RIFLEMAN'S JOURNAL - AUGUST 2010
The World Sucks
And that was the very last of my money.
Yet another murderous thug with a badge. I swear the things radiate sociopathy.
They also appear to radiate an intellect-dampening field. How is this different from armed robbery?
A warning about the Big Reno Gun Shows. Look up the word "Quisling". It's in the dictionary.
Meanwhile from Government Schools. "There really are two Americas. One is inhabited by you and me. The other is inhabited by government bureaucrats who seem to be able to commit felonies that would have you and me in jail facing 20 years, and looking at a million dollars for bail." We're gonna need more rope.
Speaking of rope, just two days ago was this report of an unstable thug with a badge, and now comes this report of armed robbery which another thug would have got away with if not for publicity.
Back here I pondered the Question. John Lott asks it out loud, as Huffman asked it five and half years ago. Still no answer.
In Lighter News
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT. Featuring TSA imbecility. Boycott airlines.
Ships! We got ships. On this day in 1798, Nelson commenced kicking Napoleon's ass at the Nile; and in 1801 USS Enterprise fired some of the first shots of the war in which we are still engaged.
A lesson from yesterday: The aftermarket grooved aluminum trigger I got for my 1911 and painstakingly installed, has sharp grooves which actually cause pain in the course of a 150+ round all-day IPSC shoot. Which means I'mn'a hafta dig through the parts drawer and wrassle that mainspring housing, sigh. Which also means I have to remove the lower grip screw bushings to get the well-funnel off, sigh.
Last today, here's a teaser from HatCam:
Yeah that worked pretty darn good.
"The criminals are going to run wild"? Uh, no. They already have been. Massive unemployment among the law enforcement community would get large numbers of criminals off the street.
And real citizens can take care of the rest. We don't need hired thugs. "...[I]f one holds his state on the basis of mercenary arms, he will never be firm or secure; because they are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; gallant among friends, vile among enemies; no fear of God, no faith with men; and one defers ruin insofar as one defers the attack; and in peace you are despoiled by them, in war by the enemy."
Just barely got the rent & water & garbage paid due to another friend's generosity. And finally a hint of a JOB, making circuit boards up in Vancouver, whose traffic can't possibly be worse than crossing Portland's entire urban sprawl at 40+ miles every day. But I'm still out of money now, including gas money to reach said job, which I don't even have yet, and there's a week-long payroll lag, so even if I started Wednesday I wouldn't get paid 'til the 13th, by which time the internet bill of $40.52 would be about a week overdue.
Man, I don't wanna mess with those direkittehs no more....
AAAAAND another astoundingly timely and humblingly generous big fat reader donation! Gunfolk are the nicest people evar. So that's the internet bill and some gas. I should be okay now if I get that job.
Real women. As opposed to the usual kind these days.
Another attempt to reform ATF. [adjusting tinfoil beanie] Ya know, the last time something like this was in the works, a federal building got blown up with conveniently-distracting timing....
Though it usually seems so, not everything I do is doomed to soul-crushing failure. HatCam was as successful as I'd hoped, and though it's use was limited on Saturday, and it still needs adjustment, I intend to use it quite a bit in future. Shiny-fying the video and stills and adding the colored arrows and such, the first stumbling block (aside from the horsepower needed for the job and my old slow computer being barely up to the task) is the video from Yuri. The RCA and my Canon both save in .AVI, but his Nikon saves in .MOV. The editing software I'm most comfortable with at present is CyberLink's PowerDirector Express v5, a limited version, bundled with a video card, fished out of the recycle bin at my last job. And it won't accept .MOV. Fortunately, some time ago I stumbled across Giveaway of the Day, and while most of the daily offerings are of no use to me I have managed to score some video conversion software which actually works, changing the .MOV to one of several .AVIs which PDE can digest.
The videos are DONE! Stage One: Bragga('s?) Wall Stage Two: Dan's Door to Perdition Stage Three: Mom's Wash Line Stage Four: Lone Oak Mirage Stage Five: Bragga Doorme Stage Six: Mom's Wash Line Extra Stage Seven: Lone Oak Mirage Revisited
Stage One: Bragga('s?) Wall
Stage Two: Dan's Door to Perdition
Stage Three: Mom's Wash Line
Stage Four: Lone Oak Mirage
Stage Five: Bragga Doorme
Stage Six: Mom's Wash Line Extra
Stage Seven: Lone Oak Mirage Revisited
Of course that's only if I get that job and soon, otherwise I'm still in deep financial trouble. And I ain't heard back yet. Next expenses are $40 storage rent on the 12th and ~$57 car insurance on the 18th. If I don't get some work hours this week I won't be paid before the 20th.
You see this? This right here? This is why people are starting to burn cops' houses down. And these power-addicted child-raping kleptomaniacs actually wonder why.
Or maybe they don't. Their psychosis is such that they are simply not capable of imagining that what they are doing is wrong.
For example: "When I was in the Army we were periodically put in formation to hear a reading of the Articles of War. I wonder if some similar ceremony at which Federal Officers were required to listen to a reading of the Fourth Amendment would be useful?" And: "Imagine being so confident you could break the rules you'd cheat on your own people. I wonder why that was apparently viewed as doable?"
Where exactly is EPA headquarters? Dear Al Qaeda....
This week's library haul includes Weber's latest Harrington, Mission of Honor, in which I guess I'll find out if she gets promoted, as Tam snarked, to God (j.g.). -One might snark about writing oneself into a corner if it didn't take 17+ volumes to get there.
Codrea's back.
And JPFO ain't going away.
At Bi-Mart today I saw UMC MegaPacks in .223, 9x19mm, .38 Special, .40S&W, .45ACP, and .380ACP. Even some Winchester and CCI primers other than #209 on the shelf. Powder too, and not just the oddballs and Pyrodex. The Drought really is starting to break. Though I speculate it's from increased supply, not decreased demand.
