Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
Category Archives: Current News
This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.
What this shooting did is it showed how weak the gun laws are in this country. And the fact that this person apparently did everything legal until he pulled the trigger just shows how weak those gun laws are.
Imagine having that criteria applied to other things:
The slanderer did everything legal right up to the point where she opened his mouth.
The assaulter did everything legal right up to the point where he struck his victim.
The speeder did everything legal right up to the point where she exceeded the speed limit.
The shoplifter did everything legal right up to the point where he walked out the door without paying for it.
The very name of “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” tells you all you need to know to oppose them. They want to prevent “gun violence”. If they wanted to prevent slander or libel they would rightly be seen as wanting to infringe upon free speech. The same is true of their advocating for more restrictions on firearms. Their goal is, clearly, the infringement of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms, most people now recognize it, and the above quote shows they don’t even try to hide it.—Joe]
The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information,” Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said today. “[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences.”
Limbaugh today railed against the media and Dupnik for trying to draw a link between the heated political climate and the shooting rampage, calling the sheriff a “fool.” But Dupnik stood by his assertions.
If he would have done his job, maybe this doesn’t happen,” Republican state Rep. Jack Harper said in an interview Monday. “Sheriff Dupnik did not provide for the security of a U.S. congresswoman.
Here is what one of my “shooting buddies” said to Sheriff Dupnik:
From: Joe Durnbaugh Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 4:39 PM Subject: Sheriff Dupnik
Here is the email I sent to the Pima County Sheriff yesterday (hope I don’t get on some watch list):
Dear Sheriff Dupnik, I am a retired law enforcement officer, and I cannot understand how your public comments, as a law enforcement professional, contribute anything to civil discourse. If anything, your vitriolic and partisan comments do nothing but aggravate the political polarity in this country. You, sir, are an embarrassment to law enforcement. You should learn to shut your pie hole and keep your idiotic opinions to yourself. Please, do the residents of your county a favor and retire at the earliest opportunity!
Joe Durnbaugh
All the data is not in yet but it looks as if politics were essentially unrelated to the shooting. The political left appears to have jumped the gun (or Planck Time) and assigned blame prior to having facts supporting their preconceived notions.
I’ll have to think on this some more but it may be this shooting incident will bring into the spotlight a much more difficult question to answer than issues related to the First and Second Amendment. The issue is mental health. The simple answer is a mental health test for gun ownership.
But if someone isn’t mentally competent to possess a firearm are they any more competent to possess a can of gasoline and a book of matches? Here, here, and here are some attempts and successes at using gasoline for mass murders.
Or how about sharp objects? The Sharon Tate murders or Lizzie Borden probably will continue to have as much or more notoriety that the assassination attempt of Representative Giffords.
Attacks on the Bill of Rights should stay off the table but there may be some opportunity for “violence prevention” if a national discussion ensues over mental health.
…or so (I wasn’t counting but for the last few) but the correct optic mount for the U.S. Rifle, Caliber 30, M1, also known as the Garand Rifle, is now available for sale. We’re waiting to ship until next week, when I’m supposed to have the illustrated instructions ready, but the product is all ready to go. In addition to making bullets, I’ll be burning the oil all weekend editing images – we try to make the illustrations serve as a more or less stand-alone picture storybook, for them that gets their information better if it’s visual.
Pretty, methinks, though I may be slightly prejudiced.
Use any IER (Scout) scope, reflex or holographic sight. Pistol scopes may be used also, but need more eye relief and you’ll be mounting them as far forward as they’ll go. The scout scopes are a perfect match, as is the Aimpoint Micro, Comp, et al, which also allow co witnessing.
If the rifle is good with its iron sights, it’s just as good, only faster and in a far wider range of lighting conditions, with a good optic, even a good 1x optic.
There has been a general assumption that a dot sight is a close quarters sight. That is true, in the same sense that iron sights are for close quarters, except of course that the dot sight is a vastly superior system. The dot sight still has its advantages on the longer shots, out to your iron sight maximum range. More in-depth info on electronic sights here.
That’s the T1 on the new UltiMAK M12. Now you can punch more holes, in more things, faster, under more lighting conditions, with more confidence.
