Snork

RX: "Can you name all seven dwarfs?"

Me: "Dopey, Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy... uh... Sleepy, Faith, Hope, Charity... um... Bashful, Thrifty, Brave, Loyal, Reverent... er... Up, Down, Charmed, Strange..."

RX: "I think Sleazy was the one who kept trying to look up her skirt."

They do have a way with words, don't they?

This may not be good

I've just given a friend the address of this place.

Good may not come of this.

For another opinion on the Fort Hood report,

look here. Among other things,
Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It's so inept, it doesn't even rise to cover-up level.

"Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood" never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat "the alleged perpetrator," Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they're still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).
and
The answer is straightforward: Hasan's superiors feared -- correctly -- that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today's armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain't many colonels willing to hammer the Army's sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.
Y'know, I don't think many people are buying this CYA piece of crap.

Gateway has two posts up that go well together

One includes a quote from Emerson; the second is this:
Even if Democrats lose the special election to pick a new Massachusetts senator Tuesday, Congress may still pass health-care overhaul through a process called reconciliation, a top House Democrat said.

That procedure requires 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to prevent Republicans from blocking votes on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities. That supermajority is at risk as the Massachusetts race has tightened.

Attention dirtbag politicians: you think a shot heard 'round the world was fired in 1775?

Hey, calm down, I'm only warning politicians; Dick, on the other hand, is preparing for war.

'Activating fluid' This clown Markey actually said that

in reference to Bill Clinton showing up? Is everyone around Coakley tone-deaf or stupid?
I heard Bill Clinton the other night saying how desperate the situation in Haiti is. Which makes you wonder how he, as "special envoy" to the crippled country, can find the time to abandon the suffering people to go campaign for a hack politician from Massachusetts. No wonder he and Obama roped George W. Bush into the Haiti relief effort. They're too busy stumping for Martha Coakley.

That prize quote is from the bottom of the post. You've got to read the whole thing to get the full flavor of this crap.

From an earlier post at JWF: Obama dithered for months on whether to increase troops in Afghanistan, it took four days of uninterrupted golf before he addressed the Christmas Day attempted plane bombing, but he moves with alacrity to save a Senate seat that should have been in the bag weeks ago.

Can you say 'Whiny little moneygrubber victim wannabe'?

I knew you could
According to the Santa Fe Reporter, Arthur Firstenberg, the plaintiff, has been sleeping at friends' homes or in his car to avoid the electromagnetic waves created by his neighbor Raphaela Monribot's cell phone, wireless network, computer, compact fluorescent lightbulbs and dimmer switches.

Firstenberg claims he suffers from Electromagnetic Sensitivity, or EMS, which induces "nausea, vertigo, diarrhea, ringing in the ears, severe headaches and body aches, crippling joint pains, insomnia, impaired vision, impaired muscular control," as well as other potentially life-threatening ailments.
...
He's part of a group of Santa Fe residents who are pursuing legal means to remove all Wi-Fi hotspots from public locations because they claim the wireless internet waves aggravate their "electromagnetic allergies." To add merit to their case, they are classifying their "allergy" or "sensitivity" as a disability and are claiming the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability.

If he's actually 'allergic' to EM energy, he can't drive: all the electronics in all the cars, and all the phones, and driving under or along power lines.

There's a test for you: put him in a car, blindfolded, and drive him under some lines for a few miles. "Members of the jury, you have seen the video: this man was driven under power lines for miles, while my cell phone was turned on and my navigation system was on, and since he didn't know they were on he had no problem."

This demonstration of whiny victim wannabe with a side order of give me money pointed to by Sondra

Added: for further similar BS, Insty points here. Please note Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds." Yeah, if you can't get the money one way...

Since This Ain't Hell is determined to make my headache worse,

I might as well say it:
Can you say 'coverup'? I knew you could.
Just go read it, I don't have the proper words to describe this bullshit; one of the times I wish I had more of Tam's or Lawdog's way with words.

I have referred in the past to 'Lawyers in uniform';

how about 'miserable scum-sucking God-cursed worthless lawyers in uniform'?
An Illinois National Guard soldier in Afghanistan has been charged by the U.S. Army with possessing child pornography over pictures of a young relative his mother says she sent him.

