Saturday, August 06, 2016

Things to do,

people to see, but there's always time to get the data out.  Or in.  Whichever.










































That was interesting

I've got a Surefire 9P light I've been using for... I think about fifteen years.  Couple of days ago, in the middle of lighting something, it went off.  "Crap, guess the lamp finally went."

No, tried a new lamp and no good.  Checked the batteries, and they showed, if anything, a bit above full charge.  Which is odd, as they've been in there for months, and it's been used.  So put in new batteries, and there is light!

At this point I don't know if one of the batteries went weird and cut flow, or if they all did something, and I really don't know, other than switching one at a time, a way to find out.  I may mess with it later.
 

And when exactly what they were warned would happen happens, what do the enviroweenies say?

"The big green groups that got invested in biofuels are tacitly realizing the blunder," said John DeCicco, a research professor at the University of Michigan Energy Institute who previously focused on automotive strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund. "It’s really hard for the people who really -- shall we say -- hate oil viscerally, to think that this alternative that we’ve been promoting is today worse than oil."
Surprise!

The Natural Resources Defense Council used a 96-page report in 2004 to proclaim boundless biofuel benefits: slashed global warming emissions, improved air quality and more wildlife habitat.

Instead, farmers plowed millions of acres of prairie grasses to grow corn for making ethanol, with fertilizer runoff contributing to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists warned that carbon dioxide emissions associated with corn-based ethanol were higher than expected. And alternatives using switchgrass, algae and other non-edible plant materials have been slow to penetrate the market.
They've been 'slow to penetrate' because they either don't work worth a damn, or are so damned expensive nobody wants to touch them.  But keep hoping.

Even the NRDC that once lobbied for the RFS bemoans that "the bulk of today’s conventional corn ethanol carries grave risks to the climate, wildlife, waterways and food security." In NRDC’s "OnEarth" magazine, an essay headlined "Played for a Fuel" argues that corn-based ethanol isn’t sustainable because it requires "huge amounts" of water, fertilizer and land.
Which is EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE TOLD WOULD HAPPEN.  And they called the people giving warnings luddites, and Haters of Gaia, and shills for Big Oil, and anything else they could think of.

So: just like warned, when the enviroweenies crawled into bed with the corn lobby, it meant lots more land being plowed, less food corn being grown, lots of resources going into growing this stuff for a fuel that damn few people wanted, and now they're all surprised that it happened.

Geniuses, I tell you.  And some of them just can't admit it.
Some biofuel proponents say alternatives are worse.

"In the absence of ethanol, your next barrel of transportation fuel is going to be coming from petroleum from fracking or tar sands or deep-water drilling," Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, said in a phone interview. "So you sort of have to assess ethanol in the context of what its replacement would be, and quite frankly, by that measurement we are the stone-cold winner."
Only if you count all the money to the corn lobby, and the food riots and so forth as 'winning'.
And the other people claiming this is a victory are just as stupid, or just as/more corrupt:
Jeremy Martin, who leads fuel policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ clean vehicles program, said the RFS has become a scapegoat, unfairly blamed as boosting demand for ethanol that probably would have reached current levels in gasoline even without the program. He casts the climb in ethanol use and the expanding footprint of corn that accompanied it as a "a one-time transition" as the U.S. fuel sector made a big shift, essentially adopting a 10 percent ethanol blend as the default gasoline.
The demand would NEVER have reached this level without you, and the corn lobby, and your paid-for congresscritters shoving it down our throats in the name of 'saving Mother Gaia(and lining our pockets)'.  'Default gasoline' my ass.


Friday, August 05, 2016

Tired. Need shower.

You take care of the studying tonight










































Sounds like something the SJWs would try here

A MAN who famously stood up to the Munich shooter after he killed nine people is facing being charged by a prosecutor for insulting the killer.
...
What will be included in the charges remains to be established, as it whether they will be brought forward.

But Mr Weinzierl, suggested they could include “insults to the detriment of the dead.”
I suggest Mr.  Weinzierl is a friggin' idiot, and if he does this should be removed from office.


"The truth is what I say it is!"  At this point I don't know if she'd just lying, or if she actually believes herself when she does.


Gun bigot breaks Oregon law he supports, apparently without knowing it(which says something all by itself).  Now
"If the pastor is prosecuted, it will demonstrate the idiocy of the law and the people who passed it," [Oregon Firearms Federation Executive Director Kevin] Starrett told The Review on Wednesday. "If the pastor is not prosecuted, it will demonstrate that anti-gun liberals are above the law and it was only intended to hurt the average gun owner, against whom it could be selectively enforced."
And open things up for charges of selective prosecution, and that could become a circus.