The weight of the mount body, clamps and screws is 6.16 ounces. The walnut handguard with retainer clip, that the mount replaces, weighs about 2.24 ounces, so the net installed weight is 3.92 ounces. Your figure may vary depending on your handguard. The mount clamps to a tapered barrel, so just like our M8 mount for the M-14, it needs a recoil lug to prevent the mount “falling off the taper”. The M1 has that rear barrel band right there, pinned to the barrel, hence the M12’s front clamp has been extended a few thousandths beyond the front of the mount body, to engage the barrel band. It uses two discreet clamping positions, like all our mounts, so there is never an issue with minor variations in barrel profiles. In this case, as with our M6 for the 30 Carbine, it is cantilevered for some distance behind the rear clamp.
Mention this post in checkout at UltiMAK and you’ll get a 10% early adopters, The-View-From-North-Central-Idaho discount. Good through Jan, 2011 – see update below. Then send the difference to the Second Amendment Foundation.
You saw it here first (unless you were on the UltiMAK site within the last 24 hours). This is the numero uno press release, right nghyaw!
{shameless self promotion = “off”}
Update, Jan 11, 2011; I posted this before we’d had a chance at a meeting to determine price. We’re changing the price to $185.00. No on-line orders have been charged as yet, so all orders will be automatically charged at the lower price, and those who mentioned, or mention, this post will receive the discount from the lower price. Discount offer good through January, 2011. Any walk-ins that occured before this notice, let us know and we’ll refund the balance. Thanks, everyone, for the big response!
The Supreme Court of Ohio Wednesday rejected Cleveland’s attempt to retain its own gun control laws.
In a 5-2 majority opinion, the Justices upheld a 2006 state law that says only federal or state regulations can limit an Ohioan’s individual right to bear arms.
The Jim Crow like anti-gun owner laws continue to fall.
With the economic in shambles few of these people will be able to find work and will resort to crime for the basic necessities. With the huge deficit and debt California has don’t expect an expansion of parole officers and/or police to protect the public from people that are still dangerous. And besides, what would they do with them if they caught them committing a crime? Put them back in the prison that was already overflowing?
California politicians who oppose people being able to defend themselves may face a sudden change of attitude in their voters in regards to gun control.
One might also expect a rise in the black market. The excessive regulation and high taxes stifle the utilization of cheap labor these newly released inmates represent. If the incentives to go straight are strong enough (getting shot for committing a minor crime could be sufficiently motivating) the price of the labor will become very low. If the labor is cheap enough entrepreneurs will consider getting into a grey market which bypasses the regulations and taxes. I would not be surprised that a dollar earned “below the radar” of the state is worth two dollars earned in full compliance with the state. If this does happened the underground economy will further erode the financial position of the state.
And what will be the end result? Will it be a Mad Max world, a libertarian utopia, or an invitation for the Feds to create a police state?
Wisconsin will soon become the 49th state to endanger unarmed citizens with a gun crazy concealed carry law. While normal Wisconsinites prefer having no guns around as a way of ensuring a safe secure society, immature thugs and their guns will soon get their way via the party of bullying, the GOP.
…
While these paranoid wing nuts insist there’s nothing safer than a load [sic] gun in the hands of an angry anti-government whiner, the public has no choice but to fight back. Raise your voice, contact the police or business owner and tell them you feel threatened for you and your family.
John Peterson November 28, 2010 Concealed Carry Killers. And these are only the ones we know about. [Interesting. With those “great” Wisconsin gun laws how did this happen? It seems that a law against concealing firearms in a backpack and a law against firearms in a school didn’t stop a student from doing just that.
And where are all those people “endangered” by the concealed carry laws in the other 48 states? What is the violence crime rate in those states compared to the violent crime rate in the states that allow people to protect themselves with the best tools available?
Peterson is just another bigot on the wrong side of history.—Joe]
The headline is The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift but even after reading the article I can’t help but think (someone else said this long before I thought of it, but I don’t remember who it was), “If you don’t play the game you shouldn’t be in a position to make the rules.”
My son and a neighbor kid got into some trouble last Spring. A minor property crime against the local grange– a stupid, boyish stunt. That’s the first big mistake in this series.
John Law got involved and came down HARD on the two kids. Really serious shit, as if they were career, hard-core gang leaders or something. Second big mistake. No one’s really responsible either– things go largely according to a pre-ordained plan in a largely manditory system. I would have thought this could be settled better, more efficiently and with more focus on restitution and correction, by neighbors talking to neighbors, but John Law has to get his piece of the action or he feels all left out and stuff. Instead, my first news of this came after the kids had been arrested. Watching the excitement on Hawaii 5-O and hardly ever even getting to slap the cuffs on some kids in a small town can be a bitch I guess. Maybe we’re all bitches now. Some people seem to think so, or wish it were so.
