This Ted Cruise ad could be an Obama ad, except for one single word (and the face). It may in fact BE a recycled Obama ad, with the tiniest bit of editing. Check it out.
Someone needs to be fired, and right now too. The same old crap such as this won’t do this time around. It won’t do at all.
The Democrats are totally ill-equipped to defeat him. He simply doesn’t fall for their game, and so it will require the combined efforts of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, the American Communist Party, et al, plus Jihadists and other foreign interests, to defeat him. This will be interesting.
The predictable, or rather a common, outcome would be that someone would get to him and convince him (threaten, bribe, cajole, lie, intimidate, mesmerize, etc.) that “For the Greater Good of the Party” he should quit before he does too much damage to the 2016 prospects. That or they primary him right out.
Why should the word “prunes” be followed by an exclamation mark? Because they’re MY prunes, or rather they were planted on the property I currently own, long before I bought it.
Do you know the difference between a prune and a plum? I didn’t, though of course I’d heard several of the theories that float around, at least in the Pacific Northwest. According to the orchard owners hereabouts (and who would know if not them?) a prune has a free pit, meaning that if you rip the fruit open the pit falls right out, whereas a plum has an in-grown pit and you have to cut, or chew, around it. That would mean I have prunes.
I’ve heard that there are peaches with free pits and peaches with in-grown pits, and they’re all called peaches, so go figure.
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When writing a review on a firearm, some ammo, or an optical sight, etc., it is probably not a good idea to say that you had “zero issues” or “zero problems” or “zero failures” with it. I’m going to be left wondering exactly what these specific zero issues/problems/failures were, and why you’re not telling us more about them. If you had “no issues” then it would be best if you put it just like that. “Zero issues”, on the other hand, are a whole different subject, and they are potentially very frustrating.
(for those of you who aren’t part of the gun culture, your “zero” is that particular adjustment, or set of adjustments, of your sighting system that puts your bullet right on target at a specific distance when using a specific load [often under specific atmospheric conditions])
I’ve warned people in the past of the potential dangers of stuffing gas, but it’s never been taken seriously. Last thanksgiving while we were putting away leftovers, I gave out the warning again.
“DON’T use aluminum foil over the stuffing!”
(Der…)”Why not.”
“It dissolves the aluminum in short order, and I don’t want to eat stuffing with that much metal dissolved into it.”
(Derp) “Heh. Don’t be silly.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve seen it many times.”
(Rolls eyes, like I’M the idiot) “OK fine, we’ll put some turkey over the stuffing. That way no stuffing will be in contact with the tin foil.” (still thinks foil is made of tin – go ahead and try to find actual tin foil at the grocery store)
Less than two hours later I opened the fridge and this was the result. The stuffing gas had wafted up past the slices of turkey and eaten dozens of little holes in the aluminum.
Stuffing gas!
If stuffing gas were to be weaponized, no aluminum structure would be safe. Keep an eye on Mrs. Cubbison!
And hardly anyone is noticing, apparently. This is one of the biggest power grabs regarding free speech in the history of history, and it seems to be going through without much discussion, or even much notice.
I’ve been saying for years that the left really, really MUST gain control over the internet, and right now it seems they’re just a day or two from initiating their Solution; FCC control. Goodbye Wild West. Hello Federal Department of the Internet. I hope you like your new overlords.
How much more clear can it be?
University of Michigan Activism class.
Just heard about it on Rush.
The university goes on to say that they’re not exhibiting any political bias. In Left-Speak that would be true of course, because “Bias” means any opposition to the Progressive authoritarian system.
Height over bore, that is.
I’ve only half jokingly mocked other “future weapon” designs in the past, saying that the trend is toward an ever more clownishly high sight axis. My educated guess is that this is in fact a psychological problem.
With the lower velocity of the grenade/shotgun, it would make actual sense to put it on the bottom, with the flatter trajectory rifle barrel closer to the sight axis.
The new terms like “Soldier integrated such and such” (which obviously turn ordinary warfare into something totally new and different) are also the result of psychological problems. Years ago, while reading one of the supposedly big cheese U.S. military publications, I found that such a thing as an “army” is, technically speaking, no more. No, ladies and gentlemen; we now have a “Soldier-Centric Force Structure” instead, don’t you know, which no doubt changes EVERYTHING.
