Saturday, October 03, 2009

Apparently it's something in Pedigree food;

changing food and the pills have made a world of differene in Security Staff. Nose back to normal size and the rawness going away, eyes back to normal and more energy.

Damned if I know what it is, but I won't be getting that brand for her again.

Friday, October 02, 2009

I first read the saying A pistol is to get to a shotgun is to get

to a rifle a while back; we may have to add a corollary: An axe is to get the guys rifle and shoot him with.
...21-year-old Rukhsana Kausar attacked him with an axe, then shot him dead with his own gun.

Let's start with Sen. John. Effing Kerry(Evil Party-MA)

blocking a Stupid Party senator from going to Honduras.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has blocked Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) trip to Honduras slated to begin Friday, according to DeMint's office.

But the chairman's office claimed that the DeMint trip was stopped because the South Carolina Republican is blocking two of President Barack Obama's nominations: Auturo Valenzuela, Obama’s nominee to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Tom Shannon, the current assistant secretary and nominee to be ambassador to Brazil
.
'But'? That translates to "Give us what we want and we'll let you go", which is about the level of work we've come to expect from John Effing Kerry. And considering the actions of Brazil in this mess, they ought to be having some kind of problem. And gee, makes you wonder why the Democrats don't want this trip to Honduras made, doesn't it?


Take a look at how Chicago taxpayers- everyone, really- are going to be screwed(again) for the sake of the Daleys and friends. Probably including Obama, who's taking time from worrying about things like the war to fly around pushing for Chicago to get the Olympics.


Oh, and Jimmy Carter(Worst President Ever, except Obama's catching up fast) is a damned liar.


Mikey Moore(Lying Hypocrite-who cares) is making the unions he keeps praising unhappy. Again. Let us remember, this is the guy who told people working for him that if they joined a union they'd be fired. Who's become rich making bullshit 'documentaries' and claims 'Capitalism never did a thing for me'. Slimy bastard, isn't he?


Today we'll find out if the Irish still have enough spirit to tell the EU to piss off. For the second time, as noted.


My first thought is "Tough crap, guy; you have to wear the helmet for riot duty, and if it won't fit over your turban..."
But the panel found he suffered a single case of indirect racial and religious discrimination, after he was included on a group email on February 8 2008, telling officers riot training was mandatory and he would therefore have to remove his turban.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

It is now officially time to puke on Hollyweird

In an interview, Weinstein said that people generally misunderstand what happened to Polanski at sentencing. He's not convinced public opinion is running against the filmmaker and dismisses the categorization of Hollywood as amoral. "Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," Weinstein said. "We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe."
We shouldn't be surprised; this is a direct fallout from those idiot bumper stickers that say Democrats Care. 'Nobody else does, just us.' Apparently nobody else raised money/donated for 9/11 victims(damn few in Hollywood seem to give a crap about the troops fighting the enemy); and nobody but HOLLYWOOD PEOPLE were there after Katrina and whatever the Approved Cause de Jure is.

Oh, and Weinstein? Would have been nice if some of that wondrous compassion could have been given over to the troops keeping the enemy from raping you and cutting off your head, instead of you pissing down their back damn near from day one.

Tam want's a .470;

she can join the club. I'd have to spend a fortune just to buy dies and components to reload to feed the damn thing, but I want one.

Like that Holland & Holland double in the case I saw at Tulsa. God, it was a lovely thing.

Apparently there are problems with the Colt Umarex

At least the ad indicates so.

Pointed to by Uncle

They knew it was there,

but it had never been excavated. But it's being done now.

"Who you gonna believe, us or the documents we left beh-

er, were stolen from us?!"
Documents purported to have been taken from ACORN computers in Oklahoma City by a state lawmaker appear to be "partially doctored,” a national leader of the community-organizing group said Wednesday.

"The documents that we have seen — ostensibly taken from these computers — do not appear to reflect the work of ACORN in Oklahoma and appear to be partially doctored versions of some ACORN documents,” said Brian Kettenring, deputy director of national operations for ACORN
.
Oh, of COURSE it couldn't be their data; why that would mean they were dishonest... Of course, they could claim he 'doctored' them by printing them out. Which doesn't change the content, but it all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is, doesn't it?
Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, said the documents were recovered from two computers abandoned by ACORN workers in Oklahoma City. Reynolds said he bought the computers from the landlord of an ACORN office in Oklahoma City after the group stopped paying its lease on the office. The computers were password-protected, but he found the passwords in a drawer, he said.
ACORN didn't pay the bills? My, my, my.
"We consider our computers to be stolen property, the contents thereof stolen work product,” Kettenring said in an e-mail response Wednesday to The Oklahoman.
Well, they can bitch about it, but if they left the stuff behind when they moved out, I rather doubt they can call it 'stolen'. Not legitimately.

