Happy New Year

Looking forward to another average year.

Worse than last year, better than next year. Average.

Gun Ban - Just A Thought

Dianne Feinsterin's gun bill is so over the top it probably couldn't have passed the 2009 congress. So why is it getting any attention at all?

1. If we don't nuke Washington with letters, they'll think we don't care and pass it.

2. Fiscal cliff, 4 years with no budget, Bengazi, Inflation, jobs, taxes, and.... oh look, a gun ban!

Gun Show Report

Saturday by reports from people who were there, was a complete zoo, elbow-to elbow front to rear although the phrase "fire marshal" was not heard. Sunday started slow, but busier than I'd seen it recently.

NRA memberships were moving at a brisk pace and many questions from concerned gun owners as to what they could do.

Write, people, write. Scroll down for advice and suggestions. While the media is solidly in support of anything the Messiah or his prophets proposes, popular sentiment is essentially unchanged. Gun control is a poison pill but you have to remind tour elected officials

Channel 4 reported that this weekend's gun show attracted a solitary protester. When I left around 1 PM, the favorable news coverage had boosted that number to perhaps 6. A 600% increase in only one day! It's a major movement! A mandate even.

I can't wait to see the coverage they get.

Update: Or more likely, stuff I forgot. Pmags which are normally $17 were being hawked at $45. AR pattern rifles normally bringing $800-1500 were being hawked at $2000-2500. Hell, the coffee, normally $1.50 had risen to $2.50 although refills were still $1. At this point I'm glad I don't own an AR any more. Should have brought some of my reloads in, I hear they were bringing $0.75/each if you found the right sucker customer.

A fellow stopped by and asked if either of us had any idea what his pistol might be worth. It was a Smith & Wesson, top break, hammerless "lemon squeezer" in .38 S&W in really nice condition complete with holster. My partners magic phone suggested $500. A really cute gun.

More Statistics

Dave Burge of Iowahawk is reporting that you are some 5 times more likely to die in England from mistreatment by the National Health than you are to die in the U.S. of a deliberate gunshot.

Let's look: First your chances of being murdered in the U.S., from the Telegraph of England:

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world - there are 89 guns for every 100 Americans, compared to 6 in England and Wales.
And the murder figures themselves are astounding for Brits used to around 550 murders per year. In 2011 - the latest year for which detailed statistics are available - there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms.

And the death stats from the NHS, courtesy of Thompsons Solicitors, a British law firm:

The largest and most detailed survey into hospital deaths has revealed that almost 12,000 patients are needlessly dying every year as a result of poor patient care.

 What I notice right off is that for some reason Scotland and Ireland are not included in the stats. Last I heard, they were still part of Great Britain, even though some didn't like to admit it.

The population of England and Wales, is last reported as 56.1M giving you a .0002139 chance of being offed by the Nat Health.

The population of the U.S. was 310.5M in 2011 giving you 2.764e-5 or .00002764 which works out to 7.73 :1 in favor of the Brits. If we count all murders, the U.S. number jumps to .00004078 and makes it 5.24:1 in favor of the Brits.

So there you are, you're 5.24 times more likely to die at the hands of the National Health in England than you are to be murdered in any manner at all in the U.S. and 7.73 times more likely if only firearms deaths are counted.

It's a good thing we aren't burdened with such a homicidal bunch here, right?

Gun Free Zones

Back in 1990 Pres. Bush signed a bill declaring schools to be gun free zones.From the look of this chart from the gun rights examiner, the bill was addressing a non-problem and wound up creating one:

Up until the bill became law, we had one such shooting every 12.5 years. Since then we've had one every 2 years, which looks to me like a six-fold increase. A proper engineering approach to this would be to declare the bill a failure, apologize to the surviving relatives of the post 1990 shootings, and repeal the thing.

The politician's approach would be to increase the penalties for shooting kids in a school by adding another 5 years to the jail time.

Meantime a Russian is warning us about gun rights based on his countries experience with them.

These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions.

Stanislav's commentary is well worth the read.

Big New Guns

I'm sure this is a typo, but move the decimal point as I can, no combination seems to make sense so let's have a laugh.

Silver Shadow, an Israeli arms company has moved into new digs and will be introducing several new weapons in the near future:

According to Yuval Katz of Silver Shadow, the  company will unveil a new series of Gilboa submachine guns in April 2013. The new series of assault rifles of different sizes and calibers will also include a 140 caliber integral silenced rifle, which was order for a special unit in Europe.

 Bullets alone would weigh .6 lb. minimum, so a 30 round mag full would tip the scales at 18 lb. OTOH with bullets that big, one mag should be plenty.

Feinstein's Gun Bill

Dianne Feinstein is reportedly working on the fine points of the Mother Of All Abominations to ban everything and confiscate the rest. So far I've seen nothing about re-educating gun owners, but the final version isn't out yet.

At this point, I'm pretty sure the Senate Dems still remember the last AWB and the Republican majorities in both houses that followed. There is speculation that this thing won't even get a vote in the Senate, but the jury's still out. The Dems will be defending 20 seats to the Rep's 13, and are holding some pretty weak ones this time around.

I suspect it will fail in the Senate. Reid wants to keep his A rating with the NRA but on the other hand he’s not up for reelection for another 6 years. My Senator, Udall, is up in 2014 and knows good and well that he won’t be coming back if he votes for it although at this point he's considered a shoe-in.

Look for carefully staged voting in which vulnerable Dems are allowed to vote no in sufficient numbers to kill the bill. The phonies will then come home and brag about how they defended your rights.