Terri Miller of Galesburg says she sent her son, Specialist Billy Miller, pictures of the little girl to help him get over his homesickness.

The pictures show the child in a swimsuit playing a wading pool and sitting on a truck. In one, the girl is wearing a swim suit and part of her buttocks are exposed.

The Army says Miller will stay in Afghanistan until his court martial. His unit came home last August. Miller faces jail time, if convicted.
Sound stupid? Idiotic? Disgusting? How's about some more background:
WQAD TV reports that the child is a relative whom the family says Billy treated as his own child when the girl was diagnosed with cancer as her father went through boot camp. Her father, the station reports, can't believe the charges, especially since they're on other family computers and on Facebook pages and no one else has been investigated.
Well, apparently the rest of the family is lucky some scum-sucking lawyer in uniform didn't happen across them and decide to demonstrate his 'Care For The Children' by reporting them to CPS; probably so he can trumpet it down the road when he plans to run for office somewhere.

Hey, Army: is there truly so little to do that you let these parasites screw soldiers over this way? And if there's so little for them to do that they have time to play bullshit games like this, GET RID OF THE BASTARDS.

I'd say 'thanks' to TAH for posting on this, except he just blew my blood pressure through the gauge.

"Well, I say we will lie under oath,

but don't hold us responsible for doing so!"

Which is pretty much what this boils down to. Isn't there a law or something involving 'perjury'?

Among the kind of crap that caused Kim to name it New York Effing City

is found here. And, among other things, brings back up that "Do not talk to- or in some cases trust- the police. At all. Because some of them are assholes who will screw you over, and you don't know in advance which ones they are."

And who does the President call on?

First on scene was the Unites States Coast Guard cutter Forward, in Port-au-Prince's harbor within hours of the earthquake. Forward's sister cutters (Valiant, Tahoma and Mohawk) are en route as 'Puter writes. The United States Navy's aircraft carrier Carl Vinson (CVN-70) was rerouted from Norfolk, Virginia within hours as well. The Navy's 1,000 bed hospital ship Comfort is preparing to get underway shortly. Members of the 82nd Airborne are heading to Haiti, along with thousands of Marines, to provide security as needed.

What does this mean for Haiti? It means that America, on its own dime, while fighting two wars and in the middle of the Great Recession, is going to once again bail out Haiti. Our soldiers and Marines will risk their lives in abhorrent conditions to protect Haitian civilians. Our ships will provide free first-world medical care, clean water, electricity and food to thousands and ask nothing in return. And how can America do this?

America can do this, because despite the protest of dirty, nasty hippies, and the continued efforts of liberal Congresspeople to defund the military, we have the biggest, baddest military on the planet.


Found at Gormogons, which was pointed to by Tam.

The other from the Geek: Why I Will Not Buy The Avatar DVD:

From the script:
INT. ARMOR BAY – DAY

TROOPERS issue automatic weapons and magazines to a long line of mine workers. The miners lock and load like the redblooded redneck NRA supporters they are.

BLASTING TECHS are setting radio-detonated primer charges into two-ton stacks of EXPLOSIVE COMPOUND. The stacks are band-strapped together on pallets.

TRACKING WITH SELFRIDGE, staring around him in growing dismay as he walks through the full-scale mobilization. He approaches Quaritch, who is barking orders amid a hive of activity around the ampsuits.
Well, gollee Mr. Cameron, since that's how you see us bastards who support ALL those Constitutional rights- not just the currently PC ones- fuck you. I'm not putting money in your pocket, and if I can help keep anyone else from doing so, I will. I'm also going to borrow the Geek's words:
Mr. Cameron, you ought to get down on your knees and thank whatever passes for your dear and fluffy blue $DEITY for the restraint that real flesh and blood redneck NRA supporters who don't inhabit your fantasy world have historically shown, and continue to show, in the face of attitudes like that.

We're not the Nazis, dipwad. We're the people hiding the Jews.


Who and what are you?

