Quote of the day—Roberta X

Sometimes I suspect the TV people of deliberately attempting to inculcate superstition in the viewing public; then I realize they’re quite serious about putting chicken bones through their noses, if less so about the Deep Meaning of it all. That, they leave for the passive, receptive blobs on the other side of the screen and there’s nothing we can do about them.

Roberta X
October 11, 2012
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;
Or
The Superstitions Of Primitives

[While I have some disagreement about there being “nothing we can do about them” she has a valid point about the superstition of people. The older I get the more evidence I see presented that there is little more than a thin veneer of rationality and civilization over a subset of the human population. The rest has no veneer. You don’t even have to watch the idiot box, as Roberta did, to gather the evidence. I haven’t had an actual powered on television set in my home in at least 10, if not 15, years now yet I have the following examples from other sources:

  • A software engineer that is certain witches can animate a corpse sufficiently that it could be made to “hop down the road to another city for burial” such that the family wouldn’t haven’t pay the higher cost for transportation by conventional means.
  • A PhD mathematician who insisted digital computers were not deterministic. She told me it was a proven fact that if you ran the same program on different computers all solving the same problem they would come up with different answers. I was tempted to point out she was a Mac user but decided her problems went much deeper than that.
  • A senior government scientist who proclaimed he could diagnose injuries and illness by looking at the iris of a person.
  • Racism.
  • Communism.
  • Most anti-gun people.

That doesn’t include any of the people I have seen having an animated conversation with a power pole (in the dark ages before cell phones) or an empty seat on the other side of the bus (no cell phone present and the police were eventually called to remove her from the bus).—Joe]

It’s a Model City alright

Detroit, that is.  I’ve been thinking of a Model Cities post for a while, but PJMedia already has a nice one;


 



Hat Tip; Kevin.


It’s a Model City alright, for exactly the same reasons that North Korea and Cuba are Model Countries.  That video should be part of every right/left debate from now until all leftist ideas are shunned from polite society forever.

My dream is coming true

Via Dave Hardy.

In 2010 The Brady Campaign reported they net assets or fund balances of -$768,643. Yes, they had net negative assets of over three quarters of a million dollars.

Their assets have been in the red since 2008 and my guess is 2011 and 2012 have not been any better for them. Total revenues in 2008 were 4.1 million compared to 2.8 million in 2011. They would do better if they went to the gun ranges and picked up just one piece of discarded brass from each gun owner in the country each year.

It’s no wonder the Brady Campaign put Helmke and his $250K/year salary out to pasture.

My dream is coming true.

Quote of the day—Thomas

When I go into prepper mode (which I occasionally do), some colleague will say, “Oh. I’ll just come to your house.” After I push back the bile, I usually say something tasteful like, “Bring your daughter.”

Thomas
October 9, 2012
Comment to Guest Post: Four Alternative Stores Of Value
[Similar thoughts have come to my mind as well but I had never found the words to express them so well.

If I put a bunch of effort and money into making life possible for myself and my family in an extreme hardship situation and you just assumed you could mooch off of me if you ever needed to then if such circumstance came about you are going to be surprised at the price you pay for a handful of lentils and cup of clean water.—Joe]

Boomershoot video from ESS

ESS attended Boomershoot 2012 and spent a lot of time recording video. They released another video, Volume 1 (Volume 5 was released earlier for some reason):



See also the ESS blog post about the Boomershoot videos where they say:



Commemorating our adoption by the shooting sports community and as a fun forward-step in working together with civilian as well as military shooters, ESS is proud to announce the release of its new video series, Boomershoot!


Filmed at the near-legendary, totally-incendiary shooting event in northern Idaho, ESS shooter, U.S. National Rifle Team (Palma Division) member, and “30 Cal Gal” Anette Wachter together with friend Shelley Rae (Western Shooting Journal /gun blogger) were among the many in attendance. In this exclusive video series, Annette and Shelley demonstrate their passion for shooting while having an explosive time, and in doing illustrate quite nicely that ESS eye pro fits women as well as it fits men.


Video installments in this series will show high-powered guns in action, exploding targets, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.


ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.


H/T to Barron.

Quote of the day—Kristophr

Joe is one of the moderates who would give him the choice of being disarmed.

I, on the other hand, would strip him of his right to vote for not meeting his militia duties. And make him get a permit to NOT carry, and put him in a public database to shame him for his moral cowardice.

And make him pay double sales tax to fund the additional police protection he requires.

Kristophr

October 9, 2012

Comment to Quote of the day—JMMII.

[Kristophr is right. I’ve gotten soft in my old age. In the past I have advocated for the Swiss system where you cannot vote unless you periodical qualify on the rifle range. Assuming someone does not point out a constitutionality problem that I have overlooked I have no serious objections to implementing a system such as advocated by Kristophr.

I’m currently reading Lone Star Planet and expect to get some ideas from the book. Perhaps that will help me regain my edge.

Thank you Kristophr for pointing out how soft I am. I’ll try to maintain a sharper edge in the future.—Joe]

Friends or tools?

I’m sure you have all heard the old saw “the enemy of my
enemy is my friend.” Well… No. I think a better version is “the enemy of my
enemy is a useful tool.” And I think
that is what we are seeing evidence of unfolding before us right now.

Obama & Co announce a record $ 181 million in donations
in Sept, largely in small amounts from “first time” donors, too small to require tracking. At the same time, a
breaking story is about extremely lax verification of donor credit card legitimacy (i.e., essentially none) ,
and a LOT of hits to Obama’s “contribute” page (something like 2/3) come from
overseas, and there is not much in the way of addressing matching with the card payment. I would be VERY unsurprised if a lot of OverSeas America Haters made
donations, in violation of US law and with complicit looking-the-other-way by
the Obama fundraisers, because they know that while Obama may not be their
friend, he is an easily manipulated fool who isn’t very fond of America and is
working to destroy it. Not because he really wants to per se, but because he is too stupid and narcissistic to realize
what real effect his actions have. The folks surrounding him want to hang on to
power because it’s shiny and what ALL the cool kids want, but they really are NOT
very good at wielding it (or even understanding it), and REALLY don’t
understand dealing with those that only understand the power of tribe, bribe,
and force, for whom our western values are antithetical to their fundamental
values.  These people (the power players
in China, Saudi Arabia / MENA, Russia, drug cartels, radical Islam, etc) would REALLY like to
see Obama pull out a win, because America’s weakness is their gain.

News is also coming out that there was a LOT of warning
about security problems in Benghazi, and a SEAL team was pulled out only a
month before, displaying massive incompetence on behalf of the administration.
His foreign policy in general is now being widely
seen
as increasingly ineffective, and his biggest supporters are those that
would gain from our weakness.

It is widely acknowledged that the first debate was a
disaster for Obama. Even the New Yorker magazine cover showed Romney Eastwooding
at the debate. I think there is also
a very real potential that the second debate, on foreign policy, will be as bad
or worse (if for different reasons), in part because of the above facts. I’m
not saying that the fat lady is singing her final notes, but I do get the strong
feeling that she’s starting to warm up for a really rock’n finale.

Then, of course, we’ll have to hear about the election being
stolen, voters being too stupid to know what’s good for them, etc., for the
next half-dozen or more election cycles, but that’s a price I’m willing to
accept.

Economics 99 (Remedial)

About this “(multi) trillion dollar tax cut” thingy; First, tax cuts don’t cost anything.  Taxes cost us, but cutting taxes saves us money.


That’s not the main point though.  The main point is that cutting taxes lightens the ball-and-chain that’s around our ankles, allowing us to invest and produce more, resulting in more income, which in turn increases revenues.  Taxing any behaivor reduces the behaivor while incentivising an underground economy (black market) in that behavior.


You might think that taxing something less dynamic, like property values, might be different– that you could actually add up the property values in your district, multiply that by the amount of change in the tax rate, and know exactly the difference in revenue that will result.  Simple huh?  Well you’d be totally wrong for several reasons.  Here in North Idaho we have a whole population of refugees from other states who fled high tax rates in their states, increasing our property values and presumably reducing the values in the areas they fled.


