Tea Party Can Do No Wrong!

Absolutely. All real participants at Tea Party Functions, and thoughtful, well-educated, non-violent people with only the country's best interests in mind.

Anyone with a misspelled sign, or a slogan that might be construed as hate speech, is instantly identified as a leftard infiltrator. Don't believe it? Check their website. Just don't tell anyone, because it's a big secret operation.

The Nobel Prize In Mechanics

It was to be mine! Mine, you hear, untill my unscrupulous partner filed the papers behind my back, took complete credit for all my work, and absconded with my beautiful wife! And here he is, gloating! The bastard!



Vengeance will be mine! My infindibulum is nearly finished, and will give me the power to create small black holes anywhere in the world. Just wait. He'll get one in the lap at an inopportune moment. If my timing's right, my unfaithful wife will be taken care of at the same time.

Bwahahahaha! Fools! I'll destroy them all!(tm)(r)(c)

Video shamelessly lifted from Curmudgeonly and Skeptical.

Copyrighted line property of DMSC, who swear they'll have their website up Any Day Now.

Just Because The French Think You're Crazy...

Doesn't necessarily make it so. Charles DeGaulle in the 50s, thought the whole world was crazy, not to mention notably inferior to himself, and was miffed that he had not been named Rightful King of the World, after his trouncing of the Germans just a few years before.

Sarkozy, it seems, has expressed doubts about Obama's talents, which were somehow leaked to the French equivalent of the CIA, by the Russians, who seem to know everything.

According to this report, Sarkozy was “appalled” at Obama’s “vision” of what the World should be under his “guidance” and “amazed” at the American Presidents unwillingness to listen to either “reason” or “logic”.

Which sounds just like DeGaulle did. On the other hand, I have a higher opinion of Sarkozy than I did of DeGaulle, and am inclined to agree with him here. Also if DeGaulle ever called Eisenhower a "dangerous lunatic", the French press was at least discreet enough not to print it. The EU Times is also a contender for best use of gratuitous use of scare quotes.

Thanx to Steve for the lead on this one.

And Back From The Convention

The local offices needing filling were already down to single candidates, so no excitement on that front.

The heavyweights running for state office find Arapahoe county too big and too convenient to pass up, so they were all there, pressing the flesh, and handing out candy. By the time I got there, I would have sold my vote for a cup of coffee, but strangely, no one had any.

The heavyweights all got to speak, and were mercifully limited to 3 minutes each. At least two shot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately, the wireless mike was cutting in and out, which made hearing difficult. I blame the administrations stranglehold on the media.

Ryan Fraiser made a good impression by dumping the defective mike and booming to the audience. The poor lady from eastern Europe who was running for governor, couldn't get the mike to work at all, and went home largely unheard.

Steal a page from Jessee Jackson: Bring your own bull-horn, and dish out the bull at full volume.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To The Convention I Go

As a delegate to the Republican county convention anyway. Here we meet the hopefuls who want to get elected to the various county-level positions, including local house and Senate candidates.

Hopefully I won't be hearing too much about how Fred the Republican can administer a big wasteful program better than Bob the Democrat. I want to hear about how "Chainsaw" Fred proposes to do away with the program.

Advance predictions:

1. Pravda-By-The-Platte, AKA the Denver Post will cover the conventions by visiting the Denver County Republican convention. They will not visit any swing counties.

2. In the upcoming elections, Pravda-By-The-Platte will confirm its claims of bipartisanship by endorsing every single Republican fortunate enough to be running unopposed, proving that they don't endorse exclusively Democrats. Just when they get the chance.

The Payoffs

It is quickly becoming apparent that, barring the Republicans acting like Republicans, the Dems are going to take a major shellacking this fall.

The game at this point is to enter your best guess as to what any specific "suicide voter" will get in return for their vote.

What do you think? An ambassadorship to someplace with warm weather and good rum? A permanent seat on a "death panel" where one could conceivably ration health care to ones enemies?

Come January next year I bet we see a whole raft of these.

Chris Dodd: An Ambassadorship to Ireland, since he already has a "modest cottage" there on an exclusive gated island.

Barney Frank: Same thing, but to the Dominican Republic. He also has a beach side bungalow in the $500,000 range, which goes a long ways in the D.R.