Rather than wrassle the mainspring housing and swap out a part which is otherwise Working Just Fine, SMLE Fan suggests something I was already thinking of - just take a darn file to the trigger with the piece still in the weapon. The trigger is aluminum, so the work isn't hard, and I have an appropriate round needle file I picked up at the tool tables at some show years ago. Yes, sloppy technique puts some marks on the frame but this ain't no Les Baer, and if I were to open up the weapon sufficient to take the trigger out - which is pretty much all the way - then I might as well swap the part anyway. ...That seems an improvement, without losing the non-slip I wanted from the grooves in the first place, but one can't be sure until after dozens of rounds of live fire.
A double-action revolver, or presumably a DAO pistol, should have a smooth trigger. SAO, not necessarily. My Cheap Philippine Clone 1911 came with a smooth trigger and my finger slid right off the sucker every time I fired. By the end of Saturday's shoot my finger was flinching away from the trigger after each shot. Searching for middle ground.
I like the feel of Uncle Mike's synthetic grips - which appear to be discontinued as I can't find any new ones being offered - but they "leak" some sticky oily substance onto the frame. Whatever it is doesn't seem to harm the metal, but left unattended it might gum up your drop-free magazines. Take 'em off and check. Hoppe's cleans it up, but there's more waiting for you next month.
At a recent show I was fondling various stuff and found a full-size 1911, I forget the maker now, some high-end piece, with slim grips and sharp checkering on grips, frontstrap and mainspring housing. The slimness was significant, and the thing was not going to shift in your hand during recoil, but one wonders what one's hand would look like after 150+ rounds. But the slimness was an improvement.
In the HatCam!!! vids you'll notice my whole body rocking back in recoil. Which is probably my sloppy technique, grip, and stance, but there ain't no compensator on this weapon and I'm using full-power loads (240gr cast over 5.6gr W231 - haven't chrono'd yet). Maybe someday I'll try one of those drop-on compensator bushings.
...Yyyyyeah, when I miss something, it's not the pistol. Ain't nuthin' wrong with the pistol. I'm doin' it wrong.
Still nothing about the job and the temp service says there won't be any word 'til Friday. Which means there's no possibility of income until the 20th even if I do get the job. That's... bad. Pretty much the last thing I can bear to sell, that someone might buy, is my Hawken. If I sell it at the show on the 14th I can fudge the storage rent that far.
I'm not the only netizen who desperately needs money. Please support this valuable public service to the best of your ability.
More arrogance in Iowa. The servants must be put back in their place.
Because The Law Is Wrong. We've been pushed too far and we've got to start pushing back.
Speaking of the law being wrong, here is another enraging example of government "health" "care" in action. You know that Mencken quote? The one about throats? Ohhh, I'm feelin' it.
Fort Smith GRE is trying, but I question his ideological purity. He seems mesmerized by the Magic Badge. If the law is wrong, enforcing it is wrong.
Authorized journalists. Again and again. (Catchy new phrase coined.)
Again with banning lead. Some of the press releases on this, like from the email lists, sound very much like what the warmist cultists say: "consensus", "science is settled", "time for debate is past"....
Worth a thousand infuriating words.
"Tolerance is not found on the left." We knew that.
Gosh, who could have predicted TSA would be storing those full-body-scanner images? I mean subliterate thugs with badges would never abuse their power....
And the politicians who dictate how we should live our lives, they'd never cut deals for their cronies....
I'm highly reluctant to invest in something like this. Because some sociopath with a badge will fabricate an excuse to steal it. Quite possibly murdering me in the process. (Talk about "use it or lose it"....) -How did we come to this? How does a nation get to the point where the citizens have to plan their trips, deciding what to take with them, even deciding what products to buy for private use, based on the expectation that they will be violently robbed and maybe killed along the way by their own government? How did this happen?
Fighting shotguns... reading MHV, maybe I'll try a Saiga after all. $omeday. Box magazines, and the most-proven-reliable autoloading long-gun design evar.
Huh, Codrea comes back and all the other GREs start producing again.
Don't forget the basics.
Caleb is posting action-handgun training vids. Which I'm actually spending the bandwidth on 'cause I kinda sucked last weekend, akshually. Comparatively.
Speaking of bizarre malfunctions.
Snorkifying Mental Image o' the Day.
Breda has a little pr0n today.
Yes, I've seen the story about the Gurkha making a positive identification. Heh. -I seem to recall Pournelle having Gurkhas in his Warworld series, a spinoff of his CoDominium saga.
So Kagan is confirmed. No surprise. (Radio news, Hussein gloating that there are now three women on SCOTUS for the first time. Like the plumbing is more important than that Constitution thingy. -Yeah, exactly like that.) Earlier this week in chat I was reflecting, with some Elves, on the value of political activism. A decade ago I was marching and waving a sign and chanting against closing the "gun show loophole" in Oregon. No. One. Cared. At least not enough, or in great enough numbers, to matter. Same with Kagan. The nation is so divided, so polarized, there is no meaningful number of minds remaining which are capable of being changed; similarly there are none who have the energy, patience, or stomach to debate when they are trying to use what few resources they have left to stockpile for the inevitable confrontation, or just get the rent paid maybe. We are past the point of reasoned discourse and peaceful solutions. As Pournelle quotes Buckley: "[Standing] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."
To illustrate: "Whether or not a statute is to his liking is not for Eades to judge. I hope that he is not confused about other laws that he [is] charged with enforcing." No, I don't think Belle Meade, TN, police chief Tim Eades - or any other hired thief with a badge - is confused about the law in the slightest. When dealing with the people whose taxes pay their salaries, they make it up as they go along, and when dealing with themselves, they ignore it completely.
Firearms and bankruptcy law. I've already sold off most of my collection. :(
Typing &^%$ 200 times.... The diseased parasites responsible for this sort of thing really need a good hot dose of tar and feathers.
