Saturday, May 21, 2016

It's a nice evening, and I want to take a ride;

you deal with the data














































Friend picked up a .45-70 a while ago,

and I've been looking up load information for it.

Bleep.

Black powder and smokeless, talk about an embarrassment of riches.  And when you touch on black, do a search for 'black powder bullet lube'.  Go on, I dare you. 

Be interesting when he gets some brass and starts loading for it.
(No, I am not sitting here looking at one and hiding it, it really is a friend.  I've done some casting and load help for him before, so there.)

No, no possible corrupution or favoritism here, noooooo...

Professional Journalism, NPR Version:
A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group's annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.
...
In The New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters(such as "You can trust us" NPR) to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran's nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.

"We created an echo chamber," said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, adding that "outside groups like Ploughshares" helped carry out the administration's message effectively.
As Insty puts it, Democrat operatives with bylines.


Friday, May 20, 2016

Friday evening, nice outside,

but the mosquitoes have shown up, so inside checking data it is










































It should be considered cruel

to send out things like "$50 off on Swarovski!"


And things become even more interesting in the Everglades

Joining an already robust list of invasive species, Florida researchers have now confirmed that three Nile crocodiles were indeed captured near Miami, and more are probably out there.

According to the Washington Times, University of Florida researchers recently published a report showing DNA testing from three crocs captured back in 2009, 2011 and 2014 does, in fact, match DNA from Nile crocodiles.

“They didn’t swim from Africa,” University of Florida herpetologist Kenneth Krysko said to the Times. “But we really don’t know how they got into the wild.”
I've got a couple of ideas!

Pythons and boas are bad enough, if there's enough of these bastards loose to make a breeding population...


'Higher' Education.  'Respect for contrary viewpoints'.
The Guardian questioned his fitness for academic life. At UWA, there was a rowdy gathering of academics and students, described by one witness as being "like a Rolling Stones concert," at which there was apparently "riotous applause" when a speaker called on UWA to "end [its] deal with the climate change-contrarian." Sounds less Rolling Stones gig, and more controversy-allergic mob.

The UWA Student Guild also insisted Lomborg should be kept out of UWA. The language the Guild used was striking: it accepted that Lomborg "doesn't refute climate change itself," but pointed out that he does have a "controversial track record [as a] climate contrarian." So this was about keeping controversy off campus, protecting UWA, not from scientifically incorrect thinking, but from contrarian thinking. It was a demand for nothing less than political censorship, of a thinker who dares to think differently to the mainstream on the issue of climate change.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Gee, I don't know, why DON'T people trust the 'Justice' Department anymore?

Or the two-faced corrupt jerks who work there?
A federal judge ordered the Justice Department to send its lawyers back to remedial ethics classes Thursday after finding that the administration repeatedly misledlied to the court in the high-profile challenge to President Obama’s deportation amnesty.

Judge Andrew S. Hanen said the lawyers knew the administration was approving amnesty applications but actively hid that information both from him and from the 26 states that had sued to stop the amnesty.

Worse yet, even after the court ordered a halt to the whole amnesty, the Homeland Security Department approved several thousand more applications, in defiance of the court’s strict admonition, Judge Hanen said, counting at least four separate times the government’s lawyers misledlied their ass off to him.
There.  Fixed that for him.

The Do'J' is all pissed-off about it.
“The department strongly disagrees with the order,” said spokesman Patrick Rodenbush.
 Of course it does; you corrupt little shits are used to getting away with this crap, and it must be really annoying for someone to actually DO something about it.

In court, the government lawyers had admitted they’d left the judge with the wrong impression, and expressed regret and sorrow.
Translation: "We lied like hell, over and over, and we're really sorry we got called on it."

Really, the PROPER course of action would've been to charge them for lying to the court, and starting disbarment procedures.  Unfortunately, all they're getting is a class to sleep through.

And the bastards wonder why they're looked on with contempt.




Some idiot in a truck carrying a boom lift didn't check heights

and brought down a big piece of a bridge; that's the southbound side of May Avenue that's now on the eastbound side of NW Highway here in Oklahoma City.

Something like twenty years back, someone carrying a crane did the same thing, except this time the damage is a LOT worse.  This is going to take a while to clear, let alone rebuild.  I'll have to take an alternate route to my favorite Mexican place.




"MHI fans don't cosplay.

We kit up."- Miguel Gonzalez


Among the reasons you couldn't pay me to live in New York Effing City*: the populace the last generation seems to prefer tyrants ruling over them.
Greeting customers as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” — or even not using the pronoun “ze” or “zir” — could prove costly for New York City businesses under rules drafted by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bureaucrats.

The Gotham mayor’s Commission on Human Rights says entities that fail to address customers by their preferred gender pronouns and titles are in violation of the law and could be subject to penalties of up to $250,000.


What?  The models don't cover this?
You know what it is, right?