Short version:
ACORN didn't pay the bills and moved out. Left stuff behind.
Landlord kept stuff.
Reynolds bought stuff, found the documents.
ACORN starts "IT'S A LIE!!" coverup. Like the "We never gave aid to that pimp!" coverup, I guess.

Delight your kids! Amaze your friends!! Make Sarah Brady cry!!!

Kalashnakitty shirts, in time for the holidays!!!!

"Obama's not-so-secret plan to raise taxes"

Which article includes this:
Obama’s campaign promise to not raise taxes on households making less than $250,000 a year was always considered a joke here inside the Beltway. It’s the economic “consensus” — and this was true even before the financial meltdown and recession — that rising entitlement costs would eventually mean a higher tax burden for the American people.

Maybe it was a joke inside the campaign, too. Since being elected, Obama has raised cigarette taxes and has advocated raising healthcare taxes, energy and small business taxes, in addition to corporate taxes. What’s more, economic advisers like Larry Summers seem eager to get rid of all the Bush tax cuts, not just those on so-called wealthy Americans.
...
Liberals love the idea of a VAT because it’s, well, so European — also because it does raise tons of revenue to expand government. And that is what Obama wants: more revenue to pay for bigger government. Is a VAT better than the soak-the-rich approach favored by Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel? Sure. Of course, the concern is that a VAT would be in addition to new soak-the-rich taxes.
(Of course it would; can you see Obama and the Democrats actually getting rid of a tax?)
See, even after the recession, there might be a 6 percentage point difference between what Uncle Sam spends as a percentage of GDP and what it takes in. Liberals like Krugman have no problem with making up that difference purely through higher taxes, even though that translates into raising the national tax burden by at least a third. And that, even though such a massive hike might well have a crushing effect on growth
.

Think of your taxes going up by 'at least a third'. Think of how that would screw with things. And think about the fact that so many Democrats(and some RHINOs) have no problem with that.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Range, general and Gadsden stuff

Today reinforced one of the nice things about the .22 conversion kit I have for the 1911: I can only shoot a box, maybe a box .5 of full-power .45 in a day before my hands are asking me why the hell I'm doing this to them?, whereas I can put a LOT of .22's downrange. Practice is practice, and you can do draw & fire and everything else with it.


I've noticed that ammo is becoming not quite as scarce; it's not plentiful, but you can find some now. Except for .380, that stuff is still "I've got X-thousand on order, but no idea when they'll get in."


Yesterday helped friend with the last of the back porch crap I'm doing for a while. Got the forms set and concrete mixed and poured for the sill around the new porch area. And my hands ache. Kind of like the day after Med-Fair aching. Which means no more digging, or anything else, for a few days.


Kathy Shaidle points to a place with lots of Gadsden flags and patches and stuff.


Security Staff was having some nose problems, as in her nose getting very red and a bit swollen, and today her eyes were puffy. Took her to the vet. Verdict: the new food I switched to a week or so ago?, she's having an allergic reaction to. So new food bought, she got a cortisone shot and some pills and I hope that'll take care of it.


I was the subject of an attack in The Phoenix a year or two back. As hit pieces go, it was a pretty feeble effort, and I didn’t feel it was worth driving all the way down to Boston just to kill a few members of staff and burn the building down. But it makes you think. In our multicultural society, the best way to get “respect” from others is to despise them; the surest way to have your views boundlessly “tolerated” is to be utterly intolerant of anybody else’s. Those who think Islam will apply these lessons only to op-ed cartoons or representations of Mohammed are very foolish.

Meanwhile, we prattle on about “moderate Muslims”, telling ourselves that the “vast majority” of Muslims aren’t terrorists, don’t support terrorists, etc.

Okay, why don’t we hear from them then?

Because they live in communities where the ideological bullies set the pace, where the price of speaking out is too high, and so they find it easier to say nothing, keep their heads down. And why would we expect them to do any differently when the mighty BBC and CNN do the same? If there is such a thing as a “moderate Muslim”, he’s surely thinking, “Well, if the CBC and The Toronto Star have to knuckle under to the imams, there’s no point me tossing in my two bits.”



