Saturday night,

and still chilly.  Well, it is late October, so not exactly unexpected.  Do yourself a favor: imbibe some of your favorite antifreeze and stay out of the weather; there's data to be studied

Further proof that these people are out of their damned minds

The Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act(also known as the 'Make Sure Democrats Lose The Next Few Elections Act') contains a “zero-emission vehicle mandate” that would amend the Clean Air Act to require 80 percent of vehicle manufacturers’ U.S. sales to be derived from zero-emissions vehicles by 2027. The requirement would increase to 100 percent of sales in the U.S. by 2035. The goal of the legislation is to “justly transition away from fossil fuel sources of energy to 100 percent clean energy by 2035.”

Unsurprisingly, from the supporters in the People's Republic of Maryland,

Maryland state Del. Shane Robinson (D), who spoke at the press conference in support of the bill, told PJM why he would support a ban on the sale of gasoline vehicles in the state of Maryland.

“I think a ban would be useful to push industry more quickly. I believe GM has already talked about moving away from internal combustion engines. We’ve seen action in the UK, in France, in Germany to move as nations away from this, so we can get on that bandwagon to help make this go faster,” he said.

"They're doing it in Europe, so it MUST be good!  We must jump on now!"

Robinson said more charging stations are needed around the nation. State and local governments, he said, must “take some initiative” on the infrastructure that’s needed to support electric cars.

“I mean, everybody I talk to wants an electric car, they are just not affordable for them or practical. I live in a townhouse with street parking so it’s harder for me to have an electric vehicle because you’ve got HOA rules about digging up the sidewalk. So those are other laws we would have to look into,” he said.

Got that?  'Everybody I talk to wants one!'  Therefore everyone must actually want one(except those stupid people in flyover country).

Now let's look at a real sign of mental retardation:

“It’s a complex thing, but it’s not difficult. It’s just multifaceted and complex. We just need people to lead on this and say ‘look, we’re going to do it,’ and then work backwards on how we actually get there. We’ve done much harder things, you know; we went to the Moon,” he added.

A: Robinson said a statewide ban on gasoline vehicles would serve as a “symbolic act” and help push the private sector to innovate at a faster pace.

'a complex thing, but it’s not difficult. It’s just multifaceted and complex.'  If actually believing that statement isn't a sign of a non-functioning brain, I don't know what is.
B: He thinks an actual law banning gas-powered vehicles would be a SYMBOLIC ACT?  A freaking LAW that can put people in jail, destroy companies, is SYMBOLIC?

As far as his 'we went to the moon' line, I swear to Deity, if we actually try to do that again he'll be one of the idiots trying to stop it because
"We need the money for social justice!"
"Do you know how much pollution this project would cause?"
"These engines are not carbon-neutral!"

Let's throw in one more thing: many millions of vehicles forcibly changed over to electric; where the hell do these people think the energy to charge them is going to come from?
Gabbard said the bill would move the “entire country forward” without “leaving anyone behind” by investing in clean-energy technologies as well as job-retraining programs for coal miners.
What, because only coal miners would be screwed by this?  Hell, they'd need more miners to- oh, that's right, they think that if they just cover every inch of available ground in solar panels and bird cuisinarts, that'll somehow generate enough power to both charge all the new vehicles AND replace the coal and gas plants they want to shut down.  Because they're fucking nuts.

I'm sorry to say that this doesn't surprise me. At all.

In the real world, the outrage would have continued unabated until either The Creepies publicly repented and slithered quietly away, or were run out of Dodge by the angry villagers. But Mr. and Mrs. Creepy knew something my wife and I didn’t understand at the time – in Hollywood, there’s something more toxic than spooning in bed with other people’s kids.

A friend of The Creepies, another Hollywood wife, approached my better half as a sort of ambassador – attempting to explain away her friend’s conduct. When her flawed argument was rejected, Mrs. Ambassador let it slip.

“Well, [Mrs. Creepy] did say you guys were conservatives.”

Fits right in with "Racism is WONDERFUL!  As long as you're racist against white people."  Because that doesn't count.  Or something.

Damn, it's chilly out there;

better to be inside and warm and go over the new information

Range report

First, get the excuses out of the way: windy and gusty(strong gusty), and this time of year the sun gets to just the right angle to cause some glare problem with the rear sight.  So that's done.