Another demonstration of
Why asset forfeiture should be ended unless there's an actual conviction, and
Why some prosecutors should be thrown out of office.

Thursday, August 04, 2016

Range report, .30-30 light loads

using the 100-grain SWC bullet, sized .311, and 5.0 grains of Green Dot powder.  I loaded five each in Federal and Winchester cases, just to see if any difference.

Winchester cases
 There's only four because it turned out one bullet enlarged the case neck enough that it didn't want to chamber.  For fifty yards and iron sights, not bad.

Federal cases
I can't blame the high and low on uneven charges(I don't think) since I weighed them, so probably my fault.

The Green Dot gave a nice 'crack' when fired, recoil was almost not there.  No velocity readings, didn't set up the Chrony because A: it was already getting hot, B: it was windy, C: I was lazy.  I am curious about it, though; these gave a higher point of impact than the Bullseye loads, so obviously higher velocity.  Going to have to load some more and run them over the Chrony next chance I get.

I think I'm going to take the .308" Lee sizer I've got and polish it out to .309 or .310.  If turns out I still need a .308" for some things, these aren't expensive, and I think sizing these bullets to a bit smaller than .311 might work better.


Snork...

When asked whom they would vote for during the 2016 campaign, 78% of servicemembers picked “other.” Nearly all then chose “military coup” from a list of options that also included Joe Biden, Ted Cruz, Jill Stein and “a massive earthquake that wipes out life in North America.”

When retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis was included on the list, he was the most popular write in. However most of those who selected him also called for him to lead the armed rebellion against the United States government.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson came in a distant 3rd, but still far ahead of Republican candidate Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton, or any other option that didn’t involve the possibility of civil war.

And this is why I refer to it as Zero-Tolerance Stupidity

The school district had argued Drescher didn’t need to be aware of the school policy to be expelled for “willfully” violating it. But the court disagreed because Drescher had to know the policy existed to violate it intentionally, based on the definition of “willfully.”
Got that?  According to the school district idiots, you can 'willfully' violate a rule YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT...

'Fucking control-freak idiots' about covers it.



No, I did not vote for any of these bastards;

neither did anyone else.
Meat should be taxed at the wholesale level to raise the price and deter consumption, says a new report from the UN’s International Research Panel (IRP). This will (supposedly) save the environment and prevent global warming.

“I think it is extremely urgent,” said Professor Maarten Hajer of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, lead author of the report. “All of the harmful effects on the environment and on health needs to be priced into food products.”
Etc.  People aren't eating they way they want, so they want more control over what you eat.  And all that money that would come from the tax.  From the quote at the top of the post:
“Did you vote for these people to tell you how to live? And who will receive the tax and what will they use it for?”
Control.  More control.  Because you won't think or eat or drink or live correctly unless they tell you to, and how.

Speaking of quotes, from the top of the Washington Post story:
Correction: This story has been significantly revised to address several inaccurate and incomplete statements about meat production's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Gee, your writer didn't bother to make sure of her facts?  And those layers of professional editors didn't catch them?  Wonderful.


Wednesday, August 03, 2016

Oh, this is going to set the EUnuchs off

“I really think that citizens should arm themselves against terrorists. And I honestly admit that I changed my mind, because previously I was against [citizens] having too many weapons. After these attacks, I don’t think so [anymore]”.

The Czech president said he was now in favour of arming the population over “the long term” and said he was convinced that if any of the revellers at the Bataclan music venue in Paris had been carrying a gun in their pocket when it was attacked by Islamist killers, there would have been fewer casualties.
...In his interview President Zeman specifically took aim at the European Union (EU) which is using the recent terror attacks as a pretext to curtail gun ownership.

Rejecting the plan, he said: “It is important that their right [to own and carry firearms] is not hindered as proposed recently by the European Commission. I am glad the Czech Republic is defending against this.”
They must've just about wet their pants when they read this.

A good piece on the Orlando mass-murder,

and the mistakes in stopping it.  Couple of bits:
Instead, they allowed the enemy to reload and reposition. That was the critical error that resulted in an additional lose of life. People bled to death while they waited, and then the shooter killed more.

The Orlando Police chief says they didn’t enter and stopped firing because the situation became a “barricaded gunman situation,” and it was no longer an “active shooter situation.”
...
None of that matters. Whether or not it remained an active shooter situation, it certainly remained an active dying situation. While the already outdated and discarded “wait and see” policy was in effect in Orlando, multiple people bled to death.

