My yard is being taken over

By gourd vines that're growing like something out of a Syfy-channel movie

Right now there's a bigger,

a middle,

 and some tiny gourds

And what're they growing on?

That thing stayed about a foot tall for weeks, then started slowly up the pole, and then... I half wondered if I was going to find the tendrils catching birds.

Not just growing along the wire, either, it's taken to the trees

This is looking along the wire toward the post; if you embiggen you can see the two lines that went up.

I think I'm gonna have some gourds to give to friends by fall.

Two good pieced at Gun Nuts Media

on night sights: Do you need and More discussion of.


More and more, I think we should just start randomly dumping federal agencies.


Overall a good piece: 6 Things Movies Get Wrong About Swords

Well, I would hope not.

A recording of the tape was played during a news conference Tuesday where the Lavaca County district attorney and sheriff announced that the father would not face charges.

In declining to indict the 23-year-old father in the June 9 killing of Jesus Mora Flores, a Lavaca County grand jury reached the same conclusion as investigators and many of the father's neighbors: He was authorized to use deadly force to protect his daughter.
Texas has some problems with cops and prosecutors, just like everywhere else, but can you imagine the reaction if they'd filed against him?
"That sign says I have the right to refuse service to anyone; so get your ass out of here and don't come back" would have been heard more than once, I think.

I wonder if HuffPo approves of this racist idiot,

or just likes the noise he generates?

I've read On Combat and On Killing,

and they're good books.  I'd wondered about this part of them, though; turns out there's a LOT of disagreement on the 'most people cannot or will not fight' idea.

Good piece, well worth reading.


"Ah, the fools! Why are they cheering?" 
Because Obama; nothing else counts to the fools.


"A New Jersey Appeals Court has ruled that both sides of a texting conversation which resulted in a car accident could be held liable. The ruling came as part of a case in which the driver of a truck received a text message shortly before striking a motorcycle carrying two passengers. The court ruled that while in this case, the person sending the text wasn't liable, they could be if the circumstances were a little different. '...a person sending text messages has a duty not to text someone who is driving if the texter knows, or has special reason to know, the recipient will view the text while driving.'"
Oh, I can just see them trying to prove that.


Dirtbag, hypocrite, worthless lying politician:
Earnest today repeated the administration’s claim that major use of chemicals weapons overseas is an threat to the United States.
“The president believes strongly — that it is imp for the international community to protect international norms against the use of weapons of mass destruction, particularly these weapons used in Syria against innocent civilians,” he said. “Protection of that international norm is a priority of the international community … is within the core national security interests of the United States of America.”
As opposed to what the Liar in Chief said about Iraq.

It wouldn't surprise me to find that closing down the CMP

was exactly what Obama had in mind.

Idiot at Slate lectures us that you're a Bad Person

if you don't put your kids in public schools.  No matter how much they suck.

Mr. Correia has a response.  It includes
Wait… Let me get this right… I need to needlessly screw up my children and grandchildren’s chances in the hope that maybe, just maybe, our shitty public schools might be decent in forty or fifty years. And this is the high note she picked to open her essay with. Holy shit.

Yes, comrades, sacrifice your offspring for the common good… Sure, that sounds bug nuts to most parents who don’t routinely put cigarette butts out on their children’s skin, but don’t worry, folks. Allison is just getting warmed up.

Sue the repo company. Get the name of the bank-

and if they're reluctant to give it mention 'contempt of court' and 'prison'- and then sue the bank, too.

Not just the wrong address but the WRONG DAMNED TOWN?

Well, my first thought is

"Before, during, or after I wet my pants?"

Because gangbangers are just loaded down with Garands

and M1 Carbines; and trusts somehow cancel out all laws on NFA firearms.
More correctly, "You people won't do what I want, so I'm issuing an order!" from The Lightbringer.

More on this crap from John Lott.


Speaking of control-freak gun bigots in the PROM,
One of the interesting aspects of their requirement to develop a new curriculum is that NRA requires that you not call something an NRA class if you’re not following the NRA curriculum. (That was part of the instructor class when I took it years ago.) That effectively means that people just coming into the shooting sports will no longer associate the NRA brand with teaching firearms safety courses.

