Monday, August 31, 2020

Who's In Charge Here?

 Found at Breitbart, this story about Clear Channel, the billboard division, who sold a billboard to Urban CURE, a group that promotes self help. Click the link to see the board.

Useful stuff, no? I suppose if I was a hard-core Karen, I could complain that it was cultural appropriation, with U.C. encouraging blacks to appropriate culture from whites, and maybe that's what's going on here.

Parker said the Milwaukee chapter of Black Lives Matter “didn’t like it” and “went after our boards,” alleging they were racist and sexist.

“They told Clear Channel Outdoor,” the company that approved and posted the billboards, “that they will control messaging, that they will control narrative,” she alleged.

Now when someone buys a billboard, who's in charge of the message? Would that be the buyer of the board, the seller of the board space, or any hobo walking down the street that disapproves of the message? I suppose it depends. If Al-Quaida bought one that said "Kill All Jews" there would be grounds to object coming from several sources. If the Republicans bought one that said "Vote For Trump" would a democrat have grounds to demand it be taken down? If this idea is taken to its last logical extreme, no billboard would exist anywhere. 

Superficially this is a good idea as it reduces visual clutter, OTOH a working capitalist economy demands that products be bought and sold, and advertising greases the skids. Conversely, silencing your opponents reduces the competition which goes against the 1st amendment.

Clear Channel Outdoor told the news station that the ad “did not receive proper approvals” and “lacked appropriate attribution.”

Which sounds like Clear Channel is turning an editorial function over to an outside 3rd party, BLM in this case.

 

 

Saturday, August 29, 2020

The 2 Parties

 Found this screen shot on Insty with 250 comments attached:


Things you can count on: When the Evil party does something stupid, the Stupid party will just stand there in slack-jawed approval.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

What Governments Are For

 Governments are formed by people primarily to do jobs that need to be done, but which have no deliverable product that can be readily sold to show a profit*. National defense for example, paving and maintaining roads, and police work. One has an expectation , in that last example, that the police will, if not eliminate crime, at least minimize it by their presence. Lately we've been getting a dose of what happens in their absence as municipal governments, for one reason or another, refuse to act to stop increasingly violent rioting and looting.

Now in Kenosha, they may have gotten what they wanted in the form of a scapegoat. Not for the looting, which they still seem to approve of, but someone to punish for acting where the government has refused. 

It's still early and the fog of war is still quite thick, but when rioters run amok and the municipal government refuses to stop them, why should anyone be surprised when the citizens step in to deal with the problem? 

*This is probably why government work is so notoriously shoddy. If you deliver a mediocre product, what would the people do, farm the work out to an adjacent government? True, the obvious solution is to vote the incompetent bums out, but how often does that happen? Governments are quite good at only one thing, and that is self-perpetuation.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Voting By Mail

 How it's done varies by state. You have to be careful in most states lest you get caught being overly flexible with the rules:

From Peter Grants page.

In Colorado the rule is that you're allowed to deposit up to 10 ballots at a time into the drop boxes, then you have to go back to your car for the next 10. Please remove the rubber band from the bundle before depositing. Finding 20-30 rubber banded bundles in a drop box raises eyebrows when they are counted as the signatures seem to be all in the same handwriting.

Monday, August 24, 2020

News Of The day - Kim Jong Un

 Again the rumors are circulating of the death of Lil Kim, the fat one, and the imminent takeover of the country by his sister. Speculation also abounded when Generalissimo Francisco Franco died with conflicting reports coming out of Spain about as fast as they could be written. This inspired Don Henley:

Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet?
You know the boys in the newsroom got a running bet
Get the widow on the set, we need dirty laundry

So who knows. Until we see the citizens of NK out in the streets, trying to mourn convincingly at the urging of armed police, who knows. Fat Lims sister is crtainly better looking that he is but reputedly is even nastier.

Friday, August 21, 2020

QOTD - Acceptance Speech

 Best QOTD so far from Slow Joe ending his acceptance speech:

“There’s never been anything we’ve been able to accomplish when we’ve done it together”.

Frankly I admit to being surprised that he's still the nominee. I had expected that he would have been quietly shuffled off the ticket in one of the online-only votes limited to anonymous, highly placed members of the DNC Illuminati. 

DNC - Divide-N-Conquer

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

QOTD - Gun Law - 9th Circuit

 From the 9th circuits ruling in Duncan et al v Becerra at Joe Huffmans place:

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press . . . and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

Striking down Cali's ban on standard capacity magazines. What it means is that no law can be justified by citing itself. If there is a law restricting some part of an amendment, that in and of itself does not justify further infringement and may well be unconstitutional as well. 

Yet Another Ammo Shortage

 Just contacted my usually reliable supplier of powder and primers. Got told I'm out of luck. Seems the ammo manufacturers have first dibs on the output of the primer suppliers, and they're taking all of it. No rifle or pistol primers of any kind at all.

When the zombies arrive, aim carefully.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

QOTD - The New Normal

 From Andrew Busch at the American Mind:

For their part, Democrats have not drifted but charged headlong so far to the left that not a single Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee could tell Attorney General William Barr that they would stand up against Antifa if it tried to burn down the U.S. Capitol. The venerable party is now under the functional control of cancel mobs and the far Left, as if Henry Wallace had returned from the grave to take his revenge.