Weber remains excessively wordy, sigh. But one can't quit reading now. (I have successfully kicked the Clive Cussler habit, I'm proud to say.) Again one sees the Solarian League as an analogy to the Only Ones - incapable of conceiving they're wrong, instinctively reaching for the big stick and looking forward to stealing innocent people's stuff.
Michigan Firearms Examiner (aka Detroit GRE) examines The Queen.
Discovered the Oklahoma City Firearms Examiner.
[pointing] Hah-hah!
"Only a fool wants war, but once war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy...."
"I sleep clearly every night." And deservedly so.
And the circuit board job still has not given word to the temp service, so they have no word to give to me. So I'm pretty screwed here.
This pattern of arrogance and elitism, of "public" "servants" looking down on citizens, has been going on for a long time. Also see - it can't be overstated - the genocidal danger of monopoly on force.
Can we start shooting them on sight now? Huh? Can we?
Another netizen needs money.
Because the whole country is really truly screwed.
In the distant future, SCA and Cowboy Action and IPSC and all that will merge. Or so speculates Weber.
What it means to be American.
In case any cat lovers in the audience missed it, behold big cats on 'nip. Must. Rub. Giant. Cat. Tummies.
I think I have the storage rent covered, if something else doesn't crap on me.
And I really shouldn't have typed that out loud. 'Cause that's how my world works.
Yet more MSM PSH, as usual, but also note that Codrea is far from ignorant of history.
Speaking of media bigotry. Get ready for the special armbands and ghettos.
Police badges are made of some kind of alien metal which induces sociopathy. It's an explanation which fits the available evidence.
With careful use of the buffing thingies and red gunk in my Dremel kit, I think I've fixed my Lee 6-cav .45 mould's jamming problem. Maybe. Sooo, since I spent most of the bullets I had cast in last weekend's IPSC shoot, but I'm not out of lead yet, I'll try casting more bullets. As opposed to driving somewhere with fuel I don't have and spending money I don't have either. ...Yeah that seems to be working now. Something to occupy my time.
Speaking of IPSC, results in email: I took first (of three) in Limited 10, 13 of 27 overall. Middle of the pack, about what I figured.
It's not about safety. It's never been about our safety.
Another bone to pick with "pure" libertarians, sigh.
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT, featuring Clayton Cramer about his being sued by MSM. (Cramer's own ideological purity is in question, sigh, but the case has broad 1st Amendment implications and he's on the right side of it this time.)
Attentive gunfolk will be aware of The New York Times' expectedly-slanted article on Appleseed. The Project responds. ...Which is fine by itself but in perspective is a waste of bandwidth. There are no minds left to be changed. Both sides of the Culture War are preaching to their choirs and no one else cares.
Still, this is America. And we're pretty damn hard to kill.
About 400 .45 pistol bullets cast yesterday. First coat LLA done, sizing.
Never tick off the Americans.
Still no word on the job.
St. Louis GRE is not dead. I was beginning to wonder.
Seattle GRE illuminates why we want to carry everywhere. Scroll down for folks gettin' uppity in Spokane.
"...[W]ould rather see us dead than armed...." What's that verdict they pronounce with the climactic music on the courtroom-drama shows? "Callous disregard for human life"?
Cheyenne GRE questions Palin's idological purity.
Looks like Fort Smith GRE doesn't like my comments.
When it all went wrong.
Cops.... When's the last time you heard about a cop helping someone? All they do anymore is electrocution and armed robbery. And, too often, serial rape. If I saw a cop on fire I would look for marshmallows. And that ain't no one's fault but theirs.
Yet another reason I don't want an iPhone. Because it fails the test. (Remember, TracFone and several competitors ain't been outlawed yet. During setup, when the automated voice-recognition thing asks for your name and such, say "NO" and it skips over it. Nice.)
Gettin' uppity in Florida.
Via Sipsey St., this right here is one of several reasons I put dueling in the Constitution of my utopia. As a self-correction mechanism.
Yyyyyeah Our Kind need us some of these.
So a friend is buying me a tank of gas last night and we're discussing HatCam!!!, and comes the suggestion to mount the camera on the weapon. I know it's been done, like with ARs in 3-Gun, and a year or two ago was that government-priced thing supposed to go on the rail of a badgethug's pistol (like they'd ever turn it on). There's no practical way to do it with the 1911 and still have it be a useful weapon with the cameras I have. I have a grip-panel scope-mount, and I'm sure some kind of camera mount could be rigged for that, perhaps JB Weld and an old scope ring with another dollar-store mini tripod, but the balance would be way off, it probably wouldn't fit the holster, my sight picture would be at least partially obstructed, etc.
But someday I'll build an AR and use it in 3-Gun....
I've taken the Uncle Mike's grips off the 1911 and set them aside, hoping they'll "air out" or something. In place, I've mounted the faux-stag grips donated by a reader, and... they're more comfortable than I recall from the last time I tried them. Hmm. Part of the reason appears to be, they're slimmer, in certain fortuitous places, than the Uncle Mike's. Also, while the UM were checkered and soft enough to give a sensation of "grab", these are smoother and slide into the hand, but the shape of them seems to lock the weapon in position so it doesn't easily slide out. How very interesting.
The trigger might need more attention; a few sharp points remain, particularly the hole for the overtravel screw. But dry practice does indicate an improvement. What I need is vastly more live practice than I can at present afford. And to lose twenty pounds or more.
David Weber's Out of the Dark, published by Tor, is a new series, neither in the Honorverse nor the Safehold saga. The plot is, Humans are the galaxy's Designated Warrior Race and neither the snarling alien carnivores who nuked Terra halfway to a cinder, nor the galactic bureaucrats who sent them, grok. (Never tick off the hairless apes of Sol III. We will kill you and break your stuff.) -Mayhap Ringo has rubbed off on Weber, they have collaborated a few times now.
The temp service told me to call back Wednesday. This is quite bad.