Fast-forward several months. My son’s “partner in crime” from last Spring was found dead this Saturday morning. Someone spotted his body near a bridge a few blocks away and made an anonymous call (who does that?) to 911. I still don’t know the cause of death and it would be irresponsible to speculate. All we know right now is; it has been reported that foul play is not suspected.
While making a huge pot of soup from our garden vegetables, duck eggs and yearling elk heart (which is tender and wonderful– thank you, Chris) this weekend, I thought back to 1977 which is when my sister and niece were killed. Some of our neighbors brought over prepared food for us, and it was very well received. It’s so simple, yet it makes a lot of sense. When you’re tragedy-struck, you probably have less, or no, appetite and you sure don’t want to fix meals or go shopping when you have all the aftermath to deal with, and the grief. But you have to eat, so I thought of bringing the parents and surviving son some of the soup and some other things this last Sunday.
Then the doubt kicked in. Third big mistake. “I don’t even really know these people, and for all I know they might hate the very idea of elk heart (Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies offering ‘possum-n-grits, chicken fried skunk, or some such, comes to mind), they might be offended, or maybe they’d blame my son for what happened or something. Maybe they don’t eat meat or these other things.” All this stupid, inane garbage prevented me from going down there straight away. The wife was out of town at a rehearsal, the kids need to stay on their homework—all the regular stuff adds up too.
An offer of help can always be refused, but at least you’re giving them the option and asking nothing, which is the whole point. Isn’t it? I’ve gone stupid and wobbly in my old age. Yakkity yacking more and doing less, maybe.
A few days later I finally got around to going over there with some home-made sweet cider and some fresh duck eggs. The grandmother answered the door, and I spoke to her and the mother. They were extremely gracious, appreciative and talkative, almost fawning, but that’s not the point. I’d decided in advance that if they slammed the door in my face I’d be OK with that. They informed me that the kids’ father is now in the hospital in intensive care for, among other things, not eating. (sigh)
If you think someone might need a little gesture of help, and even if you think your offer is dumb, maybe you should just offer the damn help. Git ‘er done. But I’m not finished here;
A community social network of some kind can be a precious thing, and whether you’re an atheist, agnostic, or haven’t thought much about it, your local church organizations can and do offer that sort of network. So long as they don’t go all hell-fire and brimstone on people, they are potentially a great value to society. I’ve harshly questioned organized religion, and I think with good reason. Some of them are downright evil, some have fallen in with the Tides Foundation or other global leftist organizations, but the argument isn’t all one-sided.
Time was when churches, the Rotary Club, Elks, Moose Lodge, Eagles, Granges and so on were THE centers of local community action. Now it’s a coercive, increasingly centralized government in concert with what can only be described as communist agitators and punks (such that now even the very term “community action” connotes leftist agitation). Which would you rather?
As I was driving across central Washington on my way back to Idaho tonight I stopped to take pictures of a warehouse fire just east of Royal City on the south side of Highway 26. I’m pretty sure this is the warehouse.
Click on the pictures to enlarge.
I’m nearly certain the warehouse contained some sort of agricultural products. It smelled like burning grass or grain.
In response to Joe’s recent post here, I want to get this on record;
The communists both here and abroad are becoming increasingly disappointed in Obama because he’s not doing enough to wreck this country fast enough.
In other news; look for the old guard Republicans to embark on a scorched Earth policy as the Teaparty begins to wrest control away from them. As the Smarter-Than-Thou (Progressive-leaning) Republicans are forced to retreat in shame, or switch parties in pride, they will attempt to burn the Republican Party and loot its treasuries. We may now have the rich entertainment of watching the communists’ and the capitalists’ final disillusionment with their respective parties. We may get a straight up contest of ideologies yet, in which of course the American Principles of Liberty would win.
The current parties, desperate to maintain power, will do everything possible to avoid such honesty.
I recently heard a communist radio talk show host calling, hysterically of course, for the Dems to get busy with the mud slinging already, and with abandon, ’cause they weren’t taking this contest seriously. Cool, except that the Republicans have been doing their evil work for them of late.
