May 22, 2014

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.

May 20, 2014

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.
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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."
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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.



May 19, 2014

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.

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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.








May 15, 2014

...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.

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*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.




May 13, 2014

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.

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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.




  














May 9, 2014

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'."

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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.

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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.

May 7, 2014

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.

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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.








May 2, 2014

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.


May 1, 2014

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.