Ah, the level of information we've come to expect

from much of the major media:
Get all that? We have the New York City Health Department saying soda doesn’t actually make you fat, and Duke researchers saying soda taxes don’t actually discourage people from drinking soda, and Bennett pushing the idea that we need soda taxes anyway in order to subsidize medical treatment for all the people who are getting fat from stuff besides soda.

And perhaps most significant: Not a word about public health pioneer Mayor Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg news.
This is the same major media that likes to keep pushing the Mexican Gun Lie, too. Even though they know it's bullcrap.


More on the past wonders of the communism the 'progressives' want to ram down our throats:
But inside the archives is an abundance of evidence, from the minutes of emergency committees to secret police reports and public security investigations, that show these estimates to be woefully inadequate.

In the summer of 1962, for instance, the head of the Public Security Bureau in Sichuan sent a long handwritten list of casualties to the local boss, Li Jingquan, informing him that 10.6 million people had died in his province from 1958 to 1961. In many other cases, local party committees investigated the scale of death in the immediate aftermath of the famine, leaving detailed computations of the scale of the horror.

In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths.
Link found at Insty, along with this:
Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest.


Why no, I'd never heard about this:
Fred Phelps is a long time Democrat supporter and frequent Democrat candidate for various offices in Kansas. As recently as 1998 Phelps got 15% in a Democrat primary for governor. He has been a devoted supporter of Al Gore and led his church members in working for Gore in 1988. Phelps’ son Fred hosted a fund raiser for Gore in his home. Have you ever heard of that? Why do you think these things are left out of news reports about Phelps?
Is that a rhetorical question if you ever heard one?



Since Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act 27 years ago, less that 250 new medications and treatments have reached the market, so that means CBLB502 is in very select company. It is the first designed to combat the effects of a massive radiation dose.

The rush to get the drug on the market raises a rather obvious question. The threat of a nuclear or radiological attack by terrorists has existed for more than a decade. If their capabilities in those areas have remained rather crude, why expedite production and introduction of CBLB502? Why not spend the money on more pressing homeland security needs?
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?


Guess That Party! again:
Ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the ultimate target in a six-year federal investigation into City Hall corruption, was indicted today by a federal grand jury, accused of orchestrating an elaborate scheme that forced contractors to pay heavily in return for city contracts.

The charges cap a lengthy federal corruption investigation headed by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office that has netted more than 10 felony convictions, including former City Council President Monica Conyers.



Is Incompitano still saying the border 'is as secure as it's ever been'?
Terry, 40, was killed about 11 p.m. while patrolling near Peck Canyon in a remote area by Arizona 289.

Border Patrol agents and officers from the Department of Public Safety are stationed on ridgelines throughout the area in the Coronado National Forest. Authorities also are stationed along Peña Blanca Lake.

The scene is about 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border and west of Interstate 19.
TEN MILES INSIDE THE BORDER. I guess somehow they leapfrogged that 'secure border' Napolitano claims.


One more activist the media is either too stupid to find the facts about or too dishonest and biased to report on:
Much of the interviewing press was happy to treat Monet Parham as a random (if oddly well-informed) California mom, but it didn’t take the blogosphere long to discover that she is apparently anything but random. Ira Stoll, who blogs at Future of Capitalism and used to put out the New York Times-tweaking smartertimes.com, soon discovered (via a commenter) that she is in fact the same person as Monet Parham-Lee, who is a “regional program manager” on the state of California payroll for child nutrition matters.

Specifically, she works on a federally funded program that campaigns to exhort people to eat their vegetables and that sort of thing. The comment:

“Interestingly, her name has been scrubbed from the website of Champions for Change, the Network for a Healthy California. She has given numerous presentations and attended conferences on the importance of eating vegetables and whatnot.

“She presents herself as an ordinary mother. She is not. She is an advocate, and an employee of a California agency tasked with advocating the eating of vegetables. To the extent that Monet Parham-Lee has EVER taken her daughter to a McDonald's, she should have known better.”
But she's suing Evil McDonald's, so it's all fine, right?


One of the best phrases of the week: Yeah, I know that that level of stupid usually causes flash cavitation, but somehow he survived it.
What brought it on?
Ya know, if you’re going to blame the brown people, blame the Israelis that manufacture a lot of the AKs, too.

KrisAinCA
So it's not just us, it's the JOOOOOOOS!!! responsible for the mess in Mexico.



According to Die Welt, Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an "emergency". In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for "national needs" – radically increasing the threat to neighbors like Colombia. The German daily claims that according to the agreement, Iranian Shahab 3 (range 1300-1500 km), Scud-B (285-330 km) and Scud-C (300, 500 and 700 km) will be deployed in the proposed base. It says that Iran also pledged to help Venezuela in rocket technology expertise, including intensive training of officers.
...
And, over the long haul, Caracas and Tehran would expand and improve Mr. Chavez's missile arsenal, adding such systems as the BM-25 (with a range of up to 4,000 km) that are capable of striking U.S. population centers with a nuclear warhead. Iran reportedly acquired the BM-25 from North Korea back in 2006 and has been working to duplicate the technology. Obviously, Tehran would have no qualms about selling the BM-25 to Venezuela, or simply moving its own intermediate range missiles to that joint base described in the Die Welt dispatch.


Ok, that's enough happy stuff for one morning. Bleah.

A note about the S&W Combat Masterpiece I drooled over and wondered how to run away withgot to shoot the other day: I'd had a .38 along and fired some of my loads through it, Berry's Plated 148-grain wadcutters over a load of Titegroup; very accurate and very clean.

I've been using plated bullets(from Berry's, X-treme or Ranier) in some loads for a few years now; I've had no problems with them, and they definitely leave less mess behind than cast. Depending on your needs/wants, might check into them if you want to handload but want something less expensive than standard jacketed bullets but don't want to mess with casting.
Yes, I still cast a lot of stuff, that fills a number of niches too.