And it's not just me.
More elitist hypocrites.
Discrimination in Michigan.
Guns & Coffee has the Barney Fife Moment o' the Day, with bonus Heinlein reference. When's the last time you heard about a cop HELPING someone?
Speaking of subliterate tax-parasite thugs in positions of authority and with no accountability. There. Are. No. Good. Cops. Society was, and would again be, better without them.
Related, sent by a reader, even "mainstream" "law-and-order" "conservative" media is starting to recognize the problem. Do RTWT and keep the antacid handy.
Aaaaand the chocolate ration has been increased to twenty grams. (Ref.)
But speaking of jobs, SCOOOOOORRRRRREEE.
A bit of unity for the Cause.
BTR has the Anarcho-Capitalist Moment o' the Day. Or would, if government would get out of the way.
Article on 1911 carry options.
Speaking of Saigas.
NOOOOO THEY BE STELIN MAH BACON11!eleben!!!
STILL NO WORD ABOUT THE JOB. Any charitable donations would be deeply appreciated.
Heat wave forecast this weekend.
Codrea and Tucson GRE observe NRA exercising the Iron Law.
As usual, Codrea's other site has far too many reports, every day, of out-of-control thugs-with-badges robbing, assaulting, and murdering innocent citizens. I haven't the stomach to link them all. Tam has some too, as does WRSA with an illustrative quote. There are no good cops. Certainly none good enough to do anything about the bad ones - instead they lie and fabricate and destroy evidence to cover for each other.
No one becomes a cop to help people. A time is coming, likely sooner than anyone expects, when killing cops on sight will be a civic duty. It's not murder. It's animal control.
Government. *&^%$#ing. Schools. Burn 'em down.
In Mission of Honor, Weber perpetrates a ruthless bloodletting not seen in the series before, to my recollection, and drastically changes the saga's course as he's been building up to for the last several volumes. With that done, returning to Correia's MHV. ...Which doesn't last very long 'cause I can't stop reading it.
Thoughts on capital punishment. Hmm. In my utopia the method of execution is usually armed self-defense. There are very few things governments can be trusted with.
Yyyyeah that's about what I expected. 'Cause that's how my world works: The job finally called the temp service back to report they've placed any new hires "on hold" until they can determine if they're needed. The temp service is looking for something else in the meantime, and in the meantime I'm really quite screwed.
Yyyyeah I don't pay to watch movies anymore. (Buuuuut....)
I got yer copyright violation right here. (But also another view.)
GR4U has a report on law enforcement officer deaths, and some speculation as to cause & effect. Yyyyep.
Philosophically related, Tam has more on the alcoholic officer who at-least-negligently murdered at least one innocent citizen (the other two are critical). There are no good cops. If there were, this menace to society, this enemy of civilization, with a years-long pattern of being a clear and present danger to public safety, would have been disposed of before he did so much damage. But no. They gave him a medal and had beers with him at the end of their shift.
Brigid shows us where we're going.
Yeah we know who's racist.
Eco-freaks and dangerous predators, again.
“I didn’t realize there was something wrong with singing the national anthem.” “...[A] police officer came over and he was yelling....” See, you were doing it without permission. Who do you think you are, a sovereign citizen with unalienable rights?
Reader sends this product of Authorized Journalism:
Talk about a broken clock being right twice a day.
You'll remember the county DA who refused to prosecute certain arms-related "offenses". G&C has more news.
SAF prepares to smack Maryland. And San Francisco.
SMLE Fan points to a PJM article on citizenship, immigration, and Heinlein. Have I mentioned that Starship Troopers was one of the first few books I ever read on purpose, and it left a mark?
I've used this Jefferson quote many times. It bears repeating.
Codrea has the Epic Duh o' the Day.
You'll have heard of the Connecticut workplace shooting. In hindsight I should have wondered why it didn't get more play in mainstream media demagoguery. Ohhh, that's why. (Since I quit watching TV years ago I had no idea what color the psycho was.) Now where have I seen that kind of behavior before...?
"But he's good on the 2nd Amendment!" ...Nnnno. No he's not.
Authorized Journalists and Only Ones, Chapter MMDCXV.
So the Department of "Justice" for the United States of America is not only officially racist (see the Black Panthers voter-intimidation case as the most obvious example), they also hate our troops and want them to die be disenfranchised. (And just yesterday we were establishing that no one has more right to vote than our troops who actually do stuff for this country.)
Oh look, another out-of-control emotionally-unstable thug-with-a-badge. Remember, we shouldn't have guns 'cause we're not professional enough and we can't be trusted.
WoGged again.
Some years ago there was a story about an ancient RAF pilot addressing a class of modern schoolchildren about the Battle of Britain. And the kids had never heard of it. Now we know Britain is an island in desperate need of sinking ("Raise it up and sink it again"), but the same disease can be found here. Yes, it really is that bad.
Quote o' the Day: "Fear of being turned out of office drives a great deal of despotic public policy." (Scroll down for yet another infuriating example of Only Oneism.)
Wednesday I linked this post contemplating capital punishment. Later that evening a reader reminded me of "balancing", the method used by Heinlein in his many-universes novel, The Number of the Beast. Yesterday I linked this webcomic which also touched on the subject. Just wanted to tie all those together here for ya.
Just for the record: Heinlein published Starship Troopers in 1959. Stan Lee created Iron Man in 1963.
Update on the discrimination in Michigan.
You know what I wouldn't mind having? A Lee 6-cavity bullet mold which makes hollowpoints. I'm sure it can be done; I have a Lee single-cav hollow-base Minié mold, the design already exists, just expand it.
Yet another shockingly humblingly generous reader donation has covered the car insurance and a little fuel & food. (15lb sack of potatoes, ~$3, lasts 2-3 weeks. By "lasts" I mean "runs out", not "goes bad". In the meat section there are usually two or three brands of turkey ham, and one is half the price of the others.) Yet I must still go to the show to sell whatever I have left which I can bear to part with. Please help?