If you really want to look at an ultra-creepy perspective, this training database means that Maryland will not only have information on gun owners in the state, but they will also be keeping a list of everyone who even learns how to fire a gun.
And just why might they want that, hmmmm?

I just might have to see this

And I'm about halfway through Solomon Kane(don't ask), I'll write about it when done.

Once again, registration moves toward confiscation;

it won't stop the bad guys, but the Greens will feel bloody wonderful about themselves.


Tam noted this one day, now from GCT another example: just because it's factory ammo

doesn't mean all is well.


Remember, these are the people who insist they need MORE power over us so as to keep us 'safe'.
And I keep hearing that idiot general bitching that 'it would be terrible if this harmed our diversity'...


"What?  You want your kid to have the best education you can get him?  Then you're a bad person!"
Because you're supposed to support the local school with your kid even if the school sucks.


I wish I could put things this well:
I hate to be the one to break this to A1C Snuffy or MSgt Powerpoint Presenter, but your job description is to kill people and break their stuff because the interests of your nation differ from the interests of theirs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you guys are the sharp end of the nationalism spear.

Oh yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

It “can make some people uncomfortable,” but City Council Speaker Christine Quinn says she’s open to allowing middle-school girls as young as 11 to receive the morning-after contraceptive pill.

“This is a really important option we need to make accessible,” Quinn said yesterday after receiving a mayoral endorsement from the Planned Parenthood of New York City Political Committee.
And she wants to take over from Bloomberg.

At this point I don't know whether to say 'NY is screwed' or 'Screw NY'.  In either case, the kids are paying a lot of the price.

And every damn penny should come from the pockets of the prosecutors

George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who killed Trayvon Martin, plans to ask the state of Florida to cover $200,000 to $300,000 of his legal expenses, his attorney told the Orlando Sentinel Monday evening.

Because Zimmerman was acquitted, state law requires Florida to pay all his legal costs, minus the biggest one: the fee that goes to his lawyers.

That includes the cost of expert witnesses, travel, depositions, photocopies, even that animated 3-D video that defense attorneys showed jurors during closing argument that depicts Trayvon punching Zimmerman.

Yeah, this is what you'd expect from President Mom-Pants

One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity "just muscular enough not to get mocked" but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.

"They are looking at what is just enough to mean something, just enough to be more than symbolic," he said.
Translation: "I don't want to do anything, but if I don't I'll be called weak; so what can we blow up that'll make me look tough?"

The bad guys are laughing their asses off.

Judge G. Todd Baugh should have that black robe removed

with a bullwhip.

And Stacey Dean Rambold belongs in a prison. 

First-World Problems

Especially for pretentious fools who require validation from their spellchecker and coffee provider.


If I were a Jew living in Europe, I'd be looking for somewhere else to go. 
Some places over there just happen to be a bit more open about their opinion of Jews.
“The comparison does not make sense,” added Bjørn Ihler, who survived the massacre by hiding on the southern tip of the island. “Breivik was a solo terrorist whose actions were based purely on an unreal situation. The situation in the Middle East is very different. There is a real fight for Palestinian freedom going on.”

Middle East expert Per Jönsson with the Swedish Institute for International Affairs (Utrikespolitiska institutets – UI) also slammed Bachman’s Breivik comparison.

“The comparison with Breivik is insane in several ways. Breivik is very special. These people that Israel is now releasing are freedom fighters, murderers, and in some cases terrorists, but they are nevertheless rather normal people,” he told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
You're pretty damn special yourself, Jönsson.


Some thoughts on precision strikes.  Especially when the target doesn't react like you want him to.


And I'm off to mow before it gets hot.

Time and opportunity collided yesterday, so range day it was

And the modified-stock MN was tried out.  A lot.

Worth every minute of time and bit of the mess.

Pachmayr recoil pads are wonderful.  That rifle still recoils solidly with ball, but the pad spreads it out wonderfully.  I've got a slip-on pad for my 1903 Springfield, and it's great, but if Springfield stocks didn't cost so much I'd pick one up and put a pad on it, too.

Spokane police Chief Frank Straub: you are a sorry bastard excuse for a peace officer. Updated

You suck like a Hoover with a turbo.  Fuck you and the diseased pony you rode in on, you miserable shit.
“Our information is that the individual fought back and that may have made this, you know, a worse situation,” Spokane police Chief Frank Straub said.
Oh, yeah, Deity forbid a 88-year-old man dare to defend himself from a couple of thug attackers...

