A Small Post for a Small Man

I posted about the pettiness and low character of Obama for 4 years, but not enough folks agreed with me to take away his key card.  This one I can't let go though.

What a douche.

Way to go, President Pindick.

Is This Thing On?

Wow, that was a longer break than I'd anticipated.

The combo of the gut-punch that was November 6th, having a semi-surprise house guest's stay stretch longer than anticipated, holiday "recharge" plans aborted, work going crazy, and having part of my house torn apart for a bathroom and window remodel for a while took it all out of me.   Extended social contact is not a strength in my family at the best of times, and I wearied: spent a lot of time in my office playing 15 year old computer games, feeling like butter scraped over too much bread, and not interacting much with folk.

But I'm in my 6th day of "Raw February" (nothing cooked, nothing processed), feeling good, regaining a little gleam in the eye, starting to pay more attention to something other than how fast I can kill the Guardian in Master of Orion 2 and get Damper Field tech.

And I notice the gun thing, especially right here in Minnesota, where they want to take anything with a mag/clip/feed cap over 7.  Hm.  Color me unsurprised, and almost uncaring.  Elections have consequences, dear-hearts, and the whirlwind's comin'.

Ouch.

I'm not a fence-sitter, and that means bruises sometimes.

Ouch.

Gonna be a rough 4 more years of El Presidente punk.

May we all survive to pick up the pieces.

We're Winning

Hard to believe, but THIS was a linked article on Powerline's top menu bar:

A for-real article about boomsticks.

Now, if it had been NRO's the Corner, I would have to dig up a "wha- wha- WHAAAAT?" graphic from somewhere.

What The Bloody Hell's Going On HERE?

Anyone got any theories on why you'd mount  a .22 pistol under an AR

http://zipfactory.com/

"Great, Kid! Now Don't Get Cocky!"

Okay. We're what, 3 weeks out? I've been a Romney guy since 2007, and certainly I've been pretty bullish about his chances this cycle. He's got a resume Obama can't compete with, we've all known that, and over the last several months he's shown he's got the abilities Obama can't compete with. He's smart enough, successful beyond most people's dreams, hard-working, good at managing and troubleshooting problems, generous, and willing to talk about the hard choices we're facing as a country. He's not perfect, doesn't pretend to be, enjoys politics and its facets, and doesn't let stumbles turn into pratfalls.

(Now, all that being said, assuming he wins, the next thought me and all the other conservatives will have is "alright, R2-Romney2 - prove to us you're not a run of the mill dipshit.")

I said "assuming he wins". Well, I've been assuming he wins for months now and for good reason, and absolutely nothing that's happened over the last few months has moved me one iota off of that position. In fact, the better Romney looks against the increasingly confused and desperate Obama, the more his chances increase. Do they even MAKE 40 state blowouts anymore? I don't know, but I can say safely as of now that Nov 6th 2012 is the best place to look for one.

Now, are there scenarios where Obama can pull out a win? Sure. But none of them are likely. The American people have taken his measure and found him wanting. Some people are disgusted by him, as I am; others simply have seen enough and will be willing to give the RomneyBot a chance or even stay home. And barring one of those weird edge-case scenarios (war, all the money blowing up, Romney pulling off his mask to reveal himself as a pig-nosed death alien from Aldeberan V) Romney's going to win, and most probably win big.

So for me that's a good bottle of bourbon to put in the cabinet and a really nice cigar or two for the humidor. November 6th will see TVs and radios on up and downstairs - TV's muted, radios loud - a fire in the downstairs fireplace, and the home project (I always try and schedule a home project for election night - keeps me from sitting down at my desk drinking and clicking refresh all night. I've done that before. It hurts the next day) will be putting in a new bookshelf.

In the end, predictions, feelings, and bluster all aside, all I can do is what everyone else who follows this crap does: cast my vote (hardly relevant in the presidential sense here in MN), cross my fingers, and hope.

Oh. And smoke cigars and drink bourbon. So the night can't be a complete loss.

"I Expect I'll Have It Sorted Out by Morning"

One of my favorite sleeper movies is The Ghost and the Darkness.  Not a big movie, just a movie about a story.  Much/most of it happens to be mostly true, even.  And a great soundtrack.

And, for a gunny-wannabe I have to say that I don't know that much about guns, but this movie has more rifles in it then "Rifles: The Movie (About Rifles)".

I expect Tam has most of them in a glass case or something.

Self Promotion

Had the night off work so I watched the Veep debate. (Disclosure: I'm a pretty enthusiastic Romney/Ryan guy.)

The big story is going to be the "about even on points but wow, Biden was an absolute creepy fuckstick the whole time, eh?" analysis.  But since Meataxe & I chatted back & forth during the debate I'd like to post the points I made that I'm most enamored of:

Giving Ryan an opportunity to talk about Medicare is like giving Peter North an opportunity to fill a specimen cup.

 and Biden just turned up the cackling prick factor to 11

we did A-gan right.  Pay the shitholes to fuck the worse shitholes with minimal footprint

then some chowdah-head decides we have to surge in the shittiest place on the planet

Ryan should say "Look, the whole REASON I'm on this ticket is because a Trillion is a really big fucking number, people.  You don't run from a Trillion.  Even Hans Gruber said that if you steal $600 you can simply disappear but if you steal 600 MILLION they WILL find you unless you're already dead.  And a trillion is more than 600 million.  Yippe-ki-yay, motherfuckers."