If a couple of Republicans can be bought off to let them call it “bipartisan” however, all bets are off,  the legendary Dem party discipline will kick in and the bill passes. I imagine it would die in the house without too much effort, but still, you have to keep the pressure on. 

Scroll down a couple posts to the one about letter writing. Even if your Senator is a solid socialist, write anyway. They don't read, but they do keep score.

QOTD

To paraphrase Stalin:

"20 dead kids is a tragedy. 440 of them is a statistic."

The New York Way

In New York, Mayor Bloomberg rules with the proverbial iron fist, and at the state level Mario Cuomo campaigns in New York City and largely ignores the rest of the state. Coming up Jan 9, Mr. Cuomo will be giving his state of the state address in which he tells the legislature what he expects in the upcoming session.

The fly in this ointment is that not all the legislators come from NYC and Buffalo, so he may not get it. One of the things he's contemplating is more gun laws:

Cuomo continued, “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

So the options are
1. Turn 'em in, no compensation.
2. Turn em in, and we'll give you something.
3. Register your guns and pay the annual protection money and we'll know where to find them when we return to 1.

One supposes this will be the model for proposed gun legislation here in Colorado.

Update: And how well does that work in practice?

But plenty of New Yorkers have chosen to own guns outside the official system. In a city that, as I write, has roughly 37,000 licensed handgun owners and about 21,000 rifle and shotgun licenses, the running guesstimate of illegal firearms stands at two million, give or take a bit. That’s the number the U.S. Department of Justice has used in its official publications in recent years.

Bad laws do not produce good results. They produce contempt.From the same piese:

Whatever the motivation, Kopel found no more than one percent compliance with Denver’s law requiring registration of semi-automatic weapons, as well as Boston's and Cleveland’s bans on such guns.

Ominous update: Not only are people buying everything, even is fairly solidly blue districts, they aren't very interested in the burial tubes.

On Writing Letters

Here's some advice I found in the comments over at Tamera's on the topic of writing letters to elected officials. This comes from someone whose job was to read the congressman's mail so he knows whereof he speaks. Some of the things you've heard are flatly wrong, so give this a quick gander, and then put together some quick, concise, ORIGINAL, content for your elected overlord.

No, he probably won't actually read it, but his office does keep score. Get out there and run up the score. BTW: E-mail is actually more effective than snail mail.

Finding The Scapegoat

In the course of my checkered career I have frequently seen the attitude of "first fix the blame, then fix the problem". Often enough, once the blame has been fixed, the problem drops to secondary importance. Of late one of the proposed scapegoats for school shootings has been violence-filled movies from Hollywood ranging from Star Wars to Hunger Games. In each case, the immediate problem, whatever it is, is solved by the application of force, amplified by weapons ranging from bows and knives to fleets of space going dreadnoughts.

Let's step back a pace and consider that the premise might be correct. The attacker at Sandy Hook, and indeed nearly all of the other school shootings, had a monopoly on force multipliers (guns). What if they hadn't?

At Sandy Hook, the security policy was to lock the school down as a matter of practice, and allow no one in except by ringing the doorbell and having someone from the office come and check their ID, etc, etc. The shooter simply smashed his way in and shot anyone who objected to his presence. Being a gun-free zone, there was no one inside in a position to present a meaningful objection to this by shooting back.

Perhaps it's time to consider trusting the ordinary citizen and put aside reliance on government to solve all our problems for us. Consider this observation I found on Theo Spark:

I have to laugh since the hippies have been demanding we question authority and smash the police state since the 60's, but now that they ARE the authority, questioning is no longer in fashion and the police state is part of the solution.

Gun Fun

At the defensive pistol shoot I got to try my latest science experiment involving in-fortuitous jams, relating to the rounds sticking in the magazine nose down. I traced this to dirt in the magazine, and while cleaning and lubing are the recommended procedures for dealing with this, I needed to look at the specifics of the problem.

Defensive pistol or IDPA or whatever you call it involves dropping magazines on the ground while moving from position to position. At our range this involves dropping magazines into fine light dirt which gets kicked into the mag. Lube the mag with gun oil, and you wind up with a mag full of mud in very short order.

I tried cleaning them with alcohol to remove all the oil, and smeared the inside and follower with dry graphite. This seems to have cured the problem at the expense of blackening my fingers in the reloading process. No more caked in dirt.

Preventing School Shootings

The NRA has come out in favor of armed guards at schools, which while it might help, probably won't work as well as one might hope. Think about it. One armed guard at the front door of every grade school, middle school, and high school. Probably several at the high schools as those are large buildings with multiple doors. And what about colleges? Do we really want the TSA groping students on a daily basis? Because ultimately that's who will get the job. They're a branch of the government, and they're unionized.

Larry Correra has a better suggestion that calls for some of the faculty to get trained, get a CCW, and carry discreetly on the job. This would be far more effective. From the point of view of a potential shooter, a guard at the door is one person who can be ambushed, giving access to the target-rich environment inside. Knowing that multiple persons inside, identities unknown, are armed and will oppose him, the shooter looks for a less risky target, like a movie theater with a "no guns" sign out front.

The problem I see is that in order to get a job inside a school building, one must first survive 4+ years of Ed school, so the mindset may not be there. In the second place it places the teachers union in the position of opposing all guns on the one hand, and demanding "combat pay" for the CCW members, perhaps to cover ammo and fees for one range trip a month on the other.

Of course it's possible that if such a policy were implemented, more teachers than you'd expect might come out of the closet for the training. After all, it would be "for the kids".

