrained by those banalities. I mean, Hell, even the New York Times and Jerry Brown know all about that.

Instead we found some experts with a new take on how you are about to die. Mosquitoes. Vast billions more mosquitoes, bigger, meaner, more dangerous, and loaded with virulent new poisons for which even Merck and Eli Lily have no antidote.

So take heed. Strip off your Spandex and send your power-hungry computer off to a certified recycling center. Make new clothes from sustainable resources, hemp fiber and slabs of birch bark. Gather your tribe and find a remote valley where you can live in harmony with nature on the veggies of the forest and -- absent a PETA chapter nearby -- slugs and snails and lightly boiled mosquitos.


*EDIT: I didn't even notice Radio Iowa reporting the  the "impactS  ...  was." It were not a typo by me.




  

Mother's Milk; The Sour Tit

By virtue of of having been an operative for national Republicans, I remain, many years later, on the special sucker lists.  If they categorize it finely, I'm in the Venn overlap as one of the superannuated has-beens who is on record as having given a little money or service to The Stupid Party since leaving Washington.

It generally doesn't bother me because my delete button works well. It is the chore of only a few seconds to whoosh off to never-never land 24 hours worth of come-ons from Viagra peddlers, conspiracy nuts,  commercial sex freaks, and the fund raising arm of the party.

 It is only when I bother to read the stuff that I get disgusted enough to react, usually thusly:

"Look, you guys, if I want my intelligence insulted, I have dozens of local friends, relatives,  and acquaintances I can turn to."

The feeling can be generated by a mere partial reading of the gimme letters, such as today's under the subject line: "Today is Election Day:" -- a patent piece of nonsense followed by, "From this day forward, every day is election day." Spare me.

Then come a few paragraphs of GOP virtues (vastly overstated) and Democrat vices (mostly true, or approximately so). Then the kicker, and you're undoubtedly way ahead of me here:


But the truth is we can’t win without your contribution today. Contribute $14 today to secure historic victories in 2014.

They want fourteen bucks for A.D. twenty-fourteen.

"Get it? Huh? Doyah get it?" 

"Oh yeah. I see.  That's a rilly cool way to write it. At least as clever as Obama's demand for a $10.10 federal minimum wage because 'It's easy to remember'."

---

After substantial salaries and bonuses to the GOP functionaries, particularly those in the fundraising arm, the proceeds will be used to tune up the no'bortion trumpets, fire grape shot from the parapets at lavender-themed weddings; maybe even restore the draft to liberate Sevastopol and bring the sweet light of reason to Nigerian Boko Harams  -- you know, the ones stealing and peddling virgins at twelve bucks per because America doesn't care enough to send them money.

In other words, to buy dull votes for guys like Rick Santorum who are the flip sides of, for instance, Nancy Pelosi and Justice Wisina Latina.

Never mind the problems that could, and may well, kill us.

--Let's start with the unannounced domestic assault on every dime you've managed to save -- the planned c. 2 per cent  annual devaluation.

--Also the notion that it's completely our fault that Islamist thugs kidnap school girls and decapitate reporters and other undesirables.

--And that a federal SWAT team is a perfectly reasonable reaction to some screwball rancher who won't pay his grazing fees. And so on.

Send me a hustle note addressing things like that and I will, without fail, send you your fourteen bucks, probably more.

---

Ancient loyalties and current observations compel me to note that the Democrats are worse. Meanwhile, I entertain myself with the probably futile dream that libertarians  may one day get at least a "C-" in Politics 101.

Global weirding

It's all my fault, of course.

Until yesterday morning I considered my carbon foot print acceptable, but a whim led to catastrophe. You see, that ten-inch willow at the edge of my miniforest was hanging precariously over the lane,  so I thoughtlessly transformed it from a graceful Gore carbon sequesterer and oxygen factory into firewood.

(The intent was good, based on humanitarian concerns. Who knows when it might have come crashing down on a van load of my usual visitors -- nuns, orphans,  girl pole vaulters in uniform. Alas, my judgement about The Greater Good has never been adequate, so the slaying of the willow was just another paver on the road to Hell.)

Not 24 hours later my teevee weather advisers report the results -- an unseasonable spot of 90-degree global warming a hundred miles west-southwest of that poor, murdered willow and a massive winter storm in nearby cowboy country, a mere day's drive straight west.

As soon at this confession hits the wires I will strip, flagellate myself with a cat-o-nine, roll in the nettles, and otherwise make manifest my shame.

---

I am doubly at fault because of the immediate social and political environment. My Great Leader just yesterday, just as I was slinging the Stihl,  took time to again explain to me the error of my ways*; my selfish insistance on a warm home, a couple-three thousand calories daily, enough scurrying electrons to power my computer for purposes of anti-government agitation, and even the occasional few dozen carbonized miles in a fossil-powered vehicle.