Update:
Pointed out by Jeffersonian in comments, it appears Straub was incompletely quoted:
“Our information is that the individual fought back and that may have made this, you know, a worse situation,” Straub said during a Monday morning press conference. “I’m not being critical of Mr. Belton. We certainly encourage individuals to fight back, and he should have. But it shouldn’t have happened to begin with.”
Expanded on today:
“When I was asked yesterday about the significant injuries that Mr. Belton sustained, I responded by saying that those injuries were incurred when Mr. Belton fought back against his attackers. Mr. Belton's actions were both appropriate and justified. In fact, I encouraged individuals to fight back against attackers and acknowledged that Mr. Belton was correct in doing so.

Tab clearing

Debtors prison; but it's only for men, so it's fine.


Chivalry was a system, in which obligations fell on women as well as men. says Insty.  So if you want men to be gentlemen...
I remember being told, back in the Cambrian Age, "Treat a woman as a lady unless the proves she's not."  If she acts like anything but, she shouldn't expect to be treated as a lady.


More previews of Obamacare.
Interesting that he seems to despise Britain generally, but he loves him some socialized medicine.  Least as long as he's the big pig on top.


More assholery from the enviroweenies.  Better for kids to go blind and die than be saved by a genetically-modified crop.


"Screw surveys; we have pictures, and we want your money."


Yeah, if this had been a couple of plain citizens, they'd already be in jail.


More on former prosecutor(resigned in disgrace) Jim Letten.
The decision to prosecute O’Keefe and to accept Letten’s recusal was made at “the very highest levels of the Justice Department.” “[O’Keefe] was appropriately convicted.”
Letten declined to answer if his office worked with Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute O’Keefe.
There’s reason to think that he may have. Last month, J. Christian Adams, a voting rights expert, revealed documents that showed coordination by Holder’s Justice Department with Attorney General Richard Head of New Hampshire after O’Keefe’s successful voter fraud investigations. [Editor's note: Richard Head has worked directly with Brett Kimberlin associate and professional harasser Neal Rauhauser.]


Swim with the crocs, and you're dinner.
Dumbass.

She'll catch hell for this

This is about more than hypocrisy related to white on black crime verses black on white crime. Their silence speaks less to the lack of empathy for the lives of all races or the false kum-ba-ya of racial harmony that Barack Obama promised, but rather it gives unspoken consent to black men gone wild, and is a sharp and cruel proclamation of their inferior expectations  for the black community they purport to serve.


Again, we're supposed to trust the Stupid Party why?



And in the Brady Paradise of Chicago,
As students go, many will be accompanied by some unfamiliar faces: A crop of newly hired workers in yellow reflective vests, Chicago firefighters and even the security guards from local public libraries, all of them expected to stand guard to ensure kids get to and from school safely.

The effort known as Safe Passage - which stations workers and others along designated routes to help students who must cross gang boundaries - is perhaps the most visible sign of how much is at stake for students in a district that has long struggled academically and financially, as well as for a mayor who has vowed since taking office that he would turn things around.
If someplace like Oklahoma City required this, we'd be hearing about needing more gun laws and the horrible situation for kids; in Chicago, this is progress.

I am so freaking sick of hearing "The officers followed Holy Procedure"

as the excuse for whateverthehell they do.
In this case, once again they shot the wrong guy.  And then
The review notes that the officers who shot Theoharis refused to be interviewed at the scene.
Deputy Aaron Thompson did provide a written statement a month later, after he'd had the opportunity to discuss the case with fellow officers at a debriefing, according to the review.
...
The review also questioned why no one from the Internal Investigations Unit (IIU) came to the shooting and why IIU did not open an investigation for six months even though Theoharis clearly felt that the shooting was unjustified when it happened.

The report, also suggests that the Sheriff’s Office was more concerned about advocating for its officers than getting to the bottom of what happened in its follow up investigations.  The reviewers said that there was an apparent conflict of interest with the first responding sergeant who took control of the crime scene, later switching roles from supervisor and neutral party to officer advocate.  The same sergeant later served as one of the deputy’s two guild representatives in an interview with Internal Investigations Unit.
...
The review criticized the criminal investigation by the Major Crimes Unit of the King County Sheriff’s Office, saying that evidence was overlooked, shell casings moved and the crime scene video wasn't dated and wasn't shot continuously making it difficult to decipher.
If that happened in a regular criminal case...
But Only Ones get special treatment.