Made... some... money at the show, enough for better groceries and more fuel and maybe a token sacrifice toward the electric bill. Didn't take the Hawken 'cause ('cause one of the few matches I ever won was won with it, that's why 'cause) I thought I had something guaranteed to sell, a couple bricks of WLR marked $5 less than local retail-which-is-still-often-out-of-stock. Can't believe no one bought them. Rent will still be screwed though - even if I get a job Monday I won't get paid 'til the 27th. I don't want to ask my sister for another loan, 'cause there's not much left I can offer as collateral.
Mexico and MSM, again.
Quote o' the Day: "Michelle Obama is a nasty classist debutante who thinks that the only thing the United States has ever done right is to recognize her and her husband as its rightful rulers."
Yeah. We know. Who's racist.
Korean Garands? U no can haz. Giant flaming meteor -> District of Columbia. Shame about the memorials and LoC and all, but some healthy tissue has to be sacrificed when slicing cancer out of the body.
GOVERNMENT. #$%*ING. SCHOOLS. Do also read comments. Yes it really is that bad.
In the October 2010 issue of Guns magazine (archive), I see a feature article on a S&W M629 with slimmed-down 2-5/8" barrel and chopped grip. Um, no, thx. I have fired the .44 Magnum in a couple different platforms. It's a weapon I want my entire hand wrapped around, and I want some extra mass up front to placate Newton. -No, I'm not about to start paperwork on a Ruger Alaskan either.
Although I do think unfluted cylinders are handsome.
Dudes:
Motorcycle. Mounted. IPSC.
You know you want it.
SMLE Fan links to the Quote o' the Day.
In chat today was a rumor of Hussein defunding the Marine Corps, or somesuch. Anyone?
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT.
Gettin' Uppity, coast-to-coast. All we want is to be left alone. What do they want?
NJT links two Enigma emulators. Which could be useful.
SMLE Fan contemplates flying cars, and alternatives.
After a month and a half, conservative webcomic Diversity Lane returns.
Still no work.
Go to Pournelle's Sunday entry and scroll down to the second section, "Best of Fred".
Seventy-odd years ago, in National Socialist Germany, children were rewarded for turning their own parents in for state punishment. Oh hey....
Via The Shooting Wire, EyeGlassCam!!!
Choosing wisely in Wyoming.
Via Borepatch, this bit of history, but also a hmm-inducing Quote o' the Day. Remember Normandy? No one dared wake Der Führer while Rangers and paratroopers were improvising and overcoming? There is an inherent chaos in American existence. Alles in ordnung doesn't work here. That's why we came. See also the Other Quote o' the Day.
Fabbers.
A good excuse for missing the Restore the Constitution rally. And think about it - he wasn't really doing something different.
Cheap(er) rocket engines.
Still no work. I'm told there are positions on the west side of town but that's the fifty-mile-daily-commute-in-horrid-traffic-at-three-dollars-a-gallon.
Ick....
As expected, Codrea is on top of the Korean rifles thing.
MCCARTHY WAS RIGHT (yes he was).
ZOMG CHILDREN ARE STARVING!!1!!!! ZOMFG CHILDREN ARE GETTING MORBIDLY OBESE!!!1eleventy!!! GOVERNMENT MUST DOOOO SOMETHING!!!!
Never trust a cop of any kind. This man might be the exception that proves the rule.
Make way for the King. Nnnno. ...What does this remind me of...? Ew, that can't be good.
But speaking of revolution. -What's Bradbury been writing lately? Mostly I read Baen.
Speaking of, starting Mark L. van Name's Children No More, fourth in his Jon & Lobo series. (The fifth title, Jump Gate Twist, I now learn is an omnibus of the first two, though it does contain some extra material.) Emoooooo....
NRA-bashing is increasingly fashionable among RKBA absolutists - like myself - but it can also be a distraction from good news like SAF actually doing stuff. Remember McDonald and Heller were their cases. The enemy has been incrementally infringing for decades. It's only right we should be incrementing back.
Brigid gots history (mixed with a little pr0n).
From BTR we have Calvin Coolidge, and from Borepatch we have thoughts on limited government. Hmm.
Prohibition FAIL, Chapter MMDCXX. It's not about guns, it's not about safety, it's not about The Childrentm, it's about control.
A week or so ago I linked a post about government schools spying on students through laptop webcams and screenshots. Oh look, "no evidence that anyone intentionally committed a crime." Rope. Lamppost.
You can't reason with them. Their minds don't work right.
Dammit! When will Geeks.com offer an affordable holotank with a VGA/DVI interface?
Personal luxury submarines. ...But where's the deck guns? Not even a three-inch?
Appleseed on Fox News. But even "our" MSM outlet has to muddy the waters, sigh. "We also have documented people who go there who have clear anti-government views...." [Anti-Defamation League bigot] Nigut said. Well duh.
[thought=random] You know what might make a not-sucky movie? Airplane racing. Could be a period piece like Doolittle's cross-country record, could be a modern sports film like - for a perhaps imperfect example - Days of Thunder. Reno/Bendix/NASCAR-in-the-sky. Hm?
Quote. O'. The Day. Aaand I guess I'll have to add RNS to my daily blogtrawl.
Blago escapes most charges? Yyyyeah that's what I expected. When's the last time you heard of a "fair trial"?
Thugs. With. Badges. Yeah we know who they're "protecting and serving". It's never been us.
Think about that. Think about what kind of people want to become law enforcement officers. Think about what kind of personalities view that as a "rewarding" career. Something they would find satisfying.
Codrea has more on "buybacks".
Opera is my primary browser. I use Firefox with DownloadHelper to grab video - it's simpler to start the download and go have a sandwich, viewing the .FLV when it's done, than to watch streaming video in an actual browser with my still-limited bandwidth. Anyhow here is a new addon for Firefox which blocks sites from Stephens Media, the outfit who's frivolously suing Clayton Cramer. And of course you can add more sites.