My Ceiner conversion is one of the more ammo-tolerant .22 systems I've seen. It'll work reliably with Remington Golden Bullet, Federal copper-plated hollowpoints, Centurion solids and Federal Champion, but doesn't care for Winchester unplated hollowpoints. The latter just don't have enough power to cycle the slide but maybe three times out of ten. Works a hell of a lot more reliably with more ammo than friend's Sig Mosquito did.


Yeah, ACORN has been screwing with things in Oklahoma, too.
The document continues, noting that Oklahoma ACORN, in 2007, was looking towards a five-year plan to obtain power and that is the key term – power – that is evident is this particular document.

Note: “Therefore, the route to power is twofold: First, build powerful city organizations in Oklahoma City and Tulsa that can control these municipalities. Second, become an influential organization by shaping a handful of strategic legislative districts that, by themselves, can change who controls the state legislature.”



I just noticed earlier that not only had the coolant level in the bike dropped(a bit over time, no problem), it had dropped fast. I think there's a crack in the overflow tank, which means tomorrow I have to take it off and see if it's repairable. I hope so, as that's a part that's only available from the factory.


The tool holders I ordered from Grizzly for the lathe came in today. Not usable at all; the body is thicker than the description, and they only hold a tiny 3/16" bit. And even if I ground the body to fit the tool post and the body to hold 1/4" bits, it wouldn't fit right between tool post, compound slide and work. Good thing, I sent for a return number and had it in about two hours, so they're on the way back. If I can find some suitable size flat stock I may just try making one; I'd wanted to skip that if I could because it'll involve a lot of hacksaw work(hands hate that anymore) but it may be the only way. Unless I want to spend a hundred bucks for a quick-change toolpost, which I don't.


Damn, it's past 2200. 'Night, all.

For further idea as to why the Republicans are known as the Stupid Party,

RNS points to this:
Here’s the story that is circulating at the convention: Back in the spring, Elder went to Washington to sit down with John Cornyn and the NRSC, and ask for their support for a bid for U.S. Senate against Barbara Boxer. Cornyn and the NRSC told him the following:

1. If Elder chose to run, they would not support him.
2. The NRSC was already committed to supporting Carly Fiorina
3. The NRSC expected Fiorina to lose against Boxer, but expected her to tie up Democrat resources in the meantime.

So Larry Elder came back to California and did not run. You know the rest: he’s watched the Fiorina campaign move from crisis to crisis (failure to vote, Iran sales, revelation of no self-funding, no CRP attendance, this Rasmussen poll, that website, etc.), and feeling increasingly frustrated. It’s probably too late for him to enter and Larry is hot under the collar that Cornyn gave him such terrible advice. So he’s talking to his friends — and his friends are talking to us — and I’m talking to you.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

And the threats and "Bleep you!" over the H1N1 vaccine

begin:
New York is the first state in the country to mandate flu vaccinations for its health care workers. The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be available beginning next week. Much of it is reserved for state health care workers, but there is growing opposition to required innoculations.

Health care workers in Hauppauge screamed "No forced shots!" as they rallied Tuesday against the state regulation requiring them to roll up their sleeves.
...
Small said she will refuse, worried the vaccine is untested and unproven, leaving her vulnerable. In 1976, there were some deaths associated with a swine flu vaccination
.
In '76 there were more deaths, and damned nasty side effects, from the vaccine than there was from the flu. And people are worried about a repeat of that mess.

Friend of mine's wife is a nurse. She recently asked someone she works with who has an epidemiology background about the vaccine and was flatly told "Don't take it; it's not been tested sufficiently. And don't let your kids get it, either." After that, and talking to some other folks, they can forget making her(or some of the other nurses for that matter) take the stuff unless they can be shown test results they can trust.

So the Brazilian government is taking heat back home

for screwing around in Honduras. Good. I do have to take note of the excuse the government is using:
Foreign Minister Celso Amorim defended Brazil's position before a Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday.

"What's at stake here is not only a small country but the future of democracy in Central America," Amorim said. "Tolerating this coup could stimulate others in the region."

Mr. Amorim, you're a damned liar. This was a legal action taken at the request of the legislature and at the order of the Supreme Court; you calling it a coup to excuse your meddling does not make it so. If you had any sense of honor or shame, you'd hide your face, apologize, and try to get your country out of this bullshit. Instead, having no honor or shame, you are making it worse.

Magnitude 8 earthquake in the Pacific updated

but it looks like minimal deaths, happily.