Gun Ban - Colorado II

Following up on the post below, here are the thirteen mayors that support Mike Bloomberg's all out assault on gun ownership.
Mayor Matthew Appelbaum
Boulder, CO
   Mayor Michael B. Hancock
    Denver, CO
Mayor Randy P. Penn
Englewood, CO

Mayor Marjorie Sloan Golden, CO

Mayor Carolyn Cutler Lafayette, CO

Mayor Bob Murphy
Lakewood, CO

Mayor Robert Muckle Louisville, CO

Mayor Marc A. Snyder
Manitou Springs, CO
Mayor Joe Gierlach
Nederland, CO

Mayor Joyce Downing Northglenn, CO

Mayor Don Stephens
Salida, CO
  Mayor Andrew Muckle
   Superior, CO
Mayor Stuart Fraser
Telluride, CO       

If you live or work in one of there towns, or a town adjacent to one of there towns perhaps a letter to the Mayor might be in order asking if their constituents are aware they support Mayor Bloomberg's rather extreeme position on guns which extended from this:

But if he had his preference, Bloomberg said he would go farther than the 1994 ban and outlaw all automatic and semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. The mayor said magazines shouldn’t be allowed to contain more than five or even three rounds. 

to a ban on letting the national guard help with the hurricane cleanup since he didn't want anyone with guns in his kingdom that wasn't directly on his payroll. Of course if he's going to ban all semi-autos, then magazine capacity becomes a moot question. With only a small amount of linguistic gymnastics, double-action revolvers could be classified as semi-autos as well.

Click the link, and e-mail your mayor:

Dear Mayor________
             It is with some consternation that I note your political alliance with anti-gun rights extremist Mike Bloomberg (MAIG). Mayor Bloomberg has come out in favor of a complete ban on all semi-automatic weapons which currently constitute the majority of all weapons owned by the public at present.

As we know, the criminal elements in society would be unaffected by this sort of legislation while the law-abiding would be left defenseless.

Could you please cite for me the polling information from your constituents in support of this position? I will be pleased to pass it along to the local paper.

Regards
_________

Gun Ban - Colorado?

The Colorado chapter of Mayor Bloomberg's gun-ban club has lined up like so many trained seals and honked their horns in unison calling on the President to "do something" about guns:

The letter from Mayors Against Illegal Guns whose co-chairs are Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was sent Wednesday, seeking to require criminal background checks for every gun buyer, a ban of high-capacity rifles and magazines and to make gun trafficking a federal crime.

Not sure what a "high-capacity rifle" is, possibly one with multiple barrels.

As to making gun trafficking a federal crime, we know good and well that Obama's not going to jail Eric Holder on this kind of a technicality.

NICS Checks

November set a new record for number of NICS checks called in at 2.009 million, eclipsing the previous high of 1.862M set last December.

Historically, December outpaces November by 15-20%. Notwithstanding that not every NICS check defines a gun sale, it still looks like there will be a lot of new firearms under the trees this year.

The stata get updated monthly and the direct link to the stats won't work in January. To get the numbers, go here, and look for - Total NICS Checks, Nov. 30, 1998 - November 30, 2012  (pdf) which should be updated to the previous month. I.E. come January it should say ..... December 2012 (pdf).

Caught A SWAT Perp

SWATting someone goes way beyond just a bad joke. When you call in the cops and they show up dressed for Falluja and armed to the teeth all it takes is one oopsie and the intended victim is dead. To add insult to injury, the cops still don't need to apologize.

The LAPD caught a SWATter. Turns out to be a juvie so no names. Probably no serious time either, but one can hope. In an earlier time he's just be stalking celebrities, now one can aspire to being a mass murderer by proxy. Ain't technology grand?

You Want Me To Do What?

The "iron river of guns" flowing from the U.S. to Mexico turns out to have its headwaters in the U.S. Justice department.

The flow of military weapons to Al Quaida in Lybia seems to have its headwaters in the U.S. State department.

The proposed sale of 20 brand new F16's to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has its origins in the U.S. White House.

And they think we're going to turn our guns over to them?

Polls And Petitions

There's a petition here asking the President to back off on gun bans.

There's a poll here asking what you think of magazine bans.

The petition was put up yesterday and will probably get the 25,000 minimum required signatures tonight.

The poll is at the Wall St Journal and is running 80/20 against regulating magazines.

UPDATE: Interestingly there's a poll in the Hartford (Conn) Courant that suggests that new gun laws aren't very popular. With 3 possible answers, 2 of which amount to a no vote, it's about 85% against.

Update 12/19: The petition is adding 25,000 signatures a day, The magazine ban is opposed 81/19, and Hartford opposes new gun laws 90/10. Obama, instead of calling for hastily written gun laws has appointed his court jester, Slow Joe, to head up a blue ribbon study committee to see which way the wind might be blowing. Diana DeGette, D-Blisninny, has put up HR-308 (fortuitous number, no?) to ban high capacity magazines, which she admits won't do any good, but makes her feel like she's doing something.

Observations

Perusing the web, I notice
1. A quote from Fredrich Hayek from his early days as a student that pretty much every time the government passes a law to address some problem, the net effect is to make the problem worse.

Of course they do. If laws actually solved problems lawmakers would quickly find themselves surplus to society's needs. If the problem gets worse, then more laws are obviously needed along with bureaus to interpret them and collect fees. The surest route to success in government is to fail.

Hayek was speaking to laws governing economics, but the rule generally holds. Bear with me here.

John Fund in the National Review cites a paper by John Lott:

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

Also noting that of the seven theaters showing the Batman movie within 20 minutes of the shooters home, the one he visited was the only one with "no guns" posted.