I could barely afford to get new siding on my house and resurface my huge deck, but since it would increase the assessment value, resulting in a higher tax bill, uh, maybe it’s not so important.  Not this year.  And there is why we have a lot of what I call “Tyvek Houses”.  A Tyvek house is one that remains in un-finished condition for decades at a time.  They are ugly, and unattractive to buyers, but if you plan to live in your house you don’t care about buyers.  You care about the assessed value, because you don’t want to pay out huge sums in taxes year after year, so you don’t want it looking too nice.


You lower the tax rate, and because the punished activity (punished by taxation) becomes more affordable it becomes more common.  The result is more tax revenue.  M’kay?  Reducing rates beyond some extremely low level that we haven’t seen in over 100 years will at some point start to reduce revenues, but in that case we will not only have no use whatsoever for 95+% of what government does today, we’ll have no time nor patience for it.


I needed the first paragraph because there is a plan that could be called a multi-trillion-dollar tax cut.  Dramatically slash the income tax rate, and you get trillions more dollars flooding into the treasury.  You get trillions more dollars flooding into the country from everywhere too, essentially, because investments in the U.S. (as opposed to investments in other countries) become that much more attractive.  Capital, along with the people who own it, moves to where it can be safe and free.  Better put it’s; “free and therefore safe”.


The “expert” economists on the left understand all of this perfectly of course, as any kid who ever ran a lemonade stand would.  That proves to us that their intentions are not good.  If they know that lower taxes will result in a better economy, and that ultra low low taxes will result in a super good economy, and they oppose all tax cuts, well, you figure it out. (hint; they think that America is too big and important already)  They want you out in the streets shouting “Eat the rich” while promising to pay for everything in your life through tax revenues.  Do you see the blatant contradiction there or has your mind been taken over?


Meanwhile, the Republicans can’t quite bring themselves to explain it, because they’re afraid.  That or they have brain damage, but I don’t think it’s brain damage per se.


I say that the American people deserve to have the case made, straight up, what it is that we face, verses what it is that America was meant to be.  If the Republicans can’t bring themselves to make the case, we’ll have to take over their stupidshitty, Progressive party and fundamentally transform it from the inside.

The clock is ticking

This is basically rehashing what I already said on Twitter but there is some new material.

Saturday morning I got a call from son James. It was to tell me that his wife, Kelsey, is pregnant. I was sort of expecting something “soon” when I made this post but didn’t officially know anything.

As I replied to Barron on Twitter, “Now the clock is ticking.” We have about 10, maybe 15, years to make full auto firearms readily accessible and to drive the Brady Campaign into bankruptcy and/or total politically oblivion.

I think it’s doable. Won’t you help make my dream come true? It’s for the children.

Don’t you just hate it

Yesterday I reported someone to law enforcement in the country where their email originated from. It might have been entirely innocent but an email out of the blue asking about “assessing the effects of an explosive on people (primary blast effects, in particular), property & environment.” sends up all kinds of warning flags for me.

I hate getting those emails even worse than spam.

Experienced shooter report

Late last month I went to a USPSA match in Renton. I expected I would be in the situation of not knowing anyone there. And even if I did recognize a face or two I figured the odds of shooting in the same squad as them would be rather low. I was extremely pleased to see Anette and Charles unpacking their gear from their vehicle as I parked. As I was signing up a little later I saw Shelley Rae! We all ended up shooting in the same squad. Also a pleasure was that Lisa Munson was in our squad as well. I didn’t offer her any shooting advice this time.

It has been several years since I shot at Renton and looking at the first stage we shot it all came back to me. These guys design some tough stages! I racked up 190 points in penalties. Most of those were for misses. In one stage I couldn’t find two targets. In another stage I shot 51 points but got 50 points in penalties! In another stage I thought I shot it really well then found out that I had completely overlooked a fault line and shot two targets while faulting. I hadn’t even seen the fault line in the walk-through. The targets weren’t that hard to get but I had done it with a foot completely over the line and got 40 points in penalties. I did manage to come in 6th place in one stage but that was not enough to compensate for all my errors on the other stages. And even on that stage I made a mistake but it only cost me about one second to correct it.