Ambivalence. Words mean things. The product-of-western-culture side of me thinks the Ground Zero Mosque is an abomination and a blatant insult from the most violent and destructive cult in human history, while my libertarian bits have to admit that governments telling people where they can't build churches is just about as bad, in the larger sense. (Remember a little church in Waco? Does the six-year-old care whether she's burned to death by a Sworn Officer o' da Law or blown up by a Holy Martyr of the Faith?) Codrea expresses clearly.
And still no work. Yeah I'm pretty screwed. Please help?
Codrea illuminates Elitist Hypocrisy, Chapter MMDCXXII.
Meanwhile in Oregon, as has been warned of before, using "mental" "health" as a bludgeon to keep the peasants in line. The people who write this legislation are the ones who belong in an institution.
Oh look! The drunk-driving negligently-homicidal callous-disregard-for-human-life cop gets a break from his brothers in blue! I'm shocked, shocked and dismayed to see deliberate incompetence and thinly-disguised favoritism among the Almighty Bearers of the Magic Badge! (...Why, that's as outlandish and fantastical as the notion of a partisan plant on Blago's jury....)
How many times must it be said? There are no good cops. Even the ones not actively slaughtering innocent citizens are actively covering up for those who do.
Speaking of, Codrea has more on the two Denver thugs who assaulted an innocent citizen; and then another batch, including another link to the murdering-drunk-with-a-badge. No child-molesters this time... or at least that's not what these are being charged with.
Oh, and here's one who wasn't drunk, just the usual kind of sociopathic. They don't view us as human beings. Our lives are worth nothing to them.
Do you get it? It's a pattern: "You and me: Felony charges, jail until we make extortionate bail. Them: Paid leave and "no comment" from the government PR Flack."
And think about what kind of people want to be TSA screeners.
Stress....
Ambivalence.... "For every Arab astrolabe or treatise on geometry, there have been a thousand — or a hundred thousand — incidents of murder, pillage, torture, slavery, and wanton destruction of anything sublime and beautiful that originated outside of Islam." One argument I saw recently against the Ground Zero Mosque (which of course we're not supposed to call such according to the Authorized Press) was, how can it be an American separation-of-church-and-state issue when there is no such separation in Islam? Sharia is both secular and religious law - no distinction at all. Proclaimed in their own holy text is the commandment to forcibly convert, enslave, or destroy any who are not of the faith. How can the peace-love-hope-change crowd, the same hippie freaks who break crosses off war memorials, be so supportive of a violent cult who would stone THEM to death for any of a hundred behaviors they believe they have the Gaia-given right to indulge? How can they not get that? But nooo, they're busy calling us islamophobes. "It’s not a phobia if the fear is rational."
United States By-God Marines. They're like a different species. Nor is this the only data point.
Exhaustion....
Another threat to freedom of speech, particularly the kind you're reading now.
Anniversary. We get murdered, they get paid vacation. And the occasional medal. And they wonder why we hate.
Right now I wouldn't mind terribly if Al-Qaeda nuked downtown Portland. Ya know, a low-yield device, me way out here on one end of the sprawl, I might be okay.
Nah.
More on Portland. I really hate this place.
It's not about safety. It's certainly not about "protecting and serving" us. It's about armed robbery in uniform.
Philosophically related, Quote o' the Day: "One thing was painfully clear. The cops were much more concerned about not getting themselves shot than rescuing the hostages." Again I refer the reader to nearly every school shooting ever, when the BraveDefendersOfPublicSafety ran away and hid while their employers were gruesomely murdered. Society would be better without police. They are more burden than benefit.
Codrea finds two good sheriffs.
Speaking of HatCam!!!s. ($igh.)
Finished van Name's Children No More. Some preachy, and very emo, but still an actual story worth continuing to read. Next is Williamson's latest Grainne, Do Unto Others.
How many levels of FAIL can a libertarian find in this news item? "Federal agents are seeking to hire Ebonics translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations involving targets of undercover drug investigations." Which part of the Bill of Rights does that one sentence not defile, either explicitly or by implication?
This is the same kind of institutionalized idiocy which leads to unopposed massacres. -Think about that....
And here we have the racism whose name no one dares speak.
Meanwhile Tam is keeping an eye on the drunken-murderer-with-a-badge and all his many Brothers in Blue.
Bah.
I can pay the electric bill - which I'll probably have to do to avoid shutoff - but that leaves nothing at all for rent. Please help?
Reader sends organized armed robbery in uniform. It's a protection racket: your money or your life. Cough up the cash or they won't "protect" you. If you try to protect yourself, they'll rob, kidnap and/or murder you under color of authority. "Those who have been intoxicated with power ... can never willingly abandon it." - British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) (Me, I've never liked giving orders much more than I've liked taking them.)
There is no moral difference between police and what they claim to be protecting us from. Codrea, taking note of yesterday's racism, illuminates another example. It's called "Catch-22". Also see.
And here's another example in Michigan.
Meanwhile in Portland, the local chief anti-rights bully calls us bullies. I hate this place.
You know how some of these bigots call for "opinions" and "input"? Waste of bandwidth. Staff picks through, shines a spotlight on anyone agreeing with the bigotry - or the staff fabricates it themselves - and summarily deletes anything else. Government hasn't been "representative" for a long time.
Army to discontinue bayonet training? That. Can't. Be. Good. -But WTH, a standing army shouldn't exist anyway, Constitutionally. And we still have Marines (which as part of the Navy are specifically authorized in the Constitution).
Related, more on the Mumbai mess. I can hear thousands of redcoat sergeants spinning in their graves....
Economics is not my forté, but I see a lot of it from WRSA and around the 'blogosphere. Heinlein, as usual, saw clearly.