The advantage you see is that people who have actual experience in stuff are no longer needed, and can therefore be safely and conveniently brushed aside. Who needs an Army General when you can have a shiny, new, Soldier-Centric Force Structure Command and Control Engineering Specialist? Hmm? Was General Patton a Soldier-Centric Force Structure Command and Control Engineering Specialist? I don’t think so. All he did was lead an Army to kill a bunch of folks and break things. Feh!
And who needs a stupid old rifle when you can have something that looks like it came out of a bad Sci-Fi movie written by an ignoramus, and having the ergonomics of a cinder block?
We all knew why the infamous H&K catalog depicted cartridges loaded backwards in a pistol magazine – photographers are not necessarily knowledgeable in the fields of their client’s businesses. In the gun industry however, we have Oleg.
I only bring this up to point out, once again, that a cartridge is not a bullet, any more than a tank of gasoline is an automobile.
The bullets shown on the catalog cover were not backwards. They were seated in the cases in the proper orientation. The cartridges however were inserted backwards into the magazine. Some people have loaded bullets backwards so as to achieve some desired terminal effect, as was explained in John Ross’ book for example.
If you walk into a gun store and ask for bullets, they’ll show you the bullets. If you ask for cartridges, they’ll bring you to the shelves of loaded ammunition. The standard, “Well you know what I mean so quit yer damn nitpicking” only comes after you’ve cleared up the misunderstanding that will certainly ensue when you use the wrong words.
Later I’ll post a story about my using one wrong letter in one word in a correspondence with a customer, and what happened because of it.
Anyway; many years ago we hired a sketch artist to depict a saxophone in a humorous cartoon advertisement. It was going to be an ad by a music instrument dealer, directed at musicians, so we wanted it to be accurate (we wanted our humor to be taken seriously). Since we knew the artist was not a sax player, we brought her in, showed her the various signature features of a sax, and then gave her one to study before doing the artwork. The ad also involved a dinosaur, so we had her look up that particular species of dinosaur and study it. That’s the kind of thing Walt Disney did for his cartoonists, and so it’s far from being a new concept. He brought a live fawn into the studio for his artists to study before doing the movie “Bambi”.
HR 131, recently introduced by U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.)
“Current federal law guarantees the right of law-abiding persons to transport firearms between two locations where they have a legal right to possessand carry them, regardless of state or local laws that would otherwise apply. The firearm must be cased or otherwise not readily accessible. Unfortunately, anti-gun local officials are using overly restrictive state licensing laws to harass and prosecute travelers who have made every effort to comply with the law, resulting in seized guns that are sometimes never returned, delayed travel, legal fees, and sometimes even unnecessary guilty pleas.
H.R. 131 would ensure the law has the effect Congress intended when it passed more than 25 years ago. Specifically, the legislation would make clear that transportation of both firearms and ammunition is federally protected, as well as expand the protections afforded to travelers to include “staying in temporary lodging overnight, stopping for food, fuel, vehicle maintenance, an emergency, medical treatment, and any other activity incidental” to the trip. Additionally, the bill would place the burden of proof clearly on the state to show that the traveler failed to comply with the law.”
Emphasis mine. So some state clowns have been flouting federal law in going after people who travel innocently through their states with gun.
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The title is of course misleading, as is all the speech of authoritarianism. Is it to protect the possession of responsible body armor? But an inanimate object can be neither responsible nor irresponsible. Is it to protect responsible bodies with armor? If so, why does it limit said armor? Is it to protect the responsible possession of body armor? How then would body armor be possessed in an irresponsible manner? Are there hoards of people possessing their body armor in some obnoxious fashion, say, wearing orange body armor with red clothing? One is given to wonder.
With all the Progressives pretending to be concerned, to the point of hyperventilating, about all the carnage carried out with guns, you’d think the one thing they’d want to see, besides a monopoly on gun possession for criminals, is more people wearing more effective body armor. Oh wait…
Authoritarians are of course insane, so in that sense there is nothing to see here.