Bart Stupak: Something in Canada, where he could come home on weekends by traveling after dark to avoid the lynch mobs.

Harry Reid: He's not a very diplomatic sort, which qualifies him with the current administration for a posting to England, with whom we are no longer being diplomatic.

Barbra Boxer: Has the kind of arrogance that would make the Red Queen jealous. A shoo-in for a death panel job, which I'm sure she'd enjoy.

Quite a few of these people have no obvious talent at all, so I suppose the witness protection program is the placement of last resort.

Any other suggestions?

Health Care - Details

In the details is where the fun lies. It now appears the writers, whomever they were, for got to give the IRS its usual authority to kick down your door, do the SWAT-Ninja dance, and confiscate everything you own until you make up that last 4 cents you owe them.

It seems that if you don't buy health insurance, the IRS is limited in retribution to sitting on your tax refund until you send them proof of insurance. Remember that if you claim many deductions, they will have little or nothing to hold over you. IRS Commissioner Doug Schulman says:

"The vast majority of American people have a healthy respect for the law and want to be compliant with their tax obligations."

Right. I know I respect the law in general, but for the government I have the same kind of respect I hold for stinging insects and venomous reptiles.

I'm sure all my readers are citizens of their environs, just as good as I am.

Elections

Zomby has a nice piece on the current political climate over at Resurrection Song. I was going to comment, but his server isn't speaking to anyone. Or maybe it's just me.

The situation is getting so strange I'm almost afraid to look. The Dems have a widely hated candidate with the union seniority to demand another shot on the ticket. They also have a "lite" version of him, with pretty much the same platform and qualifications. Also their vote-fraud machine has taken some hits. Looks great for the Republicans, right?

But wait! The traditional Republican strategy is to select some colorless party apparatchik, barely distinguishable from a Democrat, who inspires the base to simply stay home, hoping that next time they'll nominate a conservative. They have Mitt Romney, for example, all primed and ready to go, probably willing to take a conservative as his running mate, as did McCain.

The current situation is close to bad enough that Arlen Specter could probably get elected president if he changed his party back to Republican, and had a conservative running mate. Still, what did we do to deserve this?

It's caucus season, and this is where you show up and demand real candidates. If you are a Republican, demand a real conservative who isn't afraid to say so. If you are a Democrat, demand a real Communist who isn't afraid to say so. Bring a friend to vote. Bring 2 or 3, or if you live in Cook county, keep coming back till the polls close.

If you don't vote, you can't bitch.

Squirrel Season

Spent part of last weekend out doing the springtime brush clearing, and discovered that the squirrels had chewed the bark off of several limbs of my plum tree.

You realize, of course, that this means WAR?

This year we will determine if the pedal air gun can, in fact, launch a squirrel completely over the house. We will also endeavor to determine if the dogs can catch a squirrel launched nearly straight up.

No cute furry creatures will be harmed. Any more than they have coming.

PETA protesters will be welcomed with a bottle of Bleu Cheese Dressing.

Postal Matches

Mr. Completely's first postal match of the year is in, and I did credibly well, finishing 3rd of 25 in class 1 rimfire pistol, no optics, and 3rd of seven in centerfire pistol, no optics.

Paula, my shooting partner, and student, finished 15th of 25 in class 1. She's getting better.

Next up is the Conservative UAL guy, who has a similar approach:
He is scoring it a bit differently in that he allows 13 shots on the thirteen circles, but scores only one hit per circle. There's also 2 targets to shoot, one standing, and one sitting. Click the link for the complete rundown.

Gun Fun 3

Today, being the first Saturday of the month I would normally be out shooting bowling pins, but the club bought a set of Steel Challenge plates, and we decided to give them a try instead.

This was probably a good idea, as the wind was blowing at around 40 mph, and we would have spent a good deal of time chasing wayward pins as they tumbled across the plains like tumbleweeds.
Here's a stage. Sorry for the photo quality, but as I said the wind was about 40 mph, and the dust was rather hard to take. Note the 5 white plates on the left. The rightmost plate is actually in the center of the arrangement from the shooters POV. The drill is, when the timer starts, to hit the 4 plates at the rear, some 18 yards back, then hit the one in the center, some 9 yards out. The small plates are 10" dia, and the "big" ones are 12".