Two from the Geek: one post each

because they both need individual attention. The first must have Lautenberg and his little friends blowing blood vessels:
But misdemeanors are different from felonies, which the Seventh Circuit noted: "We therefore assume that Skoien's Second Amendment rights are intact notwithstanding his misdemeanor domestic-violence conviction." The judges said that the ownership ban is life-long and sweeping, providing no way for a now-peaceable citizen to seek an exception: "The government has the burden of establishing a reasonable fit between its important interest in reducing domestic gun violence and the means chosen to advance that interest -- Section 922(g)(9)'s total disarmament of domestic-violence misdemeanants." (What they didn't point out, but could have, is that a law enacted in 1996 is not exactly "longstanding.")

The Seventh Circuit opinion, which now has shifted the burden of proof to the Justice Department through an "intermediate scrutiny" standard, was written by Diane Sykes, a George W. Bush appointee, and joined by William Bauer, a Ford appointee, and John Tinder, a George W. Bush appointee.
This is interesting, and a good start. And further along, he notes:
Quote:
-------------------------------------
The constitutional question is more open than many CBSNews.com readers might suspect. C. Kevin Marshall, a former Bush Justice Department attorney who's of counsel to Jones Day in Washington, D.C., wrote a law review article earlier this year titled "Why Can't Martha Stewart Have a Gun?"

Its surprising conclusion: federal law's lifetime prohibition on non-violent felons possessing firearms is relatively recent and probably not consistent with the views of the Second Amendment's framers. In an age when Americans can be non-violent felons for possession of a short lobster or sharing MP3 files (other examples here), is a lifetime ban constitutional?

For other constitutional rights such as the First Amendment, it's relatively common to see acts of Congress struck down as going too far,
Insty has- along with a lot of other people- yelled about the idiocy of so many things being or becoming 'felony' crimes; that's supposed to be serious stuff, like robbery, not "You used an abbreviation on this form instead of spelling out 'Oklahoma' " bullshit. It's a waste of time and resources, and leads to abuses such as this.

On a new idea and a "What the hell?"

Scientists are reporting that “biochar” — a material that the Amazonian Indians used to enhance soil fertility centuries ago — has potential in the modern world to help slow global climate change. Mass production of biochar could capture and sock away carbon that otherwise would wind up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Their report appears in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a bi-weekly journal.

Kelli Roberts and colleagues note that biochar is charcoal produced by heating wood, grass, cornstalks or other organic matter in the absence of oxygen. The heat drives off gases that can be collected and burned to produce energy. It leaves behind charcoal rich in carbon. Amazonian Indians mixed a combination of charcoal and organic matter into the soil to improve soil fertility, a fact that got the scientists interested in studying biochar’s modern potential.
I mentioned this when I wrote about 1491 a couple of years ago; it had a lot of information on the Amazon basin tribes using low, relatively 'cool' fires to burn pretty much anything organic they couldn't otherwise use to produce charcoal that, along with pottery shards, was dug into soil in areas to raise and enrich it for farming. Now, I may be missing something here, but they're basically saying
Take organic materials,
burn it to charcoal,
collect the gas produced so you can burn them for energy(to char the stuff, maybe?),
dig the charcoal into soil to enrich it.
Ok, so far, so good; but they're pushing this as a way of locking up that nasty carbon in gas form from the environment. By burning fuel to produce charcoal to...

Just as a side note: next to a picture of some charcoal there's this note:
Unlike familiar charcoal briquettes, above, biochar is charcoal made from wood, grass and other organic matter, and has the potential to help slow climate change.
And plain charcoal is made from, what? Unicorn farts and fairy droppings?

NASA and climate fakery: The Post All Their Own

Climate researchers have discovered that NASA researchers improperly manipulated data in order to claim 2005 as “THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD.” KUSI-TV meteorologist, Weather Channel founder, and iconic weatherman John Coleman will present these findings in a one-hour special airing on KUSI-TV on Jan.14 at 9 p.m. A related report will be made available on the Internet at 6 p.m. EST on January 14th at www.kusi.com.
...
The report reveals that there were no actual temperatures left in the computer database when NASA/NCDC proclaimed 2005 as “THE WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD.” The NCDC deleted actual temperatures at thousands of locations throughout the world as it changed to a system of global grid points, each of which is determined by averaging the temperatures of two or more adjacent weather observation stations. So the NCDC grid map contains only averaged, not real temperatures, giving rise to significant doubt that the result is a valid representation of Earth temperatures.