In Limited class I came in 19th out of 30 shooters. That was very disappointing. I need to slow down for complicated stages.

It could have been worse. The first shooter in our squad disqualified himself by breaking the 180 on the first stage within about three seconds of the buzzer going off.

Here are some pictures:

IMG_1278_2012CroppedIMG_1317_2012Cropped
Shelley Rae and Anette correctly shooting the targets I shot with one foot over the fault line.

IMG_1431_2012Cropped
Charles is taking his first step toward a new shooting position.

Examine the following pictures of Lisa Munson carefully. These pictures were taken as fast as my camera would take them in full auto mode.

IMG_1493
Notice the piece of brass falling just below her hands.

IMG_1494
In this picture another piece of brass has just been ejected and is between her slide and sight. Her arms have started to bend and her right leg has started to move.

IMG_1495
In this picture the same piece of brass that was just ejected has fallen to about 1/3 up from the bottom barrel on the left, she has her finger off the trigger, and is well into her movement to the next shooting position.

I wish I could shoot and move like a girl.

Quote of the day—JMMII

YOU want to force everyone to HAVE to have one–preferably several with extended clips–everywhere they go. Love the avatar–I’m so impressed. What a hero. Use that for “hunting”, do you? Or only as a “substitute”?

JMMII
September 27, 2012
Comment to The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions. H/T to Sebastian.
This is the avatar being referred to:
avatar32
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Also notice the change in definition of words. “Force” means people deciding for themselves whether to own a firearm and is a bad thing but the use of the power of government to attempt disarming everyone is apparently beneficial.

Another way to look at this is that in a battle of wits with a gun rights activists armed with facts JMMII was coming up short in the “ammunition” department and had to invoke Markley’s Law.—Joe]

New shooter report

Late last month Max and Barb had watched part of a USPSA match I participated in. I introduced them to Anette and Charles but had not been able get to the range with them for their own trigger time.

Today I took Barb and her son Max to the range. Max had done some shooting before but not a lot. Barb said she might have shot a gun once when she was about 12 years old but couldn’t remember for certain.

WP_000308_2012Corrected
Max’s previous experience showed. This was with the Ruger Mark II from about 10 feet away.

WP_000315_2012CroppedCorrected
This is Barb’s first target. Again with the Ruger Mark II. I would include the picture of her smile but she had her eyes closed.

This was good for a first time shooter. She was having some problems with the follow through and pulling the gun low for a bit and after we got that corrected the group moved up and got a lot tighter.

One of the first things she said after shooting the first target was, “This was more fun that I thought it would be.”

WP_000323_2012Cropped
This is Max with his revolver target. He shot it single action for a couple cylinders then shot it double action. All from about 8 feet away. I was impressed. My little S&W Air-Lite only has a 3″ barrel.

WP_000333_2012CroppedCorrected
This is Barb with her revolver target. All single action. Very nice! Excellent for a new shooter.

We left a little early because the people in the next bay were shooting a .44 Magnum. It was a little unpleasant for us.

As we were driving away for lunch Max invoked Markley’s Law over the guy with the .44 Magnum. I gave them the history of Markley’s Law. They had not heard of it before which isn’t at all surprising. They hadn’t heard of Godwin’s Law either so I briefly brought them up to speed on that as well.

The next planned shooting excursion for Max and Barb is a trip to Idaho for a private Boomershoot party on the 20th of this month.

Quote of the day—Mostly Cajun

Retire? I will probably get killed in the early battles of the coming revolution.

Mostly Cajun
January 27, 2012
Potpourri
[Via Kevin who posts about the violence in parts of Europe over the economic collapse in progress.

I can relate to this. Although I would like to think things will collapse slowly enough that I can retreat to a “bug out place” and avoid most of the bloodshed or worst case, as someone told me a few years ago, “You and I won’t have to worry about getting into an armed conflict with the government because they will pick up us on the first pass.” I would then hope I get released after the fighting, if any, is over with.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ronald Reagan

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Ronald Reagan
[I’m always perplexed when people insist rights are something granted by the government. I don’t know if I’m just coming across it more or if it really is that I hear this more frequently in the last year or so. In any case it concerns me greatly.—Joe]

Outlier detection

As Tyler Durden said, “See if you can spot the outlier in the chart below.”