This is a difficult stage, and the wind sure didn't help. Oddly enough, I believe I did slightly better with the little CZ-82 than I did with the 6" revolver. I must be getting the hang of the automatic.

We gave up after 3 stages, although most of us shot each one twice using different guns. Several people shot the stages with .22s. If the stages don't involve any more targets than the ones today, I won't need a second magazine for my Ruger Mk 1. Still, I was sort of looking for an excuse to pick one up.

Musical Interlude

Following the discovery of this widget on Resurrection Song, I decided to try it on my blog. This thing somehow interprets the musings on a page, and turns them into music, of a sort.



Mine sounds rather upbeat. Go here, and plug in the url of your favorite on line philosopher.

The Future of Transportation, Overpowered

My favorite transport mode is what is called the "pocket rocket. That would be a "compact" car, with a generous sized engine in it. Your definition of compact may vary, but the Mustang, Camero, Cobra, Sunbeam Tiger, and others like that all qualify. Here's the big buck version:
Asking price is currently estimated to be $270K, but the car won't be available until 2013, at which time I expect the price to be closer to a half mil.

Nice, but difficult to convince the wife you need this for the daily commute to work. There's no reason there has to be a dearth of fun cars available, they don't have to be SCCA contenders to be fun, after all, just reasonably quick, and not exorbitantly priced.

Imagine you're an overpaid executive at a big car company. One of the big 2-1/2, maybe, and you want to offer something people will buy. So you think to yourself, what the country needs, is a commuter car that's snappy looking, and more fun to drive than a Focus. Keeping in mind that 99% of all commuters travel alone.

So you have the production boys send you over a compact 2WD pickup. You toss the bodywork, shorten the frame, lower the suspension about 2-3 inches, and drop on a swoopy body, with an optional convertible top, and voila! the commuter car of the 21st century. Best part is that apart from the body, all the components were off the shelf. Think Ford Ranger, Dodge Dakota, or Chevy S-10. Adequately muscular motors and manual transmissions are already there, and more power is only a chip change away.

This would not be a track-ready, refined sports car, but you wouldn't be paying for that either. You bought it to drive to work, right?

The reason you won't see this is CAFE. This requires that the overall average fuel economy of all the cars your company sells be some 27 mpg, soon to increase to 35 or so. The pickups don't count against that, so the better engines are available, although that is scheduled to change soon too. Once you remove the pickup bed, however, it's a car, and counts against your average. Sell too many, and the government will nationalize your company. Oh wait...

Unemployment, Another Perspective

The unemployment rate depends a lot on who's doing the counting, and what their agenda might be. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fairly good reputation for accuracy, although lately some of their numbers have begun to look suspect. If the economy is really recovering, for example, why is no one being hired?

The BLS gets their numbers by taking telephone surveys, among other methods, and then deciding whom to count and whom to ignore. They currently have a U-6 rate of the unemployed, the underemployed, and "discouraged" workers, running about 17%. Other sources call the number as high as 22%. Gallup has been doing its own unemployment survey, with their own methodology that doesn't allow them to ignore as big a portion of the numbers as the BLS.
This number is, to me anyway, more credible than the BLS.

A rise in the percentage of part-timers wanting to work full time (from 9.2% to 9.9%) is responsible for the March increase in underemployment. Unemployment saw a slight, but insignificant, decline in March.

So it looks like while people are finding a bit of work, it seems a good part of it is part-time rather than full-time. Gallup also shows that in the last 4 months, actual employment has dropped a tiny amount, calculated as a 30-day rolling average, which smooths out the week-to-week fluctuations. Less than 1% from the look of the graph, but this is not the rising line we hope for when we're told the recession is over.

The President, meanwhile, tells us to tone down the complaining. He finds the noise annoying.

April Gunney Girl

Rules for a gunfight:
1. Bring a gun.
2. Bring another gun.

There are several others, but putting up enough distraction to be able to get the first shot off has got to be worth something.
This young lady looks like she could get to slide lock before her opponent realized he was in a gunfight at all.

Serious posting later.