One bit of weirdness: I'd loaded five rounds with 68.0 grains of 2f, 500-grain Lee bullet, same brass, five with Federal Magnum primers, five with CCI Magnum.  For some reason not one of the five loaded with Federal would chamber.  Those ten were loaded at the same time, same everything, but.  I need to break out the caliper and do some measuring, see if I can figure out what happened with those.  The five with CCI did this

Nothing wonderful, not horrible either.  I need to load a few with 69.0 and see what that does, though getting 68 to fit uses a lot of compression.

Most of the others were loaded with Blackhorn 209, with part of the testing being using black powder-prepped cases vs. resized cases.  For example,
Federal primers in resized cases,

 Fed primers in black-prepped cases(ignore the two smaller holes, we won't talk about those)

With Blackhorn I see little difference between the two*.  And the cases being sized makes it easier to get the OAL the same each time since the powder is not compressed.  I'm only resizing about the first half-inch of the cases, I may try resizing a little less, just to see if if that'll provide enough tension to keep the bullet in place while still making it easy to seat the bullet.

I also loaded five rounds using the Lee 405-grain flatnose bullet, and five rounds with that bullet paper-patched.  And the second target got lost, and guess which I didn't get a picture of?  I'll have to test the PP load again.  The plain bullet gave this

The one to the left was a called flyer, so not a bad group.

I'm seeing very little difference in results between the CCI and Federal primers, other than I had one of the PP cartridges give another misfire with CCI.  There haven't been a lot, but enough to be troublesome.  Same as the others: nice, deep primer indent, gave it a second strike, no joy.

Know what I'd really like to do?  Mount a scope on this .45-70 so as to remove as much human error as possible, because I'm pretty sure some of these loads are capable of grouping tighter for either a scope or a shooter with better eyes.



*aside from what might be caused by my shooting that day

Got the LER upper sighted in,

and that went well.  Now need to actually shoot it some and see how that forward mount works out.

Also tried some .45-70 loads, more on that later.  Right now I've got things to clean, and since it's supposed to turn cold tonight I need to make sure the 'might blow away' stuff is put away before the wind turns.

Elizabeth Warren is a truly vile piece of work

“I was a baby law professor and so excited to have my first real teaching job and there was a senior faculty member who would tell dirty jokes and make comments about my appearance,” she said. “And one day he asked me if I would stop by his office, which I didn’t think much about, and I did, and he slammed the door and lunged for me. It was like a bad cartoon. He’s chasing me around the desk trying to get his hands on me and I kept saying ‘You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do this. I have little children at home. Please don’t do this.’”
Sounds terrible, right?  It is, but not the way you'd think, and that's ignoring other people stating she's full of shit:
More importantly, Warren conveniently—and deliberately—left out a seminal fact: Smith suffered from polio. That’s right. He was unable to walk or move around without a wheelchair or crutches. According to his former colleagues, Smith’s polio was so severe they felt pity for him.
My, isn't that special of her?

Warren may be the most depraved, cynical and mendacious member of Congress—and that’s saying something. Think about it: She is willing to smear the memory of a dead, disabled friend in order to win votes and prop up her feminist image. There is almost nothing lower.
Hell, she's lied about so much, is this a surprise?

Oh yes, it's relevant; and you, asshat, are among the reasons

for the 2nd Amendment:
Taylor: I don’t think he should speak.
Harris: But that doesn’t really comport with the First Amendment.
Taylor: I don’t care.
Harris: You don’t care?
Taylor: I don’t care.
Harris: Why not?
Taylor: I don’t think that’s a like relevant document right now.

In chorus, now: "It'll work THIS time!"

Communism, then, was taken not as a political philosophy, but as a scientific discovery that only the irrational, the evil, or those blinded by bourgeois “false consciousness” would reject. Like science, communism was about progress, optimism for the future, and the liberation of humans from social and political bondage by improving the economic and social conditions of human life. It had “an inherent optimism for the future,” as one Times article gushed. This notion that humans can be shaped and improved by rational technique still remains a dominant sensibility in the West, which explains the continuing hold of leftist ideology. From Obama’s 2012 campaign slogan “Forward,” a traditional leftist motto, to the fads of “behavioral science” like “implicit bias,” our world is still enthralled to this superstition that “human sciences” can improve life and transcend the historical disorder and evil our ancestors attributed to a flawed and tragic human nature.