I suppose I could make a down payment on redemption by planting a new tree. The trouble with that is the deer, who would eat it. We have a rule that Bambi   belongs to the people as a whole,even though the environmental havoc he  wrecks is the personal and inviolable concern of the private citizen. This last point once confused me, so I asked the leaders of our Department of Natural Resources about it. They responded with a crystal clear statement: "Shut up and do what we say."

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*He's not too hot at moral persuasion of Putin, but by God he's Hell on wheels when it becomes time to make callous arseholes like you and me feel guilty.

Gratuitous Parts Porn

This project should have been done in February, but you know how it is. One book leads to another and pretty soon you're left with an inside job when the weather and the cluttered state of your estate logically require outside time.

But it's nagging me. A little voice in my head keeps saying "you ain't got no commanderish pistol yet so you ain't s---."

"But-but-but, I got MOST of a commander..."

"Don't pee down my gun barrel and tell me it's Hoppes No. 9."  (The head voice is  sometimes a bit vulgar.)

So. Caspian has my plastic numbers and the Brown Truck of Glee will appear in due course bearing an in-the-white slide.

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A guy serious about 1911s never passes up a good deal on parts,  or practically any deal at all. Most of what you see represents four or five  years of loophole finds, and there are enough little steelies to outfit the AMT 4 1/4-inch frame and most of the new slide.

I think this one will come in around 350 - 400 Federal Reserve Cartoons. It is no special bargain but a reasonable enough value if my tinkering skills haven't deteriorated too badly.

It will be built loose, not quite as wobbly as the GI version, but close and -- if I don't get too tired of wearing out 400-grit emery --  smoother. Its planned destiny is  belt-riding, sure to go bang every time but not expected to snuff candles at 50 yards every time.

Finish? Likely Mr. Brownell's spray and bake stuff;. Color? Undetermined but probably GI gray unless I decide to impress everyone with my cool tacticality.Then camo.

I love smaller government but...

...on the other hand, if Americans decided to reduce politicians to their  proper roles in our social organization, cheap laughs would be harder to come by. 

The new zoning code for my village, Smugleye-on-Lake, retains the five-foot, side-yard set aside. Nothing unusual about that, nor even about what constitutes the parts of your house that count. Your eaves count.

But not the rain gutters. SoL village nannies actually debated that point. Because they ultimately voted to permit the added four-inch intrusion. I am able to report to you a great victory in the continuing fight for liberty.

Hole in the firewall

A spammer has bored through the Blogger filter. I don't want to moderate or apply the fuzzy word game. For the time being I'll just trash them as they appear, accounting for the deletions you may see.

Fashion, Sports, and the Bug-Eyed Luddite

No matter how fast I run, I can't even catch the first slight rise in the cultural curve.

For instance, watching the Drake Relays, I wonder when girl pole vaulters started buying their leaping suits from Victoria's Secret.

(I can not find it in myself to condemn this instance of gratuitous modernism.)

April comes like an idiot, babbling ...

It has been a tough month on the racial front. Bundy allows as how Jews are this and that. The inarticulate old guy who owns a basketball team announces blacks are that and this. Television goes bananas, and "social media" wets down its share of the spectrum.

It seems to me we're about halfway to symmetry on the bigotry front so far in this episode. If someone would hunt up a network news crew and hurl a few ignorant slurs at Hispanics and another sling some generalized abuse at us white guys, I would be content. It would be just another saga of racially fused and made-for-teevee outrage, but at least even-handed in real time and therefore -- somehow -- less objectionable. If he had known how to write Karl Popper might have expressed it as, "When everyone is is a lunatic, then no one is."

Mark Twain: "Man is a sorry piece of work."

---

One ray of hope occurred in the silly mess of April. Government was again reminded that a number of Americans get irritated when it deploys platoons of slightly upgraded  mall ninjas, equipped like Seal Team Six, in case it decides to shoot down an American citizen and his family over an alleged civil infraction.

There was a little pleasure there, too, when the button-down BLM administrators noticed that some of the citizens, not necessarily limited to the certifiables among them, were in a mood to react in kind to a federal "shoot" order. It was literary pleasure. I don't think I've ever witnessed government's professional "communicators"  whip up the standard "only to preserve public safety" news releases so quickly. You admire professionalism under pressure no matter what the source.

It up to us to gently remind our brothers and sisters that a deeper motivation was to head off rude historical allusions to Ruby Ridge and the dead mother there, Waco and the dead kids there.

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H/T to Edna St.Vincent Millay for the subject line

The Hog Ball Lady

Joni Ernst is drawing more attention lately, but I'm told her rallies are a little funny-looking. All the guys sit with their legs crossed.

"I'm Joni Ernst and I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm," she reported in the now-viral teevee spot. The conclusion is left to the viewer : Ergo Joni really needs to be a United States senator, so let's all send her some money."