One has to wonder what the authoritarian Republicans will do with this. My gut tells me they’ll be very much in favor of it, but will at the same time feel uncomfortable about letting their support be known. How that will manifest itself in their political actions I cannot guess. This sort of thing is an on-going problem for them (damn those liberty-minded little Hobbits!).
Please try to avoid getting caught up in the matter of the technical details of the various classes of body armor. This has nothing to do with any of that you know.
If the truth be known (perish the thought) this is one of many signs indicating that Congress is preparing for war with the American people. Many of them are no doubt blissfully unaware of that prospect, but it must be understood that blissful unawareness, and the vehement defense thereof, is a key component of such campaigns, right up to, and through, the the very end.
Now that the Republicans control both Houses, they’re asking for money to “fight” the Democrats. I get multiple pleas from them every day, asking for money.
I didn’t know it took a constant in-flow of money for a representative or a senator to do the right thing, that without said constant flow of money they’d…what?– They’d still be caving, capitulating, and expressing disdain and disgust toward their liberty-minded base? This is an interesting phenomenon. So money = courage, principled stands and moral fortitude? I did not know that.
It would be vastly more principled and honest of them to come right out and say, “We’ll support this specific bill and get it pushed through for this specific price. We’ve already received this percentage of our price, and so can you spare a hundred bucks? And by the way; if our price isn’t met, we’ll of course keep your money anyway and use it for things WE want instead.”
Or is it that they intend to buy gold with my donations, place gold bricks in a leather bag, and beat Democrats up ‘side the head with it? That would at least make some kind of sense, but then why not use a plain, clay bricks, or some rocks? Why gold, particularly? A hickory axe handle can work wonders, and it only costs a few dollars.
Bill Whittle brings the facts;
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE
You decide. Would you rather raise your children in Democrat controlled-since-the-Stone-Age, Detroit, or in Gun Nut Central, Plano, Texas?
(Hat tip Kevin Baker)
Would you rather more places be more like Detroit, or more places be more like Plano? There are causes and effects involved here. Are you interested in cause and effect, or are you more interested in furthering the Progressive agenda?
If you’re interested in “saving the children” the answer is fairly simple, and yet you’ll reject it out of allegiance to your political agendas. Therefore you’re not interested in saving children, QED, and no one should listen to you. You’re interested in something else entirely, and it isn’t pretty, or noble, or based on compassion or understanding.
I’ve often criticized the use of statistics, when asserting the principles of liberty takes back seat, and I will likely continue to do so. This bit from Whittle however will be very useful in the sentencing hearings of Progressive operatives who’ve been depriving people’s rights under color of law. One of those rights being deprived is the right to protect one’s children using a gun, and a very high death rate has resulted from that deprivation. Progressives are killing people at an astonishing rate, right here, right now.
Save the children; get a gun. Save the children; defeat Progressivism and relegate it to the dust bin of an ugly history. Save the children; advance the American Principles of Liberty.
ETA; There can be no “getting along”, or making nice, or living with, an idealogy that violates human rights on a wholesale level as a matter of national policy. Practicing Progressivism is in fact a crime, right now. All of it. It’s a violation of everythig America stands for and a violation of the constitution, and it’s perpetrators should be dealt with accordingly. The only question left is; are we going to it the easy way or the hard way?
Computer CPU clock speeds are now well into the gigaHertz range, meaning that there are potentially billions of things per second that can be done by the computer. Billions. Thousands of millions of cycles per second.
Why then is it impossible for my tablet to keep up with my typing? I’m not a fast typist, but a modern computer should be able keep up with the kind of fantasy, hyper typing that pushes the limits of the human hand’s ability to withstand the G forces involved in moving the fingers.
You can record audio and video simultaneously and with fairly good resolution with this thing, and one would think that taking key pad instructions at rates of a few hundred strokes per minute, converting them to text, displaying the text on screen and making a click noise would not tax the computing power beyond its limits, but it apparently does. I find this more than curious.
Either a large number of programmers and project managers have crap for brains, or we are being intentionally messed with, or converting display screen address touches and converting them to text is one of the most extremely complicated things a computer can ever do. It has to be one of those three, doesn’t it? What am I missing?