*as Kim du Toit used to call it, though he didn't use 'effing'


Oh, it's pretty

And that kind of history...
After Lawton led a grueling but successful expedition which resulted in the capture and surrender of Apache leader Geronimo is 1886, his old friend was inspired to find a suitable recognition for the deed. His choice? The “Winchester Model 1886 Sporting Rifle (serial number 1)” which he obtained by virtue of his standing in the company. The gun survived in excellent condition.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Oh man, the anti-rights people will scream over this one, too

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decision Monday in Teixeira v. County of Alameda vindicates the Second Amendment rights of gun stores and provides a good model of the Second Amendment doctrines that have been developed by the federal Circuit Courts of Appeals. Eugene Volokh’s post has summarized the decision, so I will delve into the doctrinal details.

And this, from down in the piece, is the part that'll really cause them heartburn:
The historical analysis showed that commerce in firearms was universally understood to be part of the right to arms.
That is a BIG whack at some of their 'arguments'.

Ah, their tears are sweet, are they not?

'The President will veto this.'

  Fine.  Make him do it.  Then override the veto.  Which, besides being the right thing to do, would be the first time the Democrat Party overall showed more concern for that than for covering Obama's ass.


Civil Rights victory, in Sodom on the Potomac, yet

A federal judge ordered the city of Washington, D.C., to not enforce its concealed carry law that requires individuals to state a “good reason” for carrying a firearm inside the district.
...
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled Tuesday that city officials requiring prospective concealed carriers to make their case on why arming themselves is necessary is unconstitutional:
“I find that plaintiffs have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the District’s ‘good reason’ requirement is unconstitutional.”
And what makes this even more fun?
The suit, brought forward by Matthew Grace and the firearms advocates “Pink Pistols,” scored a major victory for gun rights with Tuesday’s ruling.
So when the CSGV & Co. start screaming, we can call them homophobes who don't want gay people to be able to defend themselves.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

That was a surprise

Went to the range this morning, and since I couldn't remember ever trying them in the mini-Sharps, I took a couple of .38 Special loads, and some 158-grain .357 loads.  And got this

                                              .38 Special, 148-grain wadcutter

                            .38 Special, some fairly hot 125-grain hollowpoints

And the crown,
                                            .357 Mag, 158-grain flat-nose
That one low hole?  Knew as I finished the press that I'd pulled it, so fired one more to have five in that top hole. It's only 30 yards, but I'd not had this kind of accuracy from this load before.  Of course, last time I tried this one I didn't have the scope on, so in that light that may make the difference.

On the .38s, I need to try the wadcutters again, as the one out left and the one out right may be my fault.  Why didn't I try them again today?  Because I'd only brought five, the last of a box.  If those two are my fault, this would make a quite good load for small game: almost no recoil in a rifle, relatively quiet, and that bullet should do a good job on them.  Might try the hollowpoints again as well, just to be sure.

The wadcutters and flat-nose are both X-Treme plated, by the way.  Ought to try these two with cast bullets, though it'd be a semi-wadcutter instead of a flat-nose in the 158-grain.

Added: I checked back on something, and had another surprise.  At the outdoor range last week, firing the Hornady FTX load in the Sharps, velocity was ~1520fps(was only able to chrono a couple of shots).  Back when I fired the same load through a rifle with a 16" barrel, average velocity was 1451fps.  With pistol cartridges such as .357 it seems to be the general rule that you get the max velocity with a 16" barrel; after that friction starts slowing the bullet.  Well, the mini-Sharps has a 26" barrel, yet gave the same or slightly higher velocity as the 16".  I'm surprised, and pleased.  And I need to check into this further.

Ok, someone explain to my why the Dept. of Homeland Screwing People OverSecurity

is involved in any way with these things?

Same people whining "We need more money and people!"  Maybe if you weren't screwing around in crap that's none of your damned business YOU'D HAVE MORE PEOPLE AND MONEY FOR WHAT YOU'RE ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO DO?*


*Which seems to be 'Screw people around as much as possible, and demand more money and people'.  Kind of blackmailing us.



Monday, May 16, 2016

Attention LEOs: the answer to crap like this

is not perjury, destruction of evidence, or pretending it didn't happen: it's to clean your own damned house, not make excuses for idiots, abusers and criminals.

And if you, or your department, is involved in covering-up, lying, and otherwise violating just about every one of Peel's Principles- not to mention perjury and other crimes- then you have not one damned bit of justification for griping that 'people don't respect us anymore', or anything related.l

From the Socialist Paradise of Venezuela:

I asked our regular nurse in a bit of dark humor whether everyone was cured or dead. She told me that there are two reasons for attendance to drop dramatically over the last two months. One, the treatments must keep apace with inflation which means that it is becoming quite a burden for many, even with insurance, as paychecks are not following inflation. But more dramatic, oncologie medicine stocks have been exhausted for many type of cancers, in particular the more common ones like breast cancers.
...
Some pro Chavez/regime supporter may point out that it is mere justice that all Venezuelans have to go though this, rich or poor.  After all, the poor do not get either the medicine, nor the health support. I will reply that totalitarian regimes do not care about what happens to their civilians. They are a mere casualty in the war for the just cause. It does not matter for the regime whether its supporters die in greater numbers, they are expendable. What matters in the end is that the opposition to the regime is broken. The end justifies the means. All methods are valid. Period.