Added: news just mentioned 'villages wiped out' and 'scores missing', so it could turn out a fair bit worse than I'd thought. We'll see.

Update: well, crap. Looks like a lot more deaths than the original report I read thought; I was afraid of that. And then another, 7.9, in Indonesia, lots of damage, death & injuries.

Ah yes, 'sensitivity' taken to the level of utter stupidity

When Tracy Ryan spotted a suspected burglar emerging from the dog sanctuary where she works, she thought she would have little problem pointing him out to police.

After all, he had a large port-wine stain on his face.

But when police set up an identity parade, they refused to take the man's distinctive birthmark into account - in case it infringed his human rights
.
What's that you say? Effing insane? Stupid?

Yup.

An officer from the Nottinghamshire force explained that the mark was too rare to be included in a profile of the burglar when it was entered into a computer database.

It would leave only a small pool of potential suspects in the electronic ID parade, he said, breaking police rules.

Under laws designed to take into account 'the rights and freedoms of the public', witnesses must be shown a minimum of 12 photographs before they are allowed to identify a suspect
.
So screw having a positive identifying feature to narrow the possibilities, instead they use it to BROADEN the number of people she has to look at.

But wait! There's more!!
Mrs Ryan noted that, apart from his birthmark, the suspected culprit was tall and wore a white tracksuit. She also took his car registration number.

Police have subsequently made an arrest and Mrs Ryan is due to attend a second identification parade which will include the suspect, who is on bail.

He will be pictured alongside 11 people of a similar appearance. But if he has a birthmark, it will still be kept secret.

The suspected thief and the other participants will be made to cover one side of their face
.

The British justice system; broken beyond belief.

I think you probably know what I think of Polanski,

but after reading about all the Hollyweenies pleading- or demanding in some cases- that it all be dropped, I'll throw it out anyway:

In a pigs ass.

He drugged and raped a 13-year old girl. He didn't get a trial because he plead guilty. He knew she was 13, he gave her drugs, he anally raped her. And when he thought he might get an actual sentence for it, he fled. And now he's been caught and is facing being brought back for sentencing.

What do we get from our 'elites', especially those in entertainment? "Oh, this is a waste of time. It was so long ago. Hasn't he suffered enough? I mean, he hasn't been able to work in Hollywood for DECADES!" Which last is apparently so horrible(ignore working in Europe and travelling and marrying and getting a bloody Oscar) a punishment that anything short of defenestration(now there's an idea...) is a lesser harm.

He did it. He ran. He's been arrested and he should face the penalty. And Hollywood and every other apologist for him can kiss my ass.

Monday, September 28, 2009

It's been said you should never answer questions from a cop

without an attorney beyond "May I see your license?"; it seems the prosecutors make that an even better idea.
In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Pottawattamie v. McGhee in order to resolve it. The facts of the case aren't in dispute. In 1978, a retired Iowa police captain was killed by a shotgun blast while working as a private security guard. Prosecutors Joseph Hrvol and David Richter then worked with local police to manufacture evidence against the two chief suspects, Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, Jr. The two men were convicted of the murder in separate trials, and each was sentenced to life without parole.

The Iowa Supreme Court set aside both convictions in 2003, citing exculpatory evidence pointing to another suspect that was withheld from defense counsel in both trials. Both men were eventually released from prison. Seeking damages for losing 25 years of their lives, they brought a civil rights suit against the police, prosecutors, and county that convicted them. Hrvol and Richter maintain that under the Supreme Court's decision in the 1976 case Imbler v. Pacthman, they have absolute immunity against such a suit
.
Bad enough, right? Two prosecutors deliberately, with malice aforethought you could say, frame innocent men into prison. But it gets worse:
Hrvol and Richter contend that prosecutorial immunity gives government officials the right to coerce witnesses to lie, withhold evidence pointing to a suspect's innocence, and work with police to manufacture false evidence of guilt, then use that evidence to win false convictions that send two men to prison for 25 years. Their motivation for making this argument is obvious; they'd rather not pay for their misconduct. But they're supported in amicus briefs filed by the U.S. Solicitor General, the National District Attorneys Association, and the attorneys general of 27 states and the District of Columbia. Notably, Cook County, Illinois, home to a number of wrongful convictions, also filed its own brief in support of the prosecutors.