Some background; local cops have been out for me and my family. Not in a big way, just looking to take advantage of opportunities. Both of my kids have had run-ins with the law. Some serious and some very, very, laughably trivial. I was once the victim of selective enforcement regarding dogs being off-leash ($100 dollar ticket) on or the day after the local cops were subpoenaed to appear in court as witnesses on one of those trivial cases, they’ve threatened to have the dog destroyed, and recently one of the cops was seen prowling in my yard, and was not forthcoming as to why when I called him on the phone afterward. One of the former cops from the same department had been “hitting on” my under-age daughter and her under-age friend. That’s 2.
175 grains at over 3,000 fps. Owww!
I’ve been using the Berger VLD (Very Low Drag) 7 mm bullets which have an amazing ballistic coefficient for the weight, and do very well in the 280 Remington A.K.A. 7mm Remington Express cartridge. I’m sure they’d do very well in the new Nosler cartridge also.
…we are told, by someone (?) to celebrate the life’s work of one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – gun owner, second amendment supporter and NRA member.
OK, but if I approve of his message and his efforts, then surely every day is MLK Day, no? Just as, if you’re a Christian every day is Christmas.
Anyway; I wonder what MLK Jr. would say today, more than 50 years later, of race relations and the moral state of Americans. I don’t recall him having said;
“I have a dream…of a day when a little black child and a little white child will sit down together, and the little black child will accuse the little white child of exercising “White Privilege” and blaming him for his problems. I have a dream of a time when over ninety percent of all black people will sell their votes to the political party of the KKK in exchange for largess, indoctrination into the authoritarian system, lies and broken promises. I have a dream of a time when black people are corralled into dysfunctional, government-union-controlled schools, discouraged from using the schools of their choice, and taught hopelessness and anger instead of hope and love, and I have a dream today, People, of a time when government will have replaced the father in the majority of black families…”
No, I don’t recall him saying any of that, but that is apparently what some people are celebrating today, while calling for more of the same.
It’s simple; just watch Ramno and get your man whatever he’s carrying (not that I’ve ever been able to sit through a Rambo movie without turning it off and finding something interesting to do, like watching some oil varnish dry, but I can imagine he carries some manly weapons).
I dunno, maybe a scoped 10 inch 500 S&W for IWB carry? Something a man can get his hands around. Ladies; if you want to get me the 500, I’d actually be cool with it. I’d just carry it in a shoulder holster of some kind is all. A set of loading dies for it would be nice too, please. A 7.5″ 454 Casull would be my second choice. That’s just because I already have a DAO 38 snubbie– It serves nicely as ballast for the case it’s stays in.
Both Uncle and Tam linked to what seems to me like an excellent article on the failure mode(s) of the M16/M4 system, which cemented, for me at least, a great deal of respect for the platform. If you haven’t read the whole thing, Do Read it.
It concludes (after much explanation of HOW the conclusions were derived);
“How to Deal With Heat Limits
The Training Answer: First, every GI should see those Colt test videos [of firing them to failure] and know what his gun can, and can’t, do. While the Black Hills guys were correct in noting that SF/SOF guys usually manually fire single shots or short bursts, even most of them don’t know what happens when a gun goes cyclic for minutes at a time. A good video explaining “why you can’t do that” would be a strong addition to training, not only for combat forces, but for support elements who may find themselves in combat and feel the urge to dump mags at cyclic rate.
The Morale Answer: Every GI should see the same done to AKs as well. There is a myth perpetuated by pig-ignorant people (like General Scales) that the AK series possesses magical properties and that the American weapons are crap. In fact, nobody I know of at the sharp end is at all eager to change, perhaps because the laws of physics and the properties of materials apply just as firmly to a gun originally created by a Communist in Izhevsk as they do to a concept crafted by capitalists in California. If you’ve ever fired an AK to destruction, you know that it grows too hot to hold, then the wooden furniture goes on fire, then, if you persist on firing it full-auto, it also goes kablooey. Not because there’s anything wrong with this rifle, but the laws and equations work the same for engineers worldwide.