Modification

Few years back I wrote about getting a Mosin-Nagant sniper. I've had a lot of fun shooting it, but it has one drawback: that steel buttplate isn't real shoulder-friendly. With cast-bullet loads, no problem; with ball, problem*. So over the last couple of days made some changes. The big one

is cutting the stock back a bit and installing a recoil pad.

To ease some minds: no, I did not cut the original stock.  I was able to find another stock in good shape and used it; the original is put safely away.
And yes, the stock needs some cleanup; that'll be done after I know no further mods are needed.

Since I had to stretch my position forward a bit for proper distance to the scope on the original, I cut a little more than the thickness of the pad off; puts it just about right.  I had a large pad I'd set aside for something(what, you never bought something on sale just in case?), and it worked nicely.  Due to the shape of the stock I don't think a medium would've worked; the large I had to cut a fair amount off the toe(hacksaw), but that let me fit it nicely.  Used the belt-disc sander to cut it as close to the wood as could, then a sharp file the rest of the way.

Going to a new stock, I also bedded the action using JB Weld and made sure the barrel is free-floated.  Didn't take long to do the latter, there were only a couple of places where I had to scrape the barrel channel for clearance, and then not much.

No, no pictures of the process; on the bedding I always get the crap on my hands and other things, so didn't want to get it on the camera, and for the scraping didn't think to until it was done.  I know, bad blogger.

Now I need time and weather to cooperate so I can get to the range and try this out.



*Years before that I damaged my shoulder in a bicycle accident, and now it gets sensitive at times.
Yeah, I know; all the other crap I've done, and a bleepin' bicycle did it.

A demonstration of why we consider registration a 'Fat Effing Chance' matter,

and, among the reasons I call it Californicated: 
Earlier this year, the state legislature expanded the list of what they call “prohibited persons” – people who have legally registered a firearm but, for various reasons, are no longer allowed their Second Amendment rights. These reasons were expanded to include people who are behind on state taxes, did not pay toll fees in a “timely” manner and a wide range of other minor misdemeanors or reported mental health concerns.
Think about that: THOSE are reasons, according to Californicated, to take a basic right away from people...

If you live there, get out.

Question of ettiquete: should you get a pair of Tactical Balls

to to with your tactical kilt?


"We're the NYPD, how dare you question us!"


So, why the hell does the Army need more than half-a-million AK magazines?


A veteran intelligence official with decades of experience at various agencies identified to me what he sees as the real problem with the current NSA: “It’s increasingly become a culture of arrogance. They tell Congress what they want to tell them. Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein at the Intelligence Committees don’t know what they don’t know about the programs.” He himself was asked to skew the data an intelligence agency submitted to Congress, in an effort to get a bigger piece of the intelligence budget. He refused and was promptly replaced in his job, presumably by someone who would do as told. 


More of those nasty Republ- ah, somebody getting rich off insider deals:
More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.

Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an ObamaCare insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients.


Give black kids advice like this, you're a 'turn coat mofo' according to the grievance-mongers:
Number two, finish school. You want to break the cycle of poverty? Stop telling kids they're acting white because they go to school or they speak proper English. A high school dropout makes on average $19,000 a year, a high school graduate makes $28,000 a year, a college graduate makes $51,000 a year. Over the course of a career, a college grad will make nearly $1 million more than a high school graduate. That's a lot of money.
He also brings up something I keep asking: why would you want to wear your pants like someones' prison bitch?
LEMON: Sagging pants, whether Justin Bieber or No-name Derek around the way, walking around with your ass and your underwear showing is not OK. In fact, it comes from prison when they take away belts from the prisoners so that they can't make a weapon. And then it evolved into which role a prisoner would have during male-on-male prison sex. The one with the really low pants is the submissive one. You get my point?


They caught the second suspect in the murder in Spokane.
Adams-Kinard was arrested on a First-Degree Robbery and First-Degree Murder warrant. Several other people with him have been arrested for rendering criminal assistance.
That's 'helping him hide from the police'.