Looks to me like a very well organized nation wide uprising by a small group of useful idiots. I wonder if the lack of complaint from the left might be related to the power behind BLM and Antifa, exactly the same folks making big donations to the re-election coffers of the pols who are now too cowed to complain about the violence? 

It also appears that the electoral dynamic has changed. If you have the majority, you don't worry about extending it as much as you work to ram through as much of your agenda as you can while you have the opportunity. Unseating an incumbent is difficult at best in a general election, but replacing one in a primary is very easy and much cheaper. Also the public tends to see the winner of a primary as the same as the person they displaced and gives them the same advantage as the former incumbent.

Friday, August 14, 2020

Gun Law - 9th Circus

 Ennie Meenie Chillie Beanee the spirits are about to speak!

On 8/14/2020 12:32 PM, Dr Spinetwist wrote:
Looks like the 9th circuit is now more conservative than the 10th.  It didn't work out so well for Colorado as I recall... 

This decision will be appealed to an "en banc" hearing involving about half of the 9th circus' 27 (I think) judges, and will then be appealed to the supreme court which will refuse to hear it. If we're lucky, the en-banc group will uphold the 3-judge ruling. This will create a conflict between the circuits which the Supremes will ignore as well. The 10th circuit heard a similar case here in CO and found for the government.

En Banc implies that the entirety of the court will review the case. In reality I seem to remember that only 10-15 judges actually do the dirty work, and they are selected randomly as well so this could go either way. In the happy case that we win there, the ruling will only affect the left coast, and may well be widely ignored by local DA's who have discovered that there is little consequence to ignoring higher federal courts.

SCOTUS is supposed to resolve conflicts between the circuits, but has shown no great enthusiasm for going there of late.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

More Fun With Headlines - Upcoming Election

 First this from Americas Paper of Record:

Biden: 'A Black Woman Will Become President Over My Dead Body'

 Followed closely for me anyway by this one from Gateway Pundit:

Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Rule Out Serving in a Biden Administration “I’m Ready to Help in Any Way I Can”

 "Mrs Clinton, Mrs Harris on line 1"

Fun With Headlines - Upcoming Elections

 From my WaPo news feed:

Sunday, August 9, 2020

New Corona Drug

 Actually it's an older drug usually used for something else but a couple of preliminary tests suggest that it works very much like HCQ in conjunction with an antibiotic and Zinc.

So far, nothing will actually keep you from getting C19, bit we now seem to have a couple of treatments that can stop it before it gets out of hand. Trump needs to endorse this quickly before the Dems do. An endorsement from OrangeManBad will virtually guarantee that no self-respecting progressive would be caught using it thus thinning the herd ahead of the election.

"We had a 14-hospital trial in Bangladesh. We got [cured] 100 out of 100. In China, they tried to reproduce it. They got 60 out of 60 cured ... So I am behind the Ivermectin, doxycycline, zinc treatment because it has very few side effects and is a real killer of coronavirus," Borody said.

This is only a bit better than outright anecdote, and adding information from China pushes your credibility in the wrong direction if anything, but it does look promising 

Monday, August 3, 2020

July Gun Sales

Sales continue at a record pace as the Antifa promote anarchy and big city mayors endorse it. As always, a NICS check does not equal a gun sale.


Gun Stuff - Clearing Squibs

I have been changing the specs on my reloads recently, and as someone else once said "Nothing is more difficult than introducing a new order of things." For the 3rd time in 30 years of reloading, I got a squib in a match. We caught it when it happened so I didn't wind up like that fellow who found he had 17 slugs jammed in his barrel, but getting the one slug in my barrel out turned out to be more difficult than anyone imagined. Gun in question is a Hi Point 4095. Brand new. .40 cal.

I had been getting failures to extract occasionally at the end of a string, and so had added a dowel to my kit to push the recalcitrant last round out of the chamber. Works fine. 

NOTE DON'T try this on a stuck bullet. All it does is jam wood down around the bullet and further wedge the slug into the barrel.

When you find a cleaning rod, which is typically aluminum, DON'T BOTHER. I first tried a 3/8" Brass rod and hammer and got nowhere. I dismantled the gun and put the barrel and the rod into a hydraulic press. Bent the rod without moving the slug. I am willing to believe that without the wood, this trick might have worked but with both feet well down the rabbit hole...

Step 2: Made a 20" long drill bit. Used some of that brass rod, and drilled it to .312" (5/16) pressed the bit in and pinned it. Put some tape around the bit near the end just to be sure. Don't want the bit wandering. Peck drilled down the barrel, and first removed about 1-1/2" of crushed wood. Eventually started removing lead. Eventually the bit dropped through. Had to pry the remains of the bullet off the bit before retracting the bit. Success! Clean the remaining debris and back to shooting.

I straightened the brass pusher rod and added a steel weight so as to have a workable tool if this happens again. 

Here's the drill bit. This one is using an aluminum tube, 3/8" OD, 1/4" ID and a .281 drill bit. This is because I lost the brass original. Don't ask. The pin is 1/8" brass so no scratches.
Here it is with the hammer rod. My first squib happened in a Model 10 S&W revolver at a gun store range. I asked the folks there if they could help me and they tried the hammer and rod trick with no success at all and believe me they were really pounding on it. I eventually cleared that one by drilling the bullet and now am convinced that the "just push it out" approach is just wishful thinking.

So how long did it take me to clear that squib? About 2 days, including the time required to make the tools.