There was a call-in to one of the Marks that fill in for Limbaugh, responding to the Mark’s favorable comments on the “Fair Tax” today. The Mark repeated Steve Forbes’ call for a flat 17% income tax.
The caller tried to make the point that, although 17% would represent a large tax cut to the rich, which isn’t a bad thing, it would represent an undue hardship for those with the lowest incomes. The Mark’s reply was that at least this makes everyone a taxpayer, and therefore we’d all have a stake in things. True, but the major point was missed, in my opinion, by the host.
The correct reply to the caller’s concern is; “Perfect! Now you’ve started down the road to understanding, Little Grasshopper! If 17% percent is too much for the poor, it is too much for everyone else. If 17% will restrict the poor, it will restrict everyone else.
Let’s refer to the poor as our canaries in the income tax coal mine. If 17% makes the canary sick, we’re all being slowly poisoned, and whether we notice it right away or not, we’re all inhibited or restricted because of it.
Reduce taxes and investment and employment increase. Raise taxes and investment and employment decrease. Even if all you care about is revenue to the fed gov, and the issue of personal liberty is meaningless to you; do you want 17% of 14 trillion, or say, 8.5% of 28 trillion? That’s the sort of question we’re asking here. I say if there’s going to be an income tax it should be constitutionally limited to 5%. Any more than that not only cuts into charity in a big way, it encourages a black market, and stifles liberty and economic growth. If the fed gov can’t make it on a 5% flat tax, they’re either doing too much or wasting too much, and they need to be replaced with someone who can do the job right.
There’s another mechanism working here, that is at the same time obvious and proven, largely unreported, and almost never discussed. That is; America once was, and can be again, a haven for creativity, productivity, wealth creation, and a haven for wealth in general. Make it a safe bet that your property rights will be protected, and capital will flock to America, while at the same time wealth creation will be, once again, popping and scintillating across the fruited plains.
Let the enemies of Mankind go off and bang their heads against a concrete wall someplace. It doesn’t matter, so long as they’re ignored and powerless here.
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short.
Thomas Jefferson June 11, 1807 To John Norvell. From The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985) [In regards to the truthfulness of the mass media not a lot has changed in the last 200 years. But what has changed is the ability of people to easily invalidate such news sources and render them far less powerful than what they once were.—Joe]
This isn’t current news in any way shape or form. I just want it documented for my easy reference. I thought I had but I can’t find it.
I keep running into people that claim “there were no WMD found in Iraq”. Well, maybe in some strict sense that is true. The chemical weapons had already been used on his own people with the remainder smuggled to Syria prior to the 2003 invasion. And the yellow cake uranium was already known from the U.N. inspectors before the invasion.
Yellow cake uranium? Isn’t that what everyone said Bush lied about? There couldn’t have been any of that found or it would have been big news that all those people that said Bush lied would have been wrong!
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.
550 metric tons isn’t just some samples for experiments at your local nuclear physics classes. It’s many, many nuclear bombs worth of material.
Here’s a story you may have missed over the long holiday weekend: 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium worth tens of millions of dollars were shipped out of Iraq to Canada. The material was transported in 37 military flights in 3,500 secure barrels, according to the Associated Press.
There hasn’t been much of a fuss about this material because it had been discovered already by United Nations inspectors after the first Gulf War. But it took a second American war in Iraq to move the material out of the Middle East. For all the talk about America’s failure to discover Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, this is a big deal. We’ve reported on claims by top Israeli officials speaking on the record that Iraq smuggled its chemical weapons to Syria before America invaded in 2003.
The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. Saddam Hussein had already invaded Kuwait, launched missiles into Israeli cities, and harbored a terrorist group, the PKK, hostile to America’s NATO ally, Turkey. To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam and the same corrupt United Nations that failed to stop the genocide in Darfur and was guilty of the oil-for-food scandal would have been too big a risk.
The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.
The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.
The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.
Think about that the next time someone says, “What WMDs?” Or they say, “What media bias?”
The guy yesterday that held people hostage at Discovery Channel making demands that they “save the planet” by having a programing agenda that advocated for the voluntary extinction of humans (thanks to Ry for sending me the link to his webpage) will be dismissed as a nut case. This is probably valid but perhaps further consideration should be given to the topic. Don’t forget that not only did this nut case base his philosophy on the work of Al Gore but so did Ted Kaczynski.