The number of actual weather observation points used as a starting point for world average temperatures was reduced from about 6,000 in the 1970s to about 1,000 now. “That leaves much of the world unaccounted for,” says D’Aleo.

and
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained internal documents from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) related to a controversy that erupted in 2007 when Canadian blogger Stephen McIntyre exposed an error in NASA’s handling of raw temperature data from 2000-2006 that exaggerated the reported rise in temperature readings in the United States. According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA’s rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list.

These new documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), include internal GISS email correspondence as NASA scientists attempted to deal with the media firestorm resulting from the controversy. In one exchange GISS head James Hansen tells a reporter from Bloomberg that NASA had not previously published rankings with 1998 atop the list as the hottest year on record in the 20th century.
From the stuff in this post it appears Hansen is, ah, let's say 'troubled' by people calling attention to this stuff, and especially by people paying attention to it.
Hansen, clearly frustrated by the attention paid to the NASA error, labeled McIntyre a “pest” and suggests those who disagree with his global warming theories “should be ready to crawl under a rock by now.” Hansen also suggests that those calling attention to the climate data error did not have a “light on upstairs.”
I'd say it's more like a floodlight shining down on Hansen; and he really doesn't like it.

Now that my head’s somewhat settled,

here’s my somewhat pissed-off take on the news.

Sen. Schumer(Vile Hypocrite-NY) really is a slime, isn’t he? And are you as damned sick as I am of hearing about ‘Ted Kennedy’s’ Senate seat? Clue for you, Schumer: IT DOESN’T BELONG TO THE KENNEDY’S AND THEIR PICK, AND IT DIDN’T BELONG TO SWIMMER.


Coakley’s a corrupt jerk, and the Evil Party is going to cheat for all they’re worth in this election(already have, once before); this crap will have to be watched, with lots of people ready to show video and yell about it. The MA Evil Party in particular is scared to death; they thought Coakley would be their Anointed One for the seat, and having an actual fight for it wasn’t in their schedule.
Oh, not just a corrupt jerk: she's a sleaze who should never have been in the prosecutors office; anyone who did shit like this...


Why yes, Geithner SHOULD be criminally investigated, as well as removed from that office. As a tax cheat he should never have been seated in the first place, and I foresee a lot of people having trouble with the IRS demanding the same treatment he got(happened already, and I think it’ll get worse).


Gee, I think Sen. Nelson(I'm for sale but I'm not cheap-NB) is having a bit of trouble back home.


Question: is Obama simply an economic illiterate, or is he actually trying to screw things up? This is both stupid and unfair. (yeah, I know, 'fair' doesn't count. It still isn't)


Something else coming, but it deserves A Post All Its Own

So that I might keep my head from exploding at some of the other news

out there, for right now I'm going to concentrate on the range. Which I hit yesterday.

Number one: one of my favorite rifles to shoot is still the M39; good sights, wonderful trigger, and fine accuracy. A while back I got hold of this Lee mold for a 160-grain gas-check .311 bullet and a Lee sizer die with good results. If you're not familiar, the sizer screws into a loading press, and a ram fits into the shellholder space on the press ram. Lube the bullet with Liquid Alox and let it dry, then put the gas check on the base, set it on the ram and push it through the die; repeat until out of bullets, it sizes the bullet and seats the check. It's what I've been using for most 7.62x54r and .303 British practice loads; 16.0 grains of 2400 powder, good accuracy, light recoil and no sign of lead fouling in the bore.

The sizer seems to barely touch the bullet itself; I could wish the mold threw it a touch larger in diameter, but it's worked well in everything except the P14; that likes the heavier bullet much better.