2. In that same vein, what is the correlation between tight gun laws and high murder rates? Chicago already has everything the Brady Bunch is now demanding and Nancy Pelosi is promising to offer for the nation as a whole. I checked and discovered that in the last year Chicago averaged some 42 murders a month, mostly gunshot, mostly black. This is the gun-free nirvana we're being set up for. Of course when it doesn't work, the obvious solution will be closer surveillance.Or Something.

So 42 black people a month is a statistic, but 27 white people in a year or two is a tragedy, to paraphrase papa Joe Stalin.

3. In the same article:

A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.”

The word you're looking for here is deinstitutionalization. This involves closing down the state and privately owned minimum security homes for the moderately unstable and turning the lot of them out on the street where they are allowed to make their own decisions about their medications. Properly managed this could work out well for the nanny-staters. The Twinkies, instead of populating the busy intersections all day are now busy cutting out paper dolls with blunt-tipped scissors and their absentee ballots arrive at the front desk in a bundle where the staff can quickly and accurately fill them out and get them mailed in in a timely manner.

Musical Interlude

I love good music. Here's Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, third movement. This guy plays the whole thing including his backups. Not at the same time of course.

I can just imagine old Ludwig himself banging his bewigged head on the keyboard...

H/T to Grouchy Old Cripple, who finds this sort of thing fairly regularly.

QOTD - Gun Rights

Found the reference to the site in a newsletter I get (Colorado RKBA) and visited it. Holy guacamole! While I sympathize with the anguish over the Newtown massacre, some of these folks are coming completely unhinged.
This comes across as similar to Mark Twain's description of southern justice in which

"if a crime were committed, the menfolk would band together and search the county top to bottom and East to West, and if the actual perpetrator couldn't be found they would at least lynch a nigger."

The question has often come up as to why the anti-gunners tend to be so violent. Well who knows. Apropos of that thought, here's the QOTD from Clayton Cramer in an article he published in 1st Freedom magazine:

Most people in our society still retain the right to keep and bear arms - but not everyone who has that right should exercise it.

The article just came out and I couldn't find it on the web so no link. It's an excellent article and everyone should read it, describing how California at one point passed a ban on concealed carry, then 7 years later realized that it was only enabling the thugs and robbers and repealed it.

Come to think of it Mr. Cramer's comment applies to a lot of things, rights and privileges both, like driving, voting, and holding office. At least there's a qualification test for driving.

Appointments Matter

In the case of the president some of his appointments tell you a lot about his mindset. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute any misdeeds done by blacks for example.

I firmly believe that he appointed Hillary to Sec. of State only to insure that she didn't mount a primary challenge to him in the last election.

Now that the election is over and Hill is claiming a concussion as a work-related injury (watch her retire on disability) He's considering John Kerry for the post. As a Viet Nam Veteran, I consider Mr. Kerry to be an untrustworthy lying, backstabbing, two-faced weasel. He should fit in well in the Cabinet.

Obama doesn't seem to actually like anyone although he fakes it fairly well. We know he doesn't like white people very much and Jews in particular, but he may have found a good solid anti-Semite for the Sec Def position, since after suggesting Kerry for the job he was probably starting to hear the words "military coup" whispered in his ear by advisers who weren't quite so politically tone deaf.

Chuck Hagel never saw a pro Israeli position he could support up to now, and probably won't in the future. I'm guessing that if he gets the job, he'll serve out his term without ever visiting Israel.

Small Guns

O.K. very small guns. Homemade toy guns at that. Jeff over at Alphecca had a video of a fellow making a toothpick gun from a single clothespin. I have to admit I liked the shotgun-style slide action cocking and the economy of making the whole thing from a single pin.

Here's my version, somewhat more elaborate, which I used to make in grade school:

You cock it using the remaining piece of clothespin (not shown) pushing the spring back between the number 2 and the word "sand" written on the top piece. It shoots toothpicks better if you add scotch tape fins to the rear, as well as BB's and small stones.

Modern clothespins with the open wound coils are noticeably weaker than the tight wound ones of days of yore. Evidence of the decline of western civilization.

Guns - Newtown Followup

No less an expert than Rupert Murdoch has weighed in with a tweet:

Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy.

This was mentioned on Insty, to which a reader answered:

1934

Which is close anyway. Back then even a mega-statist like FDR recognized that he couldn't simply disarm the American public, the constitution wouldn't allow it. Plan B was to impose a prohibitively high tax on selected items, probably with the intention of expanding the list later. Remember as in the case of Obamacare, the legislature cannot demand or forbid the purchase of an item but it can tax.

And tax he did. You could have your machine gun, short barreled rifle or shotgun, or a suppressor if you paid a $200 tax for a stamp. At the time this was a lot of money. An internet inflation calculator I found suggests that in 2012 dollars that would be $3436.13. The going current rate for an AR pattern rifle is about $800 (+/- YMMV) so the tax if adjusted for inflation would be a bit over 4 times the purchase price.

As to mass shootings, Boston.com has a graphic showing about how often we can expect one of these:

The answer appears to be about 20 times a year. "Mass" in this case I believe is defined as "more than 3". So 20 per year per 300M population or 1 per year per 15M population. Do the math for your own bailiwick.

England is often cited for its draconian gun control which results in crime victims doing more time than the criminals if they try to resist a crime and are found to have used somewhat more effort in the resistance than the criminal used in the crime. Not surprisingly criminals are finding that this favors them. The police there have been under a great deal of pressure to help prove that the Labor-passed laws have been effective to the point that no one actually believes them any more. What reporting there is, however, suggests that the laws aren't working out all that well.

Guns - Stormy Weather

It's still early and the whole story is not yet out, but the Newtown massacre will no doubt figure heavily in the upcoming legislative session.  The Dems, having taken control of the legislature and the governors office think that now would be the time to "have a discussion about guns" which is PC speak for "try to grab all we can".