Speaking of 'all methods are valid', especially when it fills your pockets,
The main climate scientist behind a letter asking President Barack Obama to prosecute those who question global warming may have been cheating taxpayers by illegally “double-dipping” — he was paying himself and his wife millions of dollars while running a taxpayer-funded research group while collecting a paycheck from his state-funded academic job.

“Since 2001, as President of IGES, Dr. Shukla appears to have paid himself and his wife a total of $5.6 million in compensation — an excessive amount for a non-profit relying on taxpayer money,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith sent to the inspector general of the National Science Foundation.

Interview with Jesse Hughes about the Bataclan massacre

Pretty bad.  Language warning, as you might expect.
During the attack, one cop finally realized it wasn’t a hostage situation and yelled out, “It’s a turkey shoot” as he charged in, holding his gun. He got shot right through the hand and into the neck and kept going. He took a terrorist out, chased another one into the hallway, who then blew himself up, and did it to another guy, who blew himself up on stage. Our amplifiers were a gory mess.
Did that cop live?
Yes, I met him in triage. I hung out with him. Great guy.
You went to the hospital?
I had pieces of teeth and human bone pulled out of my face. A girl got shot right next to me by the shooter at the top of the stairs who I had met earlier. She stepped one step in front of me and her head just exploded. It blew pieces of her teeth and skull into my face.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Yeah, about that Australian model...

Australians now own more guns than before the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, according to new research that shows firearm imports hit a record high in 2014-15.
Doesn't fit the Preferred Narrative, does it?

There's some of the same "It's not more people shooting, it's just the same owners buying more guns!" crap the gun bigots have tried to sell here; slight problem with that:
Psychologist and self-described gun control critic Samara McPhedran, from Griffith University’s Violence Research and Prevention Program, attributes the boom in firearm sales to the rising popularity of shooting sports among a younger demographic.
“I think what the figures show fundamentally is that people are interested in target shooting and hunting, and that interest seems to be growing over time,” she said.

And under the heading of 'unintended consequences',
One unintended consequence of the post-Port Arthur gun laws was to boost the wealth and widen the influence of shooting clubs, according to Associate Professor Alpers.
The 1996 laws require gun owners to show they have a genuine reason to own a firearm. The easiest way for people in urban areas to do this is through membership in a gun club, Associate Professor Alpers said.
And not just membership but active participation. In NSW, for example, the firearm licensing regulations require members of target shooting clubs to participate at least four times a year. In Victoria, a licensed handgun owner is required to participate in at least 10 shoots a year. The requirements vary by jurisdiction.
“People who never normally went to gun clubs were now going to gun clubs and shooting ranges because the law obliged them to,” Associate Professor Alpers said.
“So the gun lobby has grown in size, political clout and, certainly, in money … as a side-effect of the post-Port Arthur gun laws.”
They put that crap in with the intention of making it onerous enough that people would give up, and some probably did; the rest are banding together and going after the politicians.  An effect the hoplophobes and gun bigots did NOT want.

Which, by the way, is making me do a happy dance.

And, speaking of not fitting the Narrative,
On the other hand, the link between Australia’s gun-buying surge and gun violence isn’t clear.

After all, rising gun sales are nothing new. “This isn’t a sudden increase. It’s a consistent pattern that we’ve seen over a number of years,” Dr McPhedran said.

And despite those increases we’ve seen steady declines in firearm misuse.”
Shades of 'Blood in the streets!  Bodies in the gutters!' not happening, right?


And let's not forget something the Australian authorities probably wish we didn't know about: the compliance rate for the 1996 confiscations wasn't exactly sterling:
The Australian Shooters Journal did its own math in a 1997 article on the “gun buyback.” Researchers for the publication pointed out that the Australian government’s own low-ball, pre-ban estimate of the number of prohibited weapons in the country yielded a compliance rate of 19 percent.

But maybe success is in the eye of the beholder. After the expected mountains of surrendered weapons failed to manifest themselves, then-Australian Attorney General Darryl Williams’s office revised its estimate of total firearms in the country to a number lower than its pre-ban estimate of prohibited firearms, and declared victory.

Inspector McCoomb, like the Australian Shooters Journal, concluded the ban “has failed.”
Friend of mine knows someone down there, lived in an area that pre-97, did not have registration.  The guy mentioned that for a couple of months after the confiscations were announced, you couldn't find 6" PVC pipe and caps anywhere; wonder what all that was being used for...


Oh yeah, this is going to end well...

Six people have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling weapons to radical Islamists in Sweden, Bosnian Serb authorities said on Friday.
...
Five arrests were made by Bosnian-Serbian anti-terrorism officials on Thursday, said officials, after large quantities of military-grade weapons were found during police raids.

A spokesperson said the arrests were carried out as part of Swedish-run operation called 'Varg RS', but Swedish authorities would not confirm nor comment on the police raids.
 ...
According to claims in Bosnian Serb media cited by TT, police suspect that the smugglers had intended to deliver the weapons to a group in Sweden called 'Muslim Brothers'.

It was not immediately known whether or not the group was linked to the islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood, which has its roots in Egypt.

Yeah, it's going to be kind of alarming to the populace to find out that some of the 'migrants' are doing this. Might even be damaging to goodthink.