Actually, on the 'I wish' line, I wish they made a mold that would throw the 185-grain bullet at about .314; you could still use the .30-caliber gas checks and it would fit a #1MkIII I used to have that had a slightly oversize bore. And while I wish the 160-grain mold threw the bullet a bit larger, I wish they also made a .312" sizer.

Moving on to one of my other most favorite rifles to shoot, the M1 Garand. I'd made up some practice loads using this bullet sized .309 over 35.0 grains of IMR4895 powder. It's not a bullseye-level load in my rifle, but it cycles the action and groups around 3-4" at 100 yards, which is good enough for general practice. Especially for the indoor range where the max distance is only 30 yards. After digging around at Cast Boolits and trying a bunch of combinations I've decided that
My rifle just won't shoot cast that well, or
I haven't found the magic combination for it, and
I'm not going to keep trying different cast bullets and powder combinations trying to find it.
You might be interested to know that I've had no leading problems in the bore or gas system; at most I might find a tiny fleck or two on the piston that wipe off with cleaner and a patch. Every once in a while a round cycles the bolt far enough back to eject the empty, but not quite far enough to pick up the next round; out of about thirty rounds, it did that once.

I also took along the M95 Steyr, loads used this 205-grain bullet; I don't have any factory loads, surplus or new, for it; the only surplus I've seen in a while is Nazi-marked WWII stuff that I'd like to have some for a collection but seems a shame to shoot, and the new stuff is a tad expensive. This rifle has a very slick action, and a pretty good two-stage trigger. The sights suck, like most European military rifles of the time(for me, at least), and hit WAY high. I'd built the front sight up using some epoxy putty(suggestion from a commenter, I've lost track of who; whoever you are, thanks) and now it only hits about six inches high; I'm going to add just a dab on top, then file to dead-on next time I take it out. When I did my part right, it would group into about 2.5-3" with these loads; an occasional flyer quite possibly due to my eyes and those sights. If you're wondering, I got the 8x56r brass from Grafs. Good stuff, but due to the design of the stuff somewhat fragile in the neck; of the first batch I ran through the sizer, I crumpled the neck of two. And you will need the clips; single-loading this thing is a pain.

Over on the handgun side, I mostly shot a Romanian TT33 with- appropriately- Romanian ball ammo. I've probably fired close to a thousand rounds through this pistol in the time I've had it, and it's never bobbled once. I'd like to find a way to add to or modify the grip frame to give it more of a 1911 angle, otherwise it's a fine shooter, a surprisingly good trigger and quite accurate.

A while back I tried loading some ammo with Hornady 90-grain XTP hollowpoints, and had problems with them. The other day tried again, this time both seating the bullet deeper in the case and using a Lee factory crimp die to crimp them; this batch- only loaded a half-dozen to try- cycled through perfectly. I'm going to make up some more and try it again. Since the safety on these is an add-on and just blocks the trigger it's not what I'd prefer for a carry pistol, but if it'll cycle the hollowpoints reliably, for a house gun... a 90-grain HP at about 1400fps would leave a definite mark.

Not much in the way of brass to pick up; between weather the past few weeks keeping most people home and there still being snow piled up in front of the pistol firing line- the way things are laid out it's kept that area shaded- not much to find.

And that was range day.

Hey, union members; you like the way your leaders sold you out

for the sake of a few years exemption from the tax? Well, the rest of us don't like this crap at all; your bosses are throwing everybody else in the country into the trash for the sake of buying favor with these corrupt politicians, AND WE DON'T LIKE IT.

I don't care what you think of your union, screw you AND your union.

Oh, and you think this exemption will last? You think you won't wind up paying this one way or another? Then you're too damn stupid to vote.

I repeat: if this bill is passed in any form, we should go to DC, drag a bunch of people out of those taxpayer-supplied offices and introduce them to tar and feathers. And some of them to ropes.

One last thing before bed: Martha Coakley is a friggin' idiot

I mean, come ON!
Martha Coakley: No we have a separation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Martha Coakley: (…stammering) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.
In one of the most Catholic-infested cities(that just doesn't sound right, but it gets the point across) in the country, she says this? Just before an election?

TSA: We can molest little kids, but we can't catch an underwear bomber

This is just pathetic.