Locally there are mutterings as to what is about to be proposed, and mayor Bloomberg is planning to figure significantly in the writing of the bills. Speculation at this point is that the following will or may be addressed, via Greg Smiths newsletter:

Updated information on anti-Second Amendment bills in the 2013 Colorado Legislature

We can expect 14 to 20 anti-gun bills. The current Democrat package includes:

A ban on an undetermined number of semi-automatic firearms (No grandfather clause);

A ban on magazines of over ten rounds (No grandfather clause);

Making an individual with a violent misdemeanor a "prohibited person" re: gun ownership;

A ban on private sales by requiring universal background checks;

A waiting period on background checks that will kill gun shows;

Rollback of concealed carry on college campuses;

More strict enforcement of gun confiscation related to restraining orders; and

Wider use of mental health treatment information for gun control purposes.

Published reports indicate that rabid, anti-gun, millionaire, New York City Mayor Bloomberg is sending a well-funded team to Colorado to push gun control.

Bloomie counts 13 Colorado mayors as his minions, and the standard talking points will be rolled out. The question to be asked is why the legislature wants to disarm the law abiding citizens to the benefit of the thugs?

I was communicating with some gun rights folk in England (yes they have some) and his rather discouraged position was that every time you ask the government to let you protect yourself, they drag out the Dunblane massacre in which a man with an SKS killed 16 children and a teacher which resulted in a nationwide ban on handguns. My observation was that the tragedy occurred not because a man had a gun, but because only one man had a gun.

Perhaps a counter proposal that some percentage of the faculty at public schools be trained and given CCW . A double whammy here since the CCW teachers would be unlikely to vote with the sheep and could be a "bad influence" on them

Gun Fun - Hi Point 4095

I got my carbine back from the factory today, about 2 weeks sooner than I had expected and Hi Point deserves their reputation as the best customer service group out there.

They didn't send me back a whole new gun but it was a near thing from the look of it. Anything that was worn was replaced. Anything that has been upgraded in the last 2-1/2 years was replaced. Anything that needed polishing got polished. Five stars out of five and a +.

Time for a range trip. Wish it was warmer. I hate winter.

The Union Label

By now this video has been everywhere. What I find interesting is the yelling at about .50 of someone saying "he's got a gun!".

I have to think this is the union action equivalent of the poacher claiming to the game warden "He was coming right at me!" to justify the out of season meat.

Quote Of The Week

Found on Moonbattery, the original and the original rewrite are here on Texas CHL.

“Do not blame Obama, blame the people of America who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be America’s, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”

The original was from Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC). Some things never change.

Musical Interlude

Being a songwriter has a certain appeal for me and my greatest inspiration has been Al Yankovic. He's in no danger of being dethroned:

As many people lose full time jobs and move to part time or temp jobs, your career is likely to cover several employers per year.

The Contractor (tune of The Boxer):


I'm now a lowly contractor
my story's seldom told
I have squandered my existence
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

When I left my home and my family
I was a brand new college grad
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of a cube farm business running CAD
Starting low, seeking out the flash assignments
Where the up and comers go
Looking for assignments only they would know

Lie la lie ...
Now asking only salaried wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers,
Just a come-on from the job sites on the internet
I do declare, there were times when I was so near broke
I took some low gigs there

Lie la lie ...

Now I'm polishing my resume
And wishing I was hired
on a job.
Where the New York City taxes weren't a-bleeding me
Bleeding me, going broke

In the clearing stands a contractor
pursuing his old trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry job he finished and was
told it was his last day
but you did a real good job.
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the contractor remains

Lie la lie ...

And for those of you who have gone from seeking a hip new joint to a new hip joint, here's Life In The Slow Lane:

He is a bald-headed man
He used to be handsome, and she had varicose veins.
She propped him up, and he held her for balance as they walked
through the crowded mall.
He has a nasty reputation as a cranky old fart
They say that he's toothless, he had a weak heart
They had one thing in common, they slept late in bed
She'd say, “Slow down honey, your face is turnin' red."
Life in the old lane
Surely now you’ve lost your mind, mm
Are you with me so far?

Viagra for action, hot flashes just the same,
The afternoon movie, forgettin’ your name
They shopped Vitamin Cottage, they took
all the right pills
They threw Tupperware parties, they paid Medicare bills
There were lines behind her driving, pissed at her slow pace
She pretended not to notice, she was caught up
in the race

In every evening, just as it gets dark
He was too tired to make it, she was too tired
to fight about it

Life in the old lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the old lane, nuttin’ to do, too much time
Life in the slow lane, uh huh
Fartin’ and bitchin’, blinded by thirst
They didn't see the stop sign,
took a turn for the worse

She said, "Listen, baby. You can hear a siren
ring. We've been up and down this highway;
haven't seen a goddam thing."
He said, "Check the rearview mirror. I think I'm gonna crash."
"The cop is right behind us, and you just can’t pay him cash."
They went North on the Southbound freeway,
messed around and got lost
They didn't care they were just dyin' to get off
And it was life in the old lane
Life in the slow lane

Unemployment

Unemployment is down by .2% for November which is happy, happy news except for a couple of minor things:

1. The number varies a bit, but on average it takes about 150,000 new jobs a month the break even in this country. Average job creation for the last 6 months has been 141,000. Last month was 118,000.

2. The big reason the unemployment number is going down is because people just quit looking and are therefore not members of the workforce. When the unemployed give up, they're no longer unemployed, hence the drop. When labor force participation drops to about 58%, unemployment will be zero.