SeptemberChangeNSA20-24

And after doing the seasonal adjustment:

SeptHistorical20-24

If you can detect an outlier then feel free to draw your own conclusions. Those that cannot detect any outliers probably aren’t reading this, aspire to careers as fence posts, and vote for Obama.

Double nonsense

People like this think they are qualified to make laws regulating firearms? And the media doesn’t even point out they don’t even make sense?

Moylan said he has taken heat from the gun lobby for his stance opposing semiautomatic, .50-caliber military-style assault rifles.

Assault rifles are, by definition, capable of fully automatic fire and of a medium caliber and power. Therefore the sentence above is nonsensical from at least two different perspectives. I suspect a third because “the gun lobby” likely would not care if he was opposed to something that does not and cannot exist.

Quote of the day—NotClauswitz

The way these drooling idiots lurch from one panic-driven mistake to another, over and over again and not suffer a complete nervous breakdown, one is forced to question whether they have an actual CNS, or just a vestigial malformed brain-stem?

NotClauswitz
October 4, 2012
Comment to Denial – The first stage of grief…
[It may not be so much a lack of brain matter. It may be they have such an ingrained culture of deception that they don’t have a problem with what we think must have been a mistake. It could be it was just another deliberate deception that was implemented poorly. Those things frequently happen when the truth is irrelevant to what you advocate.—Joe]

Intellectuals

Via Kevin:







This really resonated with me. I know an avowed Marxist who is a professor of business. The last few times I spent time with him I wanted to leave the restaurant because of the way he bullied the staff. I was extremely uncomfortable with his demanding to be in control of things that were against the restaurant policy. And that same demanding “in charge” attitude extended other things as well. He asked that I not carry a gun when in his presence. He apparently didn’t know that at least two others and possibly three were also carrying as well. I told him, “No. I prefer to carry.” My soon to be ex-wife asked him to drop it and he did so I didn’t have to tell him what I really thought and blister the ears of others.


His superior attitude, even with confronted with the logical inconsistences and obvious falsities of his beliefs, was nearly intolerable. Even the simplest to confirm facts would be dismissed with, “I don’t believe your facts.” And finally, just, “We’ll just have to disagree because I feel this way.” in direct conflict with his own supplied facts. He even insisted that basing decisions on emotions, “is just as valid as facts and logic.”


He seemed proud of the corruption of his city politicians (Chicago). He told stories of all the graft and was proud of his vote for Democrats. He laughed at the fence around the graveyard, “To keep the dead from voting.”


I’ve had extended conversations with others who view themselves as “intellectuals” and they all view themselves as superior to others and I wouldn’t trust them to think themselves to a draw in a game of tic-tac-toe. It’s the “intellectuals” of the anti-rights crowd that are confused that everyone doesn’t see the superiority of their view and demand guns be banned regardless of the increases in violent crime when the victims are disarmed. Facts are irrelevant because they believe they are smart when in fact they have merely subscribed to a religion that rewards its followers with the belief they are superior to others.

Random thought of the day

I heard Romney did exceptionally well in the debate last night. I wasn’t interested in watching. I couldn’t see any advantage to watching in real time as opposed to hearing a recap on the radio talk shows and blogs as I got ready for work and rode the bus to work this morning. So I spent the evening at dinner with friends and didn’t get home until midnight.

Some pundits are claiming Obama made such a poor showing that he may lose the election. But I think those people are overlooking something.

Obama has the critical communist dictators endorsements of Hugo Chavez, Raul Castro, and Vladimir Putin while Romney has the kiss of death NRA endorsement. When the choice is between the tranquility of servitude and the animating contest of freedom how is there even any question of who should or will win? Who would want to compete when you can have tranquility?

Of course some people see things differently than I do. There are those that believe the clear winner of all three presidential debates will be Obama.