My first thought involves very unsocial behavior. For a bunch of law enforcement and Justice Department 'professionals' to argue that one of their number who lies in court, frames innocent people and sends them to prison should be immune from being sued... reminds me of the bastards in Congress who had such cows when the FBI served a search warrant on Jeffords and searched his office; they seemed to believe their offices were somehow immune to the laws everyone else has to obey. Now we see that these clowns think the same thing; that they shouldn't have to face the same kind of penalties that you or I would for doing such wrongs.

Any prosecutor who knowingly uses false evidence, let alone frames an innocent into prison this way, should not only be sued, they should be prosecuted and jailed. Assuming we could find an honest prosecutor who'd handle the case.

Which, from the sound of this crap, I wonder.

Window replaced

Amazingly, no visible blood loss during process

My house has the old style windows where the bottom will slide up and the top slide down. About a month ago I decided to slick up a couple of them where the upper was sticky, so I got out the paste wax and waxed the track, pulled them down, then waxed the upper section. Work them back & forth a few times and it smooths things out nicely. So nicely that one of them slipped down a bit when I moved the lower, and when I pushed it back up it went with just a little more enthusiasm than expected.

Crack.

Diagonal crack from the lower left to upper right corner with a small piece breaking out at the top. Dammit. Since it was rainy at the time(the thought of standing out in the rain replacing glass did not thrill me) I flooded the crack with superglue to stabilize it and left it for later. Which, today being nice, was the day. Only problem was that the old glazing was still in very good shape; I wound up using the dremel and a coarse grinding ball to break some of it loose, which let me break the rest off.

Oddly enough, among things I know will hurt me, window glass is one thing that doesn't really bother me to work with. I know how an edge of it will cut, and I've known a couple of people who had broken glass fall on them(one industrial accident, one doing what I was) and got interesting scars from it; one damn near died. But for some reason, unlike various machinery and work, glass doesn't bother me; just go slow, and wear gloves for taking out the broken stuff. Odd, because it's at least as dangerous as most of the other stuff.

In any case, it's done. I had to get glazing points and glaze as well as the glass. And for some reason Lowe's doesn't carry the small tubs of compound, only the one big enough to do most of the house. So I got a tube that fits the caulking gun instead.

So one new window pane installed.

After all that was done I fooled with the lathe a bit. Not much; all the digging caught up today, mostly in my hands. Sore enough I almost put off the window another day. I tried some threading and screwed up; I started it at one point without engaging the backgears and chipped two teeth on one gear. Happily, nobody was around to hear the language practice. I know where I can get a replacement, but it'll have to wait a month or so.

Well, THIS is really going to help settle things

[/sarcasm]
A Utah attorney claims the FBI edited some security camera videotapes from the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing before releasing the recordings to him.

"Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain’t no such thing as a coincidence,” Jesse Trentadue told The Associated Press Sunday.

"The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02,” he said. "The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn’t want anybody to see.”


From the AP story,
He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because "they had run out of tape" or "the tape was being replaced."

One camera having tech problems or tape being changed at just that time, sure. Two of them? Hmmmm... Three or four? All at once? All at that time? Sorry guys, have a bit of a problem with that.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Not only is Gadhafi a freakin' nutcase

who supports terrorists, now President Unicornfarts wants to give him money. To 'project a new and positive image of Libya'.

Like anything short of a decapitating strike or revolution could manage that...

Test results: Microlon engine treatment and joint juice

No, dammit, they're not the same stuff.

First, about a year ago I decided to give my truck engine the Microlon treatment, and I've been watching mileage ever since.

Not the best of tests because my tracking of mileage had been kind of sketchy prior to this. But here's what I came up with:
There is a bit of mileage difference. I'm guessing 1-2 mpg in the city, as much as 3-4 highway. Not dramatic but a real difference. On highway I say 'as much as' because on some of the trips I'd have strong headwinds, and a truck doesn't have the most aerodynamically efficient shape; not much the engine does can make up for that.

So I didn't get a large boost, but I did get one. Realistically, about all I could ask for. As I recall the motorcycle got about a 3-5 mpg boost, city & highway. One thing I noticed is real subjective but I'll pass it along anyway; seems like the oil doesn't look as dirty when I change it, usually around 4,000 miles. I have no way to test the oil for dirty at that point so I'm just throwing it in as an oddity.

I did say it was subjective.


The other test is a very short-term at this time: Elations. Og wrote about the stuff and said it really helped his knees. Well, even taking glucosimine/chondroitin pills every day mine have been getting worse(maybe they want to match with my hands?), so decided to try it. Happily I found out Sam's* carries it, so got some to try.