3. It seems that in the last 6 months alone, close to 3/4 of the jobs created have been government jobs, which means that they produce no wealth for the economy, just a drain on money that would be more profitably used elsewhere.

So a semi-real unemployment rate somewhere in the 10's has been rendered down to 7.6% and a more real (U6) unemployment rate in the upper teens never gets mentioned.Adjusting the U6 to normal participation rates gives us a number in the low 20's which is comparable to great depression numbers, which were generated without the tricks in current use.

The obvious solution then is to raise taxes on those who create productive jobs and give it to non-productive government drones. It worked for FDR who parlayed a similar situation into a third term.

Work Is The Curse

Of the drinking class. The blogging class as well. Had an interview this morning and I start tomorrow at 7:30. Back to the grind.

Could be interesting. In the meantime I guess I don't retire quite so soon. Or as is more likely, I get a nice raise come February.

All Your E-Mails

...Are belong to us.

Or so says this fellow who was in a position to know. He says:

The FBI has the e-mails of nearly all US citizens, including congressional members, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. Speaking to RT he warned that the government can use information against anyone it wants.

This calls for data storage on a truly massive scale of course, and a search might take a not inconsequential length of time as well. I suppose if the government finds you suspicious, they can just toss you in jail and start the search engine. You'll stay there untill they find the evidence or remember that your'e their guest after finding nothing.

A friend of mine had a sig line that contained every flag-raising word he could think of and attached it to every e-mail he sent. This was before the advent of mass capture and storage software and presumably he no longer uses it.

You can tell it works by the large numbers of terrorists and bank criminals the feds have been publicly picking up. I mean it's not like anyone involved in investment fraud or tax evasion could get a high government position now is it?

Islam, An Aberration

Interesting chunk of text:

… For what it is worth, Ahmad al-Baghdadi is not the first Muslim to portray Islamic civilization as a fantastic anachronism that has outstayed its welcome; the prophet of Islam himself, Muhammad, made a similar prophesy in a canonical hadith: “Verily, Islam started as something strange, and it will again revert to being strange just as it started, and it will recede between the two mosques [Mecca and Medina] just as the serpent slithers back into its hole.”‘

Not even the prophet himself believed the BS he was selling.

Found on Gateway Pundit where the principal line is a Facebook posting of a slave for sale.

1 – Black skin. Tall 172 sm. Weight 60 kilos.
2 – Castrated (excellent for working with a family) you can check him with a doctor our yourself if you have experience in the matter.
3 – [His] health is quite undamaged and has no imperfections.
4 – Age 26 years.
5 – Religion muslim and [he is] obedient and will not disobey you except in what displeases God. Please, the matter is very serious and is not a joke.

No price mentioned. He's in Saudi, so shipping would be pricy.

The Future Of The Military

Under Obama, the military is reduced to a giant sociological experiment by the undergrad psych students at Harvard, and technology developed by the greenest mad scientists money can buy.

Sen Mark Udall is up for election in 2014 and is in full campaign mode already. His latest contribution is to the greening of the national defense. His latest newsletter boasts:

Dear Fellow Coloradan,

What do GPS, flat-screen televisions and the Internet have in common? Before each became commonly available consumer goods, they were developed by the military.  Alternative fuels are on the cusp of similar cutting-edge development. 

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 62-37 in favor of my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, authorizing the Defense Department to continue its efforts to develop and use alternative fuels.

This is vitally important because you never know when we'll find ourselves in a military conflict in a region where the only available fuel for our Abrams tanks is dried cow chips. To this end, I can envision a tank with a 200 ft tall windmill on top and a boiler on the back into which the crew are frantically tossing the chips. Range and speed would be reduced but fewer people get killed in highway accidents at lower speeds.

This is green technology here on so many levels. Start your company now and get your own Abrams tank to play with and half a billion bucks to spend on your green ideas with the usual understandings that 10% will go to the DNC and the president's re-election* fund. Big bonuses to your companies management team 2 years out just before declaring bankruptcy are the norm. Don't forget to include a GPS, flat screen TV, and high speed internet connection for the tank crew.

*Or retirement fund if it turns out he can't repeal the 22nd amendment by executive order.

Domestic Terrorism

This time from a different source. The president is tweeting to his followers what will happen if we don't give him our watches and wallets:

From the prez' tweets, regarding the mortgage deduction:

"Breaks for middle class impt for families & econ. if top rates don't go up, danger that middle class deductions get hit - bo," the president said via Twitter.

Thanslation: Gimmie my tax hikes or the middle class gets it. Later student loans and teachers saleraies came up:

Obama responded that tax cuts without revenue increases would result in a reduction in student loans, while work/study and college tax credits would expire.

Translation: Gimmie my tax hikes or students will get it.

The prez is in a pretty good position here.

Plan A: No one agrees with anything and taxes go up next year. The economy tanks, and the prez blames republicans.

Plan B: Republicans agree to more modest tax hikes and budget cuts to be named later. Budget cuts never happen. Economy tanks and the prez blames republicans.

Plan C: Republicans give prez everything he asks for, economy tanks, prez blames republicans.

Going to be a bumpy ride.

Domestic Terrorism - Not

If you dig a bit there's a story going around about a bomb being set off at the back door of the Social Security office in Casa Grande AZ, a suburb of Phoenix.

The bomber was picked up rapidly as his car and license number was noted by a suspicious citizen. It was a big bomb, or a very small town as practically everyone heard it but no one was actually injured. Daily Kos has already ID'd the bomber as a Tea Partier in the advance wave of the upcoming right wing revolution. The FBI however, ID's the culprit as one Abdullatif A. Aldosary, 47, an Iraqi refugee with a long history of disruptive behavior.