We have known for a long time that anti-gun activists have strong violence tendencies. And such things as John Cusack’s “I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES [OF DICK] ARMEY AND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS” is not all that uncommon.
And of course all the great genocides of the last century were under leftist regimes.
My hypothesis is that at some level they know that is the only method by which they can achieve their goals. They, almost by definition, believe in the power of government to “do good” no matter what domain they enter into. They believe in central planning and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But as George Washington said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” Government is force. It is violence. Every dictate of the government is backed up with people with guns who job it is to force compliance.
Those who want to expand government, by definition, want to expand the use of force to achieve their goals. It should therefore come as no surprise that liberal individuals and groups are inclined to use violence to further their goals even outside the domain of government.
This also might explain why most liberals are opposed to the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It explains why they keep insisting, long after the courts have ruled otherwise, that the Second Amendment only protects the power of a state to arm itself independent of the Federal government. The explanation is that they see the willingness inside themselves and those they associate with to use violence and they fear it. They believe they, and everyone else, might use violence in an unethical manner if allowed the tools and the opportunity. They believe in the wisdom of “the central committee” to temper the violent impulses they believe the individuals to have.
This might also explain why liberals accuse the others of violence tendencies. They are projecting the worst fears about themselves onto their opponents.
These violent tendencies can be dealt with at the individual and small group level via the police and the legal system and amount to noise in the big picture of things. It’s at the governmental level that we have genocides with millions dead in the span of a few years. It is at the government level that we must enforce strong restrictions on their power to deliver violence against individuals. This is why we have a constitution that (by design, not in practice) limits governments to a small set of enumerated powers and the Second Amendment to stop a runaway government from becoming tyrannical. One might even be able to make the case that the Second Amendment isn’t only not about hunting–it’s about protecting us from liberals.
Chet came by my office today and started talking about “When we were kids.” We are about double the age of most of our co-workers and have a little more in common with each other than we do some of the other people. We both grew up on farms. He in Kansas. And, of course, me in Idaho. It gives us a perspective that “some of the younger folk” don’t really appreciate. We remember when most of the homes had outhouses instead of indoor toilets. And our parents lived through the “Great Depression”. We remember what our parents told us about what they and others had to do to make it through. I keep wondering if that will someday be referred to as “GD I” and this go around “GD II” but that is another story.
We talk about economics quite a bit. “What is it going to be like this time?”, we ask each other. Back then it was a world-wide thing too. That was what enabled Hitler to gain power.
This time it wasn’t economics that Chet wanted to talk about.
“Remember those old movies about WW II when the Germans would stop someone on the train and demand their papers?”, he asked.
My officemate had stepped out for bit and I knew we were going to have “a session”. I leaned my chair back and put my feet up on my desk and said, “Yeah. I remember.”
He continued, “We used to think how scary that was. How terrible it was they would do something like that. Right?”
“Absolutely!”, I agreed.
“There is an article in the New York Times today about how our government is doing that today on trains that run between New York City and Detroit”, he said.
I told him I had just read a blog post about that same sort of thing this morning. We chatted a while about it. Neither of us knowing what we could really do about it. “But it sure ain’t right.” we agreed. We always used to believe it couldn’t happen here. We were “special”. We were a free country and that sort of thing just didn’t happen here. It couldn’t happen here.
My officemate returned and Chet left with us both shaking our heads in sadness.
I found the New York Times article and after I read it I went over the Chet’s office. “The government is claiming that if they are within 100 miles of an international border or the three mile limit off the coast they don’t need warrant or anything. They can just grab people they think are ‘of interest’ and demand they prove they are citizens”, I told him. “Right here in this office we are within 100 miles of the Canadian border.” I let it sink in for a couple seconds then continued, “Think of what 100 miles inland from both coasts, the Gulf, and both the north and south borders cover. I’ll bet 50% of the U.S. population is covered by that.”
Chet and I didn’t have much to say after that you wouldn’t have already concluded. We could be headed for some scary times. We talked about it for a couple minutes and went back to work. I think we just got used to it.
If it makes you feel any better about the whole thing–the agent in charge of the Rochester station told the New York Times, “Our mission is to defend the homeland.”
Yeah, I’m sure it is. I think I heard that line in a movie when I was a kid.
Bigotry is terrible no matter where or when it happens. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when it happens in a place like San Fransisco. At least no one has been bashed in this latest incident.