As did this guy: "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy." - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Government health care. ROPE.
Quote o' the Day: "Some judges still respect the 4th [Amendment] ... [a]nd they are conservative, with the liberal ones giving the police whatever power they want." Click through for Reason and see also this new outrage.
Gettin' uppity in campaign ads.
I see the latest version of OpenOffice still has not fixed the window-size-and-position issue. It saves it if you close the file in the desired size and position, but if you close maximized it loses it the next time you try to restore down.
Williamson's Do Unto Others is, as expected, all action-y (something explodes, not on Correia's fortieth but the first page (seventh paragraph)) and evocative in a well-thought-out universe. In Contact with Chaos it was plain he'd given a great deal of thought to a great many causes and effects and flavor-izing details. Williamson's ability to immerse the reader in the setting approaches Kipling's. And, like Ringo and unlike Weber, he doesn't waste words doing it - every one is aimed and squeezed.
Something which still bothers me about my utopia is how to pay for stuff. Now, cheap energy and high technology goes a long way - when computers and robots do most of the work, from mining the raw ores to applying the final paint job, production costs plummet. When any individual household can have their own little fusion pack - which incidentally would provide enough electrical power to run a desalination plant and electrolysis rig, providing drinking water if you're nearer saltwater than fresh, breathable air if you're not planetside, and more fuel for the aforementioned fusion pack and yer personal spacecraft mass-produced affordably by the aforementioned robots - the society no longer needs sprawling infrastructure, road and power networks, or government bureaucracies to dictate where they can't be built. But still, if yer gonna have a navy, or a navy-like-organization, to protect said society from foreign invaders or the odd meteor, somebody has to pay for the spacers and marines and rations and whatnot. Here's some thoughts.
And more thoughts on anarchtopia here.
Hm. There is some talk of the Singularity, the point at which the speed of advancement of technology exceeds humanity's ability to predict or, possibly, control. Dunno about that, but I can see a critical mass of technology, a point beyond which the personal fabbers become viable and Leslie Fish's notion of a high-tech anarchy becomes feasible. Nanotechnology will likely figure big in this, buuuut the road to that happy future may not be smooth. Hmm.
Another shockingly generous reader donation has knocked out the electric bill, meaning my pitiful wad of cash can be diverted to rent. Which also means if I have to ask my sister for another loan I might get away with it. OTOH this does not allow for other costs like fuel and food and the upcoming internet bill and so on.
Still no job of course.
Seattle GRE explains the difference between Us and Them, then points out how The Other Them, once again, made up the law as they went along and assaulted and robbed an innocent citizen with deadly force.
I repeat: Armed Robbery In Uniform.
And remember, "We have a legal system. Not a justice system." They do not view us as human, only as gamepieces.
Remember also that "law is often but the tyrant's will."
As illustrated by the Worldsuckage Quote o' the Day: "People who don’t know if their day-to-day behavior will trigger criminal prosecution are not truly free."
Codrea fiskrants on Portland's bully mayor.
Speaking of high-tech, gray goo isn't the only danger. -And that doesn't even consider the EMPocalypse frying anything built in the last, what, twenty years? More?
Some may not grasp the full potential of fabbers-as-I-mean-them. I mean, they approximate Star Trek replicators, except they still cut and shape from ingots of raw material rather than assembling things by the molecule. (OTOH, the nanotech mentioned yesterday would be an advance of several orders of magnitude.) Schlockiverse fabbers strike me as somewhere between, leaning toward the Trek end of the spectrum. Ringo's Posleen forge is about the same. My idea of a fabber is a rather smart computer instructing the user to insert so much Ingredient A in this slot, so much Ingredient B in that bin, etc. Contemplate cheap energy and really automated manufacturing. Go far enough, a personal fabber could be the economic equivalent of a used laptop - who wouldn't have one? And you can get the .FAB files off ThePirateBay to make your very own Webley-Fosbery or StG44 or M1906 .45 Luger. Or pistons and rings for Fifi, the Confederate Air Force's (and the world's only) flying B-29. Or anything that fits through the output port. (I recall L. Neil Smith - Pallas, I think it was - designing and fabbing a volkspistole with the frame in stacked sections because those were the biggest pieces his protagonist's milling machine could make. I think there are at least two public-domain plan sets for an AR lower receiver constructed from easier-to-machine-with-existing-machines slabs.)
You watch, some self-soiling bureaucrat is gonna order a masks-on, guns-out raid on a Harbor Freight store....
$tress....
NEVER TALK TO POLICE. The law is wrong and Da Law is wrong.
And speaking of their protection racket. (Lemme guess, paid vacation for the one with the badge? Do you understand yet?)
Also see the Quote o' the Day: "I don't give a rat's hind-end about race. Thugs come in all colors, creeds, ethnicities, nationalities, and uniforms."
Aaand the first part of Firehand's latest worldsuckage roundup. Trespassing, assault with a deadly weapon (he's the Only One professional enough to carry it!), armed robbery, kidnapping (wrongful arrest). Who belongs in jail?
Every time I hear a siren, I reach for a weapon. The reaction is logical and prudent, based on an overwhelming body of evidence.
Yes I've been reading about the lead ban.
Remembering Katrina. I have the book. I can't read it. It is too infuriating.
Why can't Americans do this? ...Yeah we know why.
The line between satire and official policy has been erased.
Uh huh.
The "single issue" is freedom. (But how many other collectivist elitists is NRA endorsing and funding, sigh?)
Again I wonder, why can communists design 75- and 100-round drums for 7.62x39mm that don't waste gobs of space, while we can't manage it for 5.56x45mm?
[thought=random] So, like, Howdah pistols, yah? These reproductions are percussion, I've seen vintage flintlocks. Cartridge breechloader? For example, .500S&W? Does some damnfool "law" (repugnant to the Constitution and therefore null and void) limit handgun bore size like it does with rifles for the moronic "destructive device" classification? So, like, a side-by-side, break-action, .577 Snider pistol? Or WTH, maybe .615 or .729 brass-case? 8-D -Yes I'm still recoil-sensitive but hey, Big Honkin' Handgun with Traces of Steampunkishness!