I've been taking it about a week now, which is too short a time to say much, but I really noticed one thing this morning: after all the shovel/walk/carry work yesterday, my knees should have been awful, and they weren't. I was a touch sore, but nothing like what I expected.

So I'll keep taking the stuff and see how it goes.


*Yes, I know Sam's is directly connected to Wal-Mart; I can't give up every damn place. I have been pretty good about not going to Wally World unless there's something nobody else around carries, and that'll have to do. If you're new to this place, when W-M decided to suck up to Bloomberg's Mayors Who Want To Ban Guns But Don't Have The Integrity To Say It Flat-Out group, I wrote to them saying I had a problem with their actions on this; I got back a fairly insulting form letter blowing me off. 'Fairly insulting' as it included the line "...we don't think our honest customers will mind" near as I can recall the wording; someone hints that objecting to their decision means I'm not an honest customer, they're cordially invited to kiss my ass. And I won't give them any more of my money if I can avoid it.

Well, maybe this is why Brazil is sucking up to Chavez

Take this:
Iran is helping to detect uranium deposits in Venezuela and initial evaluations suggest reserves are significant, President Hugo Chavez’s government said Friday.
and cross it with this:
To top that off, Brazil’s vice president and former defense minister, Jose Alencar, told journalists that “we have to advance on” developing nukes “as an instrument of deterrence” because of Brazil’s massive western border and oil-rich territorial sea.

Yeah. Brazil 'needs nukes' to protect their oil...

FROM WHO, you fucking morons?

And President HopeyChangeyPants can't deal with the commander in Afghanistan's request for more troops right now because
...the Obama administration took official custody today of the report that requests a significant troop increase for the Af-Pak theater. However, Barack Obama will not officially get to see it for a while. The Pentagon says they will hold his request, officially, until Obama officially makes an official decision about the officially official policy he wants to officially pursue in the war:
Which means he wants to see if he can find a way to surrender and run to make his lefty allies happy without everyone else looking at either impeachment or hanging. This from a bastard who spent how long lecturing that 'Afghanistan is the real war, the right war, and I will fight to win it!'* Of course, now he IS the President and won't be allowed to vote 'Present' on it. He'll be held responsible, and he don't like that, do he? And he's so busy telling us how he's "...not interested in victory", probably because both he's not(asshole) and trying to set things up so if he does pop out with a cut & run strategy, he can claim it's part of a 'more worldly strategy' or some similar bullshit.

Hey, Mr. President, you going to give Brazil a stern look over this?

Bullshit Bob Ainsworth, British Defense Secretary

As to why Yon has dubbed him that, go read.

“This will prove Bob Ainsworth was trying to cover up the real reason for James’s death. He was trying to shift blame away from the lack of equipment for which the MoD was responsible and negligent,” Philippson said.

Bob Ainsworth is covered in British blood and painfully deceptive. Henceforth, he will always be known as “Bullshit Bob” to me.

Among the other reasons Baucus & Buttmonkeys Inc.

don't want to post the bill before voting; not only can you be fined $1,900 for not buying insurance,
...if there is a willful failure to file, pay, maintain appropriate records and the like that the taxpayer may be charged with a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to $25,000 and not more than one year in jail.

Well, damn

Amazing what happens when a tool is made right.

Evening before last I worked with the lathe a bit, then did some comparing to the book and found I had the side rake angle(think of one of the bevels leading to a knife edge) wrong. So I reground it- yes, again- and this time got it right. Last night, before I collapsed, I gave it a try; BIG difference. Faster, cleaner cutting and could do deeper cuts with no chatter.

I found a set of mini-lathe tool holders at Grizzly and ordered them(which also includes more bits which at this rate I'll need), so hopefully will get here in a few days. Right now I'm clamping the bit in the post that should hold the tool holder, which is not exactly the ideal setup; enough for trying some small stuff, not stable enough for bigger. Happily, most of these things don't cost much, and as it is it'll take a while to get all the stuff. Next after this, maybe sometime next month, is a tailstock spindle I can put a drill chuck on, which will make drilling pieces in the exact center much easier and more consistent.

Sarkozy has his problems, but he seems more grounded in reality

on the subject of nukes than The Obama:
Secondly, there is North Korea — and there it is even more striking. It has violated every Security Council decision since 1993. It pays absolutely no attention to what the international community says. Even more, it continues ballistic missile testing. How can we accept that? What conclusions should we draw? …”