The first clue should have been the bombing of a Social Security office. The SSA is doing more damage to the U.S. than all of Al-Quaida put together. Also a not insignificant number of Tea Partiers are on Social Security and while they wouldn't object to seeing it phased out, they certainly don't want to miss a check.

The FBI refuses to call this domestic terrorism:
A quote from an annonymous FBI source says

This contact said that it is highly unlikely that Aldosary will be charged with any terrorism offense. While they are internally treating it like a domestic terrorism investigation, including looking at if he had any help constructing the explosive device, the FBI is saying very little and and will prosecute this as a simple explosives and arson case because of “the political sensitivities involved.”

The thinking goes, I guess, that if you do nothing to upset the sensibilities of the terrorists, maybe they'll put the next bomb in front of a Wall St. bank instead of the white house.

The Future Of Transportation - Bicycles

I just found out that downtown Denver is getting a supplementary set of traffic lights specifically for bicycles. Just what the beleaguered downtown driver needs is another distracting set of instructions to try to follow while navigating a decidedly traffic-hostile environment. Bicycleists are a bunch of spandex-wearing scofflaw hooligans. Run them down if you get a chance.

Yes I ride one too, but I don't wear spandex. I also try to stay off the streets.

In a remotely related circumstance, here's a phone message covering a red-light accident. You got to root for the little old ladies in this one. Hilarious.

Weed

This video is just too good not to pass on:

The pothead ex-professor is someone I've met repeatedly.

To Your Health!

Some of my favorite vices now seem to be virtues. It seems that in addition to the health benefits conferred by beer and wine, Coffee, when added to ones daily intake, piles on the health benefits to the point of near immortality.

Well maybe not quite that good, but capable of extending your life to the point that you die of something more obscure than the usual ailments. Throw in some Astragalus* and you're good to go. Or at least outlast the Social Security system.

*I'm not endorsing this stuff. I don't take it, and all claims for it are hearsay at this point. It might work, who knows.

Gun Fun

Following a carbine match last week it was discovered that my Hi Point 4095 was suffering a mechanical failure in the bolt. The casting was fine, but a steel insert that carries the firing pin was buckling. The factory said send it back, so I did. Estimated return time is early January. It was hinted that the bolt design had been redone and a new one would be coming back on the gun.

At the time I had been experimenting with a sight mount that seemed to promise 2 MOA accuracy from the gun. Testing will resume when I have my lab rat back.

Meantime I'll be at the gun show tomorrow. Stop by the CSSA table and join the NRA if you have any money left after buying 2 more Evil Black Rifles and more Bulk Ammo.

D'wife has suggested that if I buy reloading dies for 9mm Luger and a supply of bullets, the ammo might make good trade goods in the coming apocalypse. While I wouldn't mine having the parts, I'm inclined to think she's been watching too many prepper shows on TV.

In Memorium

This morning about 1 AM my MIL passed away after about a month of declining health. She was 88. She is survived by 2 daughters and one grand daughter. Her ashes will be returned to Scotland.

Education

The survey says that Colorado is in a tie at 35th out of 50 with an overall high school graduation rate of 74%.

Here are the rates reported for Colorado as broken down by demographic groups:

• American Indian – 52 percent
• Asian/Pacific Islander – 81 percent
• Black – 65 percent
• Hispanic – 60 percent
• White non-Hispanic – 81 percent
• Children with disabilities – 53 percent
• Limited English proficiency – 53 percent
• Economically disadvantaged – 62 percent

In a possibly related story, with the changing of the State House from Red to Blue, the new chair of the House Finance Committee .

Never has that been more true than with the selection of HD6 Democratic State Rep. Lois Court to head the Colorado State House Finance Committee.  Rep. Court has, on more than one occasion, professed her lack of skills in math

Possibly a product of the local education establishment. I wonder if she understands the concept of a deficit?

The Future Of Transportation - Warp Drive

The physics of the space-time continuum is the playground of the scientist for the moment, and will be until the math is worked out suggesting that real phenomenon can be substituted for the chunks of the equations to produce a real working experiment.

Einstein famously came up with E=mc2 in the early part of the 20th century and some 40 years later the engineers came up with an actual demonstration of the equation.

What is needed at this point is a careful description of the phenomenon included in the math so we can get to the real business of building demonstrations on lab benches.

Some aspiring SF writer could certainly have some fun writing a description of the first such experiment on a bench somewhere and the result of moving even a small object at relativistic speeds across a laboratory of necessarily limited dimensions.

In the meantime I encourage the boffins to keep crunching the numbers. I'll keep a space clear on my workbench.

Scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been.

                                           A. Einstein

Licensing Of The Press

Licensing of the press is being proposed in Great Britain, with only one newspaper so far coming out against it. The obvious outcome of something like this would be a press fawning over whatever party was considered most likely to abuse the licensing power. Misbehavior of this party would be studiously ignored while the smallest foible of the other side would be presented as evidence of unpardonable moral decay.

Of course if the Labour party passes this, and the Spectator refuses to participate, the Spectator will be shut down and its staff jailed to the sanctimonious clucking f the remaining press. "If only they could have followed the common sense rules" will run the editorials.

Of course if it works there, expect a similar regulation to be put forth here. This will most likely come as an extension of the powers of the FCC which can be done by executive order rather than getting tied up in the partisan bickering of the congress. Current practice is to simply not invite Fox news to the White House press conferences.

Thought: Some bloggers (not me) are pleased to call themselves journalists in attempts to question politicians. Some politicians, noting that some bloggers are notably unfriendly, have been known to forcibly push the bloggers away to the point of risking assault charges. Wouldn't it be nice if those pests were licensed and thus easily identifiable as friend or foe before the interview could get out of hand?