---

It's part of the 2014 through 2016 Iowa political circus. The ultimate purpose is to decide which president-thing-hopefuls you will be allowed to vote for if perchance the nation survives  the remaining 32 Obamanation months.

It's a dreary show, a reprise of the banal. but this time without the interest of a Ron Paul semi-libertarian presence. Joni's cutting remark may be the only noteworthy snark of the revue, and she must concede some credit to  congresscritter Bruce Braley. (Joni is in a GOP primary fight; Bruce has been slated by the White House Office of Iowa Affairs and will be the statist nominee.)

They both want to replace Tom Harkin who is retiring to his Bahamas home after 30 years of pretending to represent Iowa as water carrier for the Ted Kennedy  senate tribe. (As a frame of reference, he was elected to the senate when Pete Rose was still hitting homers for Cincinnati instead of dodging process servers; the same year Madonna was still singing on American Band Stand. And, get this, he is still Iowa's junior senator.)

Braley's handlers made the fatal mistake of letting him speak without a teleprompter, and he decided to bitch slap our senior senator, Chuck Grassley,  as an "Iowa farmer who doesn't even have a law degree."

Joni's surgical line is a direct result of Bruce's ad lib, and Braley operatives spent the next three nights foetally under their blankies, sucking thumbs and wondering if things were as bad in the private-sector job market as they were hearing.

---

And there it stands as a soft April rain nurtures the fresh grass seed on the Camp Jiggleview grounds; as the Trail  (phhbbbtt)  Trial Lawyers Association rallies with massive Citizen's United cash to redeem their artless colleague; as the evil Koch Brothers lurk behind the barn, trying to decide which of the primary Republicans would be their best senatorial buy.

---

All of this overlays something I need to get to before long. Libertarian forces are in disarray around here this season. They had a decent presence on the state GOP Central Committee, but it has just been recaptured by the church-basement faction.

Danny Caroll is the name you want to Google. I know him only second-hand, but I hear he's a very nice guy if you can get him to quit quoting Genesis 1:1 in response to any question, from farm bills to Russian expansionism to making Janet Yellan slow down the goddam printing presses.

Resurrection Day, 2014

Religious feast days can be difficult for non-celebrants, particularly apostates living among the faithful. Even hard-logic skeptics, however, can surely find room for a sliver of poetry, a sense of renewal.















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Without ambition to play St. Francis, I have nevertheless created a local congregation of happier birds. It happened this way:

For three or fours years a simple auto tow-bar lived in the large-project pile. The intent, finally fulfilled on Wednesday,  was to bolt on a spike-studded timber, creating a tractor-drawn groomer for the gravel lane which might also serve as a dethatcher for the unruly grass and weeds which make up the Camp Jiggleview grounds. It works better than expected.

The was no aim to fatten the the robins, but that unintended consequence occurred, Oh those lovely little worms and grubs and other tasties, all freshly exposed for easy hunting. The tweets are deafening but wasted, of course, on a no-account man.

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Part of my Easter pleasure has for years been dinner with the incomparable C's. Sometimes I contribute wine, sometimes the regionally famous baked beans a la Jiggleview. This is a bean year, speaking of the Boston Marathon.

May it pass without new drama, although we can depend on our electric media to resurrect every tear, every fear, every snippet of 2013 Oh-My-God! tape.

In the 1980s it occurred to all sentient humans that people running down the street for hours had decidedly limited news value and entertainment potential.

The same thought penetrated teevee producers' skulls about 20 years later. As much as they may personally abhor violence, it is not lost on them than a bomb here and there does wonders for the Neilsons.

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Happy Easter, Friends.

God: Bought and Paid For

A nice boy from the Jewish tradition, MAIG boss Michael Bloomberg certainly loosens jaws when he lines up with the most anal of the Calvinists and Weberites; you know, the folks who deem Tesla drivers holier than poor schmucks  tooling around in rusty pickups.

Bloomberg is going to Heaven because wealth is a sign of God's favor, don't you know?

Honey, I shrunk the camel.

His Gate pass wasn't free. He bought off St. Peter with deposit of  $103 million to pretend to clean up the coal and motivate fish to fuck more frequently. He now  announces he  getting his halo out of layaway with another $50 million to ensure that only criminals are armed.

No one is making this up:

I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.

So be it, and we can hope that former mayor Bloomberg enjoys an eternity in close companionship with Abner Scofield, of whom our friend Mark Twain wrote.  You'll recall, of course, that the wealthy coal dealer secured his seat near the Throne of God as a reward for sending $15 to his impoverished sister. The Recording Angel confirmed the arrangements in a personal letter to Abner:

"... (St.)Peter, weeping, said, "He shall be received with a torchlight procession when he comes"; and then all heaven boomed, and was glad you were going there. And so was hell."