Oregon Arms Collectors' yearly two-day exhibition! Very near the hovel, so not much concern for fuel; got in free with my ACSWW card. Click for pics.
Elsewhere:
More writing tips from Correia.
Okay, yeah, the Danish rocket made by Danes is frickin' awesome. But dammit, Americans should be doing it!
Hm. In email from RWVA, they'll be on Fox & Friends Monday morning. Which is great. But scrolling down I see they're letting law enforcement officers shoot free. You can imagine, I'm conflicted. Never trust a cop of any kind. Prolly they'll be recording license plates, and breaking into folks' cars and stealing or planting stuff. -And I expect range safety will suffer, if they actually try to shoot.
The World Still Sucks
Got a loan from my too-generous sister. Need income.
BTR has another Quote o' the Day: "I want to live in a free society where I don't have to prove myself worthy to walk the streets or go to a place of business of my choosing." What kind of person doesn't want that? What kind of person can't stand to see anyone living that way?
Disenfranchising the troops. Who, as previously established, have more right to vote than anyone.
Words... fail: Criminalizing the act of catching rainwater in a barrel. -Okay words don't fail: People who come up with this... tyranny should be gibbeted, alive, from streetlights, in front of city hall. Until they die. Of starvation or dehydration or kids throwing rocks at them or birds pecking out their eyes when they're too weak to brush them off.
Codrea on NRA, Reid, and principles.
Where it went wrong. Now, see, in my utopia, the Founding Documents, with explicit condemnations of government power, are carved in effin' stone five meters tall in front of every school and government building on a hundred worlds. So they can't say they never read the thing.
Exhaustion. Motivational crisis. What's? The? Point?
Meanwhile on the Island Which Must Be Sunk, "This is what lampposts and rope were invented to handle."
More on the previously mentioned trespassing, assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, and kidnapping. The people who commit these crimes are evil and deserve to be killed.
Speaking of crime and punishment, Joe Huffman channels Heinlein, as pointed out to me earlier by a reader referencing "balancing" in his novel The Number of the Beast. Okay this is not exactly the same, but it's in the same philosophical direction. -Wasn't there an episode of the New Twilight Zone, or some other show, which touched on this? The victim's family hunted the criminal through an arena?
The Bill of Rights is not a buffet table. >:-[
And speaking of Bloomberg, wait what?
Generally speaking, fewer cops = more public safety. But, the fewer they are, the worse they can be expected to behave. It's like a critical mass in reverse; the parasite population must be reduced below a self-sustaining level. That will be hard, messy work.
Also see. No I am not willing to make the first move in restoring harmony between police and citizens. The thugs with badges have several thousand moves to take back first. But the real issue is, police should not exist in a society which claims to be free.
Because: "The end result is obedience to laws out of fear and not out of respect for their reasonable nature...and the ability to crack down on anyone because every person breaks many laws daily unknowingly." The. Law. Is. Wrong. By which, I repeat, I don't mean any particular law any particular individual may happen to disagree with - I mean the fundamental concept of punishing victimless behavior. Those who write such laws, those who enforce them, are truly guilty of true crimes.
This Just in: Britain Still Sucks.
Seattle GRE has more on the lead not-ban. Note comments - a lot of prime-time "gun-rights activists" are NRA apologists, while us actual gun owners aren't letting them get away with it anymore.
Finished Do Unto Others the other day, satisfying. When I'm without the latest Baen from the library, I peck through other stuff, like Hanson's Carnage and Culture donated by a reader years ago (finished Rorke's Drift, bloodily illustrating the difference between warriors and soldiers; next section is Midway (and I really should go back and finish Shattered Sword someday)), or several ebooks, or presently, grabbed from the untracked paperback shelf at the library, Niven's Neutron Star, the collection of some of the most iconic shorts in his Known Space. The kind you still remember lines from twenty years after the last time you read them. "A million stars [monetary units]? I'd be fascinated." "Flatten out, you yeastheads! It's an attack!"
Another thing I like about the Opera browser is, you can tell it to load pages without images. Saving much bandwidth. You can also do this for individual tabs, and it saves the setting for new tabs launched from the current tab.
Anyone wanna buy some ad space?
And then they call back to inform me the positions are already filled. Because that's how my world works.
Portland's short summer is ending again. The roof is the only part of the hovel which doesn't leak.
Seattle GRE has bigotry from the tolerance crowd ("Tolerance is not found on the left" - also see), and followups on several other cases like the preacher murdered by a Spokane cop. And possibly another murderer-with-a-badge in Seattle. Yes, I'm pre-judging and jumping to conclusions. Based on an overwhelming body of evidence and a clear pattern of such behavior.
I've missed the last two weeks' Gun Talk (and chat), but Codrea hasn't - as expected, NRA claims undeserved credit for the McDonald case. For this we pay membership dues?
"Getting Used To It Doesn't Make It Right." "Illegal" doesn't mean "wrong" and "legal" doesn't mean "right". The Law is Wrong.
Even the enemy admits "there is no such thing as a gun show loophole."
Even CBS can't cook these numbers.
Fabbers....
Speaking of money, my utopia uses real metal with actual worth and government tends to stay the hell out of the way - people have their own little analyzers as peripherals for their 'puters, or they can borrow one at any restaurant or bar or retail establishment. x grams of gold is x grams of gold (or silver or platinum or rhodium or iridium or whatever the rockrats made port with this week), whether the government has stamped an Official Motto on it or not. But back before the Great Repealing, when my fictional Republic was issuing currency, the back of each coin held some variation of a rattlesnake and the old words of power: NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT.
Make a comment
Return to the weblog
Return to Jeffersonian's Page