In the article, former FBI SWAT team member and hostage negotiator Chris Voss states “buying time increases the likelihood of a successful assault” and can often save more lives.” This ignores a painful fact.

Tick Tock, Drip Drop, they are bleeding to death.  Lots of them.
Which makes me think of Columbine.  SWAT teams all over, and doing nothing because 'We need a full plan before we act.'  And a bunch of people bled to death while they were planning.

It's a good piece, but has a very disturbing conclusion, which I'll put here:
Why was this the option, and why did it take three hours to make that decision?

Mr. Voss again sheds some light on that decision making process: “This is not military combat where there are acceptable casualties on both sides. Law enforcement doesn’t have that conversation. No casualties are acceptable.”

The two sides he is speaking of are the shooter and law enforcement. The unacceptable casualty rate is for law enforcement. The conversation that law enforcement doesn’t have is how many law enforcement casualties are acceptable. Who’s missing from that equation? The victims. The dying. 
Those are the “acceptable” casualties.

You are on your own.
Brings up a new line: When seconds count, the police may be spending hours planning what to do.




This is one of the more stupid things I've read in a while, because

the people he's demanding stop, are the ones who've helped her get away with this crap for so long.
Her dishonesty could push an unknown number of independent and undecided voters into Trump’s camp or toward a non-major-party candidate. If too many swing voters walk away from Clinton because she destroyed her credibility or because they don’t want to condone her behavior, the nuclear codes go to Trump.

That is why Clinton’s advisers, senior Democrats, and members of the liberal media need to stop covering for Clinton. Stop repeating her spin. Stop spreading her lies. Stop enabling her worse angels. It’s too late for Clinton to come clean, but honorable Democrats should at least insist that she stop muddying the water.
Yeah.  The media is going to start calling her on lies.  Her advisers are going to grow spines.  Senior Democrats(Feinstein, Reid, Rangel anyone?) are going to tell her to knock it off.

What've you been smoking, Fournier?

ATF can't be trusted with the information they have NOW,

and they want to be given more?
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the go-to federal oversight agency, conducted an audit of ATF and found it does not remove certain identifiable information, despite the law explicitly mandating it do so. GAO conducted reviews for four data systems, and concluded at least two of ATF’s systems violated official protocols.
And anyone who's surprised either hasn't been paying attention, or is a fool.

You might remember that the head of BATFE announced a few days ago
What he would really like, however, is a computerized database of all gun purchases made by every buyer and seller in the country:
There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense.… Would [having such a database at the ATF] be efficient and effective? Absolutely. Would the taxpayers benefit with [improved] public safety? Absolutely. Are we allowed to do it? No.
What he doesn't mention is that they're forbidden to (legally) do so because the agency has proven it cannot be trusted to obey the law, and not abuse such information.  Now read this from the GAO post:
Accumulating and centralizing such data can become harder to maintain as time goes on. GAO recommends that ATF eliminate or at minimum obfuscate the unnecessary data to comply with federal law and to ensure that unnecessary information isn’t vulnerable to breaches or internal infractions.
ATF can't- or won't- obey the law on what they've got now; the list the ATF head wants would multiply the data by God-knows-how-many times, and we're supposed to believe they'd obey those laws then?  This would wind up like the NFA database, which is incomplete and can't be trusted to be accurate, yet there are recordings of supervisors telling agents that if asked, in court and under oath, they should testify that it's complete and accurate.

"But- Germany has those CSGV- and Mommies Want-approved gun laws,

how could this be?
Germany has some of the strictest firearms laws in Europe, although there are four illegal guns on the streets for every properly registered weapon.

According to data from the German Firearms Register, there are almost 5.5 million guns in private ownership belonging to 1.4 million people.

But research by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in January estimated there are up to 20 million illegal firearms in Germany.
And if Obama and Clinton & Co. got what they want, this would be the situation here: multiple illegal guns for every registered one.

Of course, they wouldn't actually care; they'd have they control over honest citizens they want, and that's all that really matters.

Added: borrowed from Kevin,  That's because the countries around Germany don't have strict enough laws!! (That's Chicago's excuse. And New York's. And D.C.'s. And....)

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Made it to the range today,

and had some interesting results.  I'll write them up when I'm not so damn tired(being out in this heat and humidity that long takes it out of me anymore).


What's Spanish for 'kulak'?