The Systems Answer: As you can see from the Colt videos, if you clicked on over to Chivers’s article, thickening the barrel nearly doubled the rounds to catastrophic failure on cyclic. An open/closed bolt cycle might have practical benefits. They wouldn’t show up in sustained heavy firing like the destruction tests, but they might show up in how a weapon recoups from high temps, and open-bolt autofire would eliminate cook-offs, at least. But any such approach needs thorough testing.
The Wrong Answer: Replacing the M4 with something like the SCAR or the HK416, something that is, at best, barely better, that is much more maintenance intensive, and that, contra Scales’s assertion that his undisclosed client’s weapon is “the same price,” is twice (SCAR) or three times (416) the money. (The 416 mags are the best part of the system, though).”
I’ve fired over a thousand rounds in a day, both from an AK and a Ruger Mini-14, and didn’t come even close to failure, or even serious degradation of the rifles. (I haven’t tried it with the AR simply because my business hasn’t made products for it as yet) But then I’ve WORKED WITH steel since I was a kid, and know first hand how soft and moldable it becomes at high temperature, and I’ve seen how it can be “hammer welded” which is welding two pieces together that are red hot, just by hammering them together). And just about anyone who grew up on a farm understands “instinctively” that even the best steel becomes soft enough to bend like a pretzel, using nothing but hand and arm muscles, at high temperature, because THEY’VE DONE IT over and over. And so, without even having to think about it, it was natural for me to avoid over-heating the weapons. I’ve never had so much as a cook-off (again; as kids we sometimes cooked off naked rounds on purpose, because it was interesting and fun). I have no doubt than an AR-15 would do as well in a thousand round, one day test, though it may need a little attention to keep it cycling with the carbon that gets into the action. My Colt AR has been known to stop after about 350 rounds unless I keep it real wet (and depending on the particular ammo).
That one of the M4s in the battle related in the article was able to get through ~600 rounds in a very short time is pretty awesome. The physical limits of the steel were exceeded at that point, and physics is physics.
Another quote from the article stuck out to me as great. It addresses the trade-off between the ability of a weapon to fire an enormous number of rounds quickly without failure, verses the operator’s ability to actually carry it (because it’s too heavy). This may be a paraphrase, but it’s really close;
“You can carry it all day or you can fire it all day, but you can’t do both.” Yup. Take your pick.
But then if you’re unfortunate and pathetic enough to have gotten your technical and physics information from Hollywood actors you might believe that, “Fire doesn’t melt steel”.
I found it interesting to look at the “service life” of a typical rifle in terms of actual bullet-acceleration-in-bore time. If we assume a nice round number of one millisecond to push a bullet through the bore, and if we assume a nice round number of, say, 30,000 rounds to wear out the rifle, that’s a “service life” of thirty seconds. Compared to your family car’s engine, the combustion system in a rifle runs at awesome power levels, and with no oil pressure. Your actual mileage may vary.
In processing a customer order today, we got a “Service Not Allowed” message from our credit card merchant services bank. They’re the ones who handle all of our credit and debit card transactions. We called them to find out what this message means, because we’d not seen it before. Well, they were by this time quite familiar with the “problem”. The problem is MBNA, in this case, who issued the card to our customer, DOES NOT ALLOW TRANSACTIONS WITH GUN RELATED BUSINESSES.
If you’re doing any business with MBNA, you’d best give them a jingle, and DO NOT FORGET this. This sort of thing seems to be on the rise, and it will get worse unless we push back, soon.
Update, Jan. 7, 2015; The customer called his bank, assuming the “Service Not Allowed” was due to a late payment on his part. As I explained to him several times; we were told by our Merchant Services bank that it was due to MBNA policy, and that our Merchant Services people were quite familiar with said policy as they’d had to deal with such denials many times previous. The customer only repeated what he’d said about a possible late payment. In any case, the transaction, on the same card, was approved today. All I can make of it, given what we were told by Merchant Services, is that MBNA will cave without comment or discussion once they’re called on it. From what commenters are saying, the practice of denying transactions may be random, or it may be targeted toward individual customers or vendors. Without more information I have no way of knowing. This would all seem quite unbelievable, except for what we already know about the recent IRS targeting, Fast & Furious, the attempted intimidation of Sharyl Attkisson and others, and other insidious pranks aimed at the perceived enemies of Progressivism.