Term Limits

Here's some sentiment from the Shoe comic:

I suppose the more draconian version of this would be called a Terminator, no?

Gun Fun - E-Postal

This months e-postal over at True Blue Sams turned out to be among the most difficult I've seen so far. What I like about these matches is that when you get a simple looking target which when you finish you become convinced that either someone used a shotgun on it or you're in terminal Parkinsons, it's because the target was considerably more difficult than you thought.

Ranging from 1 hit on the bottle on the left to 5 each on the bottle and 'gong' on the right, those last two prove to be difficult indeed. Theoretically you should need 20 rounds for this. In reality 45-50 is more like it.

Art

The state of Art right now is that Glenn Beck has assembled and put up for auction, a piece of his own consisting of an Obama bobblehead doll in a jar of urine, reminiscent of the "Piss Christ" from way back when. He posted this on E-Bay with an asking price of $25,000 and had bids over $11,000 when E-Bay pulled the offering. Proceeds were to go to Beck's charity, Mercury One.

It seems that E-Bay does not allow the sale of bodily fluids on its site.

This brings up another possibility: Reminiscent of the portrait of the Virgin Mary done in elephant dung, how about a 3-D sculpture of the pres done in male bovine scat? This not only meets the E-Bay standards, but could probably be the best representation of the pres to date, on multiple levels.

With the artist's provenience that all the BS used in the sculpture was genuine BS from genuine bulls (not steers) I'd set the asking price at $50,000, proceeds to be donated to some worthy charity, say the Tea Party.

A common plaster bust of the prez dipped in ordinary liquid cow pies might be priced much more reasonably for the common man.

Tax The Rich

And feed the poor,
until there are no
poor no more.

Hey, it works! England, along with France is in the process of proving it. The citation from France says that Sothebys has sold more than €1.7 million worth of high-end property from April to June this year. If you're looking for a nice place in France, this probably signals the time to buy. Note: The WSJ's real estate section last week decided to specialize in really upscale properties and if you got below $1M, you were living on the wrong side of the tracks for sure. €1.7M is probably only 2 properties. Either that of the price of real estate in France is lower than I thought.

On the bright side, they're making real progress in reducing the income gap between the rich and the poor although this bodes ill for all those government programs once the people who have to pay for them pack up and leave.

Wave of the future: The Cayman Islands becomes a major manufacturing  trade and financial center after a consortium of wealthy capitalists buys the place outright. The locals, newly rich from the sale of their country, readily agree to the new name: New Hong Kong, which becomes the only sovereign country to be traded on international stock exchanges.

QOTD

"Gun-related violence has fallen steadily since 2006 in Virginia despite record firearm sales, according to a university professor's analysis."--Associated Press, Nov. 24.
                             H/T to Taranto at WSJO

It's something to point out to legislators when arguing against the assorted gun bans being proposed. Of course you may have to include an explanation, they're not quick learners.

Gun Grab

O.K. the election is over and we lost. Now comes the ritual paybacks. Last weekend the local fishwrap carried an editorial by Meredith Carroll calling for a renewal of the old AWB only this time the new and improved version. The premise is that this isn't the wild west anymore. Instead of isolated farmers with AR's fending off marauding Indians armed with AK's, it's flash mobs on the 16th st mall in central downtown. Certainly the use of automatic weapons in a crowded shopping venue is uncalled for. Not to mention they're hard to carry along with 5 or 6 big shopping bags.

This week the editorial has moved from the party line intensive Perspective section nearer to the front page in the Denver And The West section.

'Gun violence can be solved with science, public health experts say'

Colleen O'Conner is pushing the idea that guns should be regulated like medical devices.  This suggests that if the safety and efficasy of such a device cannot be proven, the device may be removed from the market. If the device can be proven to be a menace to anyone nearby, like cigaretts, the device may be subject to blanket confiscation in the interest of the public health.

At the same time, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, whose only known member in Colorado is currently serving as Governor, is proposing to close the private sale loophole in Colorado. This "loophole" allows me to sell you a gun without paying a $35 "fee" on the sale. The reasoning goes that most crime is committed by people who buy their guns from private parties. This will prevent the potential armed robber from buying a gun from his acquaintance, the burglar.

Widespread Support:

·       According to a poll commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns in November 2012, 90% of Coloradans, and 90% of Colorado gun owners, support requiring all buyers to pass a background check.

·       In 2012 Frank Luntz, found 74% of NRA members and 82% of non-NRA gun owners agreed anyone purchasing a gun should be subject to a background check.

Somehow the results published here don't seem quite in line with my own observations. Sorry, no specific link. I notice on their website that they're current hobby horse seems to be to get your mental health records included as part of any background check so that people suffering from partial deafness, tinnitus, or having a history of voting the wrong way can be prevented from owning guns. A Variant of this is already being implemented in England.

The Colorado legislature now being 100% blue*, there is a distinct possibility that one or more of these things may make an appearance, sponsored by someone in a safe district and whooped through on a voice vote on a Friday as the last item before adjournment.

The time to begin calling, writing or otherwise bothering your state congress animal is right now. They understand that anything done now will be forgotten by the electorate in 2 years, so bear down hard, but politely. 

*The Dems hold a slim voting majority in both houses as well as the Governorship.

Cease Fire II

Scroll down a couple of posts and see "Cease Fire" . Note specifically the definition of the word "hudna".

Now go here and read this short article in the Jerusalem Post.

'Satellites show Iran moving quickly to rearm Hamas'

That was too easy.