Venezuela said private and public companies will be obliged to let their workers be reassigned to grow crops, in a dramatic move in the middle of the country’s crippling economic crisis. The Labor Ministry announced the measure as part of the economic emergency already in effect; it will require all employers in Venezuela to let the state have their workers ‘to strengthen production’ of food.
...
For the Soviets, the big targets were the kulaks, prosperous free-holding farmers, who were viewed as dangerously independent and had to be replaced by collective farms. For Venezuela, it was the supermarkets and shop-owners who were targeted as exploiters and enemies of the regime. The result is the same: a chronic shortage of food that has people scavenging in dumpsters and raiding zoos to slaughter animals for their meat.


Yes, Dear Leader is attacking firearms ownership in any way he can.  Which includes going after people who work on them.


Speaking of dirtbags who don't like the commoners owning guns, especially ones he doesn't have a list of,
Deputy Director Thomas Brandon (shown on right), head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) appeared on CBS’s Sunday Morning television show, complaining that his agency is “a small agency with a big job” and that he really needs more agents and more money to do that job.

What he would really like, however, is a computerized database of all gun purchases made by every buyer and seller in the country:
For public safety.  No other reason, honest; he's the head of BATFEIEIO, you can trust him!

There's information on just what a cluster this same kind of idea turned into in Canada, followed by this:
Brandon doesn't need a gun registration computer program to do his job. And, in fact, so much of his agency’s “mission” is outside the constitutional powers granted to the executive branch that Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) is correct when he said, “I think we ought to get rid of the ATF,” and giving it additional funds to pay for a searchable database of every gun, and gun owner, in the country amounts to “de facto gun registration.”
Which is exactly what they actually want.


Monday, August 01, 2016

The Modern Service Revolver,

A Modest Proposal
This should set some people off.


When schools are more concerned with PC-approved 'history', and

'self-esteem', than facts, this is the kind of stupid that spreads:
I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test… just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students - I’m talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years – they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They’re 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention… How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that’s what they think of their own country – that America invented slavery? That’s all they know.
That miserable little communist Howard Zinn is laughing in hell at the damage he's done.


Two choices: either Hillary Clinton told Democrats what she thought they wanted to hear,

with little intention of actually doing anything, or she's playing the Bill Clinton "go over every word to try to figure out what she actually means" game.
I'm just going to focus on what she said when Chris Wallace confronted her with something she said last year, "The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment."
WALLACE:  Now, in the 2008 Heller case, the court said there's a constitutional individual right to bear arms.  What's wrong with that? 
She responded and — forgive me — I've got to parse this pretty closely:
CLINTON:  Well, I think what the court said about there being an individual right is in line with constitutional thinking.  
Is the "constitutional thinking" she's referring to there wrong, in her view? She doesn't say. She repeats the majority's interpretation and essentially says that was an interpretation that existed out there in the legal literature. 
And on.  And on.
I’m not looking to take people's guns away...
That's just a policy — a policy the government could enact even if there were no individual right to bear arms. So we're very far from the original topic now.
... but I am looking for more support for the reasonable efforts that need to be undertaken to keep guns out of the wrong hands.  
So you are for the policy of taking some people's guns away. The wrong people. (And speaking of wrong, was the Supreme Court wrong on the Second Amendment, in your current opinion? I still don't know.)Even if it stopped there, who all does she consider the 'wrong hands'?  That phrase give you any comfort?  It doesn't me.

Sunday, July 31, 2016

And it's literally the People's Republic of MA now; the law is

what Comrade AG says it is.
“This isn’t a panacea,” Roy-Gonzalez said. “This isn’t going to solve the issue of gun violence. There’s a lot more that needs to be done. There’s been a law on the books since 1998. It’s up to us to enforce the law. The point is these guns are illegal and 10,000 of them were sold last year alone.
And the most basic question: if they're illegal, why did you allow them to be sold?  Or, for that matter, brought into the state at all?
Answer: because they were legal under MA law, and you decided you didn't like it, and changed the law.  Because you're a nasty little tyrant at heart.

When a bureaucrat or politician can change what the law means, at will, NOBODY is safe in anything.

As for this being about public safety,
Cyndi Roy-Gonzalez, spokeswoman for Healey, said the office did not consider how many shootings in Massachusetts have been carried out with assault-style rifles, but insisted the ban is an effective anti-violence measure.

According to FBI statistics, rifles of any variety were used in just two of the Bay State’s 779 murders in the past five years, which were mainly carried out with handguns. In that same period, hands and feet were cited as the murder weapon 35 times.
Two.  That's their excuse for playing Stalin games.  Revealing the always-there real reason: it's about control.  Not crime, not safety, control.