“But the other American tragedy are those producers and networks and hacks who accept violence through unconscious bigotry,” Gutfeld said. “They just don’t think it is fair to demand a community what it demands from their own. Even if the crime isn’t about race, and maybe it isn’t, it is an evil act rooted in destructive lifestyles and broken communities. In the media’s eyes, a black teen is invisible until he’s a body. And a dead Australian is just the price you pay to be politically correct.”


Culture of poverty:
But if you are a single parent with multiple children by multiple fathers, and a high school dropout, with a record, then chances are you are part of that culture. If you move to a new rental every six months, yanking your kids out of school after school, and if you do drugs in front of your children, and sell your food stamps for cash, then chances are you are part of that culture. If you are 20 years old, living with your grandmother, with no interest in ever getting a job, or getting married, or doing much of anything, chances are you are part of that culture. If you do not have a kitchen table, but you do have a big flat screen TV, and when the social worker comes to visit someone yells, “The social worker is here, go get the light bulb,” then chances are you are part of that culture.

'Safety measure' my ass

School district officials in San Bernardino County say they will discontinue a policy that required elementary school students to kneel down before being dismissed to class.
Principal Dana Carter at Calimesa Elementary School had reportedly instituted the policy, which called for students at various times of the school day to kneel down on one knee and wait for the principal or another administrator to dismiss them, as a safety measure.
...
“She says that she has to drop down on one knee with her hands at her side, wait for the principal to come out, lift his arms and tell them to go to class,” said the mom.
Hey, have to teach the kids to be proper peasants, and display proper obeisance to the lords, now don't they?

I repeat, 'safety measure' my ass.  And the fact that the school district thought that
This was a good idea, and
They could get away with this
tells you a lot about what they think of the students.  And what the district is really after.


Speaking of socialists in progressive clothing,
As a measure of his dedication to authoritarian socialism and his suitability to run the Ministry of Truth it is worth quoting an article published in the Guardian during the smoking ban debate:
"the final answer is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilizing influence for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off".
No 'nudge units' or 'behavioral insight teams' for Red Andy, just good old fashioned nightsticks and jackboots.
He goes further with the cultural replacement agenda:
"The police are first in line to be burdened further , but a new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too".
Faced with a fanatic with beliefs like that Churchill's reputation is bound to take a hit.
Churchill?  Why did he come into this?
The professor's rewriting of history includes the assertion that Winston Churchill "was not a decisive influence on the nations willingness to fight on against Hitler when Britain was on its knees in 1940".

He makes this assertion but fails to tell us what did the influence the people to fight on when all appeared lost in 1940. It wasn't his deputy, the discredited appeaser Neville Chamberlain or that modest little man Clement Attlee.

He also claims that Churchill's famous 'finest hour speech' "lacked impact because people thought that he was drunk".
...
In his desperation to justify these assertions this professor claims that his research revealed that when Singapore fell to Japan in 1942 one Londoner said that Churchill's rallying speech was "f*****g b******t and a f*****g coverup". The professor doesn't enlighten us on what the other eight million Londoners had to say.
Got to make sure history shows the 'right' history, y'know.


Maybe they should fence off Detroit and relabel it a nature compound?

So this is what the DoD teaches the troops?

The guide is reportedly authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a Defense Department-funded diversity training center. Further, the documents cite the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when identifying “hate groups.”
...
• A statement that “Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publically espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”  So if you speak of those things, it's a substitute for being in the KKK, or calling for all the darkies to be killed or shipped to Africa.  Wonderful.

...
• Under a section labeled “Extremist Ideologies” the document states, “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements.  The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.”
...

• In this same section, the document lists the 9/11 attack under a category of “Historical events.”

• The SPLC is listed as a resource for information on hate groups and referenced several times throughout the guide.(big warning sign right there)

• Of the five organizations besides the SPLC listed as resources, one is an SPLC project (Teaching Tolerance) and one considers any politically or socially conservative movement to be a potential hate group (Political Research Associates).

• Other than a mention of 9/11 and the Sudan, there is no discussion of Islamic extremism.

Oh, of course not!  The REAL enemy is people who actually believe in that document all military troops swear to defend and uphold!