Which brings something to mind:
Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave.
Interesting that that came out of the mouth of a character created by a leftist jerk.  Wonder if he believes it, or just thought it fit the character?

I'm going to try something

No, there should not be any meltdowns or other drama.  Take an AR upper with a long rail on top, and put a long-eye-relief scope on it and see how it works.  In this case,

That's a cheap 2x scope I've had for several years, quite good enough to try this out.  This handguard is rigid enough that it should be plenty stable for general use; we'll find out for sure.

Speaking of crooked bastards,

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh asked the state’s highest court Monday to step in and derail an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyers over accusations of destruction of evidence that could eventually lead to them being disbarred. 

Mr. Frosh, a Democrat who was a Clinton supporter in last year’s election, also asked the high court to reseal the case to prevent public view of the proceedings.


More on Professional Journalism:
It’s not exactly breaking news that most journalists lean left. I used to do that myself. I grew up at The New York Times, so I’m familiar with the species. For most of the media, bias grew out of the social revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Fueled by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the media jumped on the anti-authority bandwagon writ large. The deal was sealed with Watergate, when journalism was viewed as more trusted than government—and far more exciting and glamorous. Think Robert Redford in All the President’s Men. Ever since, young people became journalists because they wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, find a Deep Throat, and bring down a president. Of course, most of them only wanted to bring down a Republican president. That’s because liberalism is baked into the journalism cake.
And what right-wing activist is saying this?
Michael Goodwin was weaned on Abe Rosenthal’s New York Times, rising to City Hall Bureau Chief before becoming Executive Editor of the Daily News and, now, chief political columnist for the New York Post.

So now they want to get rid of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' because "It encourages doubt

when someone says they've been raped!"  Wonderful.

There SHOULD be doubt; our whole system is built on 'innocent until PROVEN guilty beyond reasonable doubt'.  But these idiots want to tear that down in the name of "Believe the victim no matter what!"
At least some victims.
This is why Lee elevated righteous scepticism: she was addressing a culture in which instant belief had replaced fairness. As it has again today. This is not to say modern-day feminists are racist. Of course they aren’t. But there is a thread that ties the old racist hysteria about black male rapists and today’s supposedly progressive panic about “rape culture”: an astoundingly dismissive attitude towards due process and the rigorous establishment of guilt. What both these moments share in common is an insistence that we believe the victims. No questions, no scepticism, no interrogation — just belief. But belief in cases like this has caused untold damage throughout history. Black men were hanged because of a cult of belief. In the Satanic Ritual Abuse and paedophile panics of the 1980s and 90s, families were torn apart as a consequence of a cult of belief. What damage is being done now by the elevation of almost-religious belief over cool, just scepticism? Our cry should not be “I believe you”; it should be, “I respect you and I want to believe you. But I need proof. Strong proof. Because I prefer civilisation to barbarism.”
Very damned much so.

A helluva lot of this crap would stop if

they starting throwing these bastards in jail when they lie under oath.
The State Department admitted in federal court last week that it has 72,000 pages of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's records and has yet to process 40,000 of the pages, Judicial Watch revealed Monday. State has reportedly processed about 32,000 pages of emails so far, with another 40,000 pages still remaining to be processed. Only a small number of the processed emails have been released to the public, the watchdog noted.
State, EffingBI, Dept of 'Justice', all of them: they lie under oath, they submit false documents, prosecute them.  Disbar the lawyers.  Cells for the convicted.

Why yes, I am bloody sick of these people, and those who won't go after them.

Busy. Tired, May have actual content tomorrow.

Maybe.  In the meantime,

"Free speech? We do not have that here, we have free approved speech."

A new German law introducing state censorship on social media platforms came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether or the content is accurate or not.
How bad is this?
Meanwhile, the district court in Munich recently sentenced a German journalist, Michael Stürzenberger, to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photograph.
"We do not care if it is history, it should not be seen in public; to the cell with you!"

Want to know how badly some of the left is losing it?

"You ARE oppressed!  You just don't know it!  We need to properly indoctrinate these womyn in intersectionalism!"
Sarah Hoyt may be right; outside the screaming clowns of academia and the other leftists, they may be losing ground.  Badly.  And losing any makes them lose it even more.