 I want a townhall forum here int he Twin Cities where I can ask Ryan if he has any .45 long Colt he could spare.

They should let me & Meataxe moderate the next one. I think I'd go for the Mark Levin style:

"You're an idiot and that's not an answer!"

"You - Haircut - you say you can do better than the current pack of clowns.  How?!?"

 

I'd enjoy it, anyway.

Kiddie Korner: Machine Gun Inventors Coloring Book

Presented without further editorial comment:

Today’s education system leaves out or minimizes some of the most important parts of world history: the martial ones. The Age of Invention is almost forgotten today, and in the frenzy to re-write history, the politically correct have forgotten some of the most important inventors of all time: those who worked on the machine guns.

Read more and order>

This Week's Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us

Sex with robots. Now a reality.

Chinese hospitals introduce hands-free automatic 'sperm extractor' for donors 

The money quote:  "A website which is selling the machine for $2,800 promoting it stating 'it can give patients very comfortable feeling.'"

 

"What if he shoots first?" "Then he's hurryin' and he'll miss."

So my first love in handguns is the single action revolver.  I love the history behind it, the myths and truths of the Old West it helped "tame", the sheer uncomplicated brilliance of its mechanics. Last but certainly not least, I shoot them well.  I really enjoy my other pistols too, but the reality is that I don't shoot them as well when I measure my results against my intent.  Lately, especially after conversations with MeatAxe, I've started to wonder if I could "point shoot" my semi-auto pistols as well as I can my cowboy guns, even given the different ergonomics (the classic cowboy pistols were designed for one-handed shooting, after all).

So I went to the range yesterday to test my theory.  I brought my Steyr M9 9mm and my Taurus Millennium Pro .45.  100 rounds through each (plus the 10 JHPs I had already waiting in the Taurus). I put 50 rounds downrange per target at 21 feet, then another 50 at 35 feet. The range I go to (Bill's Gun Shop) doesn't permit draw-from-holster, so the best I can do is just let the gun arm droop and/or rest my wrist down against the lip of the counter.

All shots were standing one-handed (I'm a rightie) with no aiming.  Pistol brought up from rest and held out loosely between belt and chest.  I varied my facing a little and did some minor position shifting.  Some shots were cross-body, some double taps, a few triples.

 1. Steyr M9 9mm. 21 feet. 50 rounds. 49 on paper, 47 in target.

 2. Steyr M9 9mm. 35 feet. 50 rounds. 46 on paper, 38 in target.

 3. Taurus Millennium Pro .45. 21 feet. 60 rounds. 56 on paper, 50 in target.

4. Taurus Millennium Pro .45. 35 feet. 50 rounds, 29 on paper, 17 in target.













So.  Conclusions.  Basically I'm satisfied that if I have to fire unaimed at minimum ranges, I'll hit what I'm aiming at.  At longer ranges I need more practice, and with the little Taurus, more aiming.


But not bad for not aiming, IMO.

Obama, National Security, and Secrets

I've noticed that there hasn't been that much difference between Obama and Bush on the national security/civil rights front.

For example, when a judge struck down Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorized the military to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely, strip them of due process and hold them in military facilities, including offshore penal colonies, the administration protested vigorously.

Four years ago, that's not something I would have predicted the White House would do with such fervor.

And it reminds me of this lengthy quote from Daniel Ellsberg's book Secrets, where Ellsberg discusses the effect that classified information can have on the people who know it.

“Henry, there’s something I would like to tell you, for what it’s worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You’ve been a consultant for a long time, and you’ve dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you’re about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.

“I’ve had a number of these myself, and I’ve known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the effects of receiving these clearances are on a person who didn’t previously know they even existed. And the effects of reading the information that they will make available to you.

“First, you’ll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.

“You will feel like a fool, and that will last for about two weeks. Then, after you’ve started reading all this daily intelligence input and become used to using what amounts to whole libraries of hidden information, which is much more closely held than mere top secret data, you will forget there ever was a time when you didn’t have it, and you’ll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don’t….and that all those other people are fools.

“Over a longer period of time — not too long, but a matter of two or three years — you’ll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn’t tell you, it’s often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can. But that takes a while to learn.

“In the meantime it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn’t have these clearances. Because you’ll be thinking as you listen to them: ‘What would this man be telling me if he knew what I know? Would he be giving me the same advice, or would it totally change his predictions and recommendations?’ And that mental exercise is so torturous that after a while you give it up and just stop listening. I’ve seen this with my superiors, my colleagues….and with myself.

“You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.”

….Kissinger hadn’t interrupted this long warning. As I’ve said, he could be a good listener, and he listened soberly. He seemed to understand that it was heartfelt, and he didn’t take it as patronizing, as I’d feared. But I knew it was too soon for him to appreciate fully what I was saying. He didn’t have the clearances yet.

Tyrannosaur Bites Ceratopsian

So let me get this straight.  The lefty MSM apparently just found out that the RomneyBot 9000 is running as a conservative and so says (and hopefully believes) conservative things about the Palestinian orcs and the difficulty of convincing people to turn down the spigot on their free money faucets?  And they are somehow surprised by this?

Or the lefty MSM is desperate to try and help their Boy King stumble into another four years of kicking this country in the balls.

Which could it be...?

Attention: Nerds. This Is The Coolest News Of The Week

Warp Drive. No shit.

best .gif ever