Somebody put locoweed juice in the Senate water supply

At least that's as good an explanation for the idiocy going on there as I can think of. Not going to link to anything as there's enough stuff out there that you can't miss it. Happily, my state's two senators are voting against this IIABAN* bill, so I don't have to do a lot of yelling at them. But a lot of others...

Had Sean Hannity's show on while sitting here cleaning boomsticks and just listened to his interview of Sen. George Voinovich(Weasel-OH). Somebody talked to him the other day(may have been Hannity) and he explained his vote for cloture as 'I want there to be more debate, and we have another vote for cloture coming so this one doesn't really count'. Which is absolute marfi. Today he went on a tear about 'people are trying to intimidate me, and I've been in this business 40 years and I DON'T INTIMIDATE', which roughly translates to "The peasants are really annoying me. They act like I'm supposed to listen to them instead of doing what I want, and I'm getting mad!" He the proceeded to do the standard politician two-step of trying to avoid answering questions by talking around them and trying to talk over Hannity when he called him on it. And finally(tried to do it earlier but Hannity did manage to keep him on) said he wasn't getting anything but ignorance, etc., and wasn't going to waste any more time and hung up.

Ohio, I don't know a lot about his previous record. That being said, if this is an indication of how he sees his relation to the voters, you need to kick him the hell out of that office: he thinks he's your boss and shouldn't be questioned, and seems to think he owns that office.

*Illegal Immigrant Amnesty By Another Name

I think it'll hold true here also:

licensing and registration will be followed by confiscation.
Kilt wearers could face prosecution if they do not have a licence for their sporran under new legislation which has been introduced in Scotland.

The land of some of my ancestors has turned into enviroweenie and GFW central.

Another liberal discovers guns as tools,

instead of something to be terrified of.

More of those old cartridges

Starting off with some pistol fodder











#1 is the old .45 Colt
#2 .44 Colt
#3 .38WCF(Winchester Center Fire) Also known as .38-40
#4 .38 Colt NP(New Police)
#5 .32 Colt NP
#6 is a .38 S&W blank

Case heads:










#1 is WRA Co.(Winchester Repeating Arms)
#2 is UMC(Union Metallic Cartridge)
#3 is Rem-UMC
#4 and #5 are WRA Co.
#6 is R-P(Remington-Peters)


Now to the rifle fodder












#1 is .40-82WCF
#2 9.5x57, a variation on the 8x57mm Mauser cartridge
#3 .25-35 Win
#4 .25 Remington
#5 .401 SL(Self-Loading)
#6 .351 SLR(Self-Loading Rifle)
#7 .25-20

Case heads










#1 W.R.A Co.
#2 PS on top, a six-pointed star left & right, then the 9.5x57 at the bottom
#3 Super-X
#4 REM-UMC
#5 WRA
#6 REM-UMC
#7 Western


Rimfire and odd stuff











The first two are the paper-case 9mm shotshell I posted before next to a metal-case of the same.
Second is a pinfire. The bullet at the case mouth is .44" and it's .944" oal.
Third is an unfired rimfire case. The case mouth inside is about .41", 1.52" long.
Fourth is a lead bullet .68" diameter and .89" long. My loading scale goes up to 500 grains, and won't begin to lift this; I'm guessing about 700 grains.
The last is (I think) a Winchester .22 Rimfire

Case heads on these










On the two shotshells, the paper-case is W, the metal looks almost like a stylized GF but I can't quite make it out.
The big empty case is U, so is the .22
The pinfire(not shown until I can manage a better picture) has PSH at the top, FGA7PIA at the bottom; there's a line in front of the F that may be an 'I' but I can't really tell.

Some interesting stuff coming out of that box.

And a slightly better picture of the Webley

in all its new, black, oily glory.

Finishing up a blade,

and this one I decided to parkerize.

Which, if you're not familiar with it, is a phosphate coating chemically deposited on the metal surface to help prevent rust. A few years back I got a bottle of a concentrate for treating knives and I've still got the solution I mixed up; some are only good for one use, this stuff you can keep using. Nice and simple to use, just bring the solution up to 165-180F(and it's not real sensitive, you can be a bit lower and it'll still work) and hang the clean, degreased steel in. After about twenty minutes, take it out and let it dry completely, then oil.

Here's before:














This one was forged out of a harrow tooth, and the guard is hammered brass soldered into place on the tang. That's a 400-grit finish, which is as fine as I usually polish unless special request/need. So into the bath for 25 minutes, and here's after:

















You'll notice a difference in color between the edge and back. Remember the differential hardening I wrote of before? It causes that, the stuff grabs just fine but looks different on the different hardnesses.

It doesn't actually stick to the brass but it does discolor it. A little careful polishing with a dremel and a polishing wheel will take care of that. Then fit a grip and pommel.

When you look in your breaker box,

you do not want it to look anything like this

Bluing, before & after

Last fall I wrote of finally finding a MkVI Webley, a big, ugly .455-caliber revolver. It had none of the original finish left, so I decided to make it my second bluing project. Here's the before:















and here's after:












A very nice, even black over all surfaces. Like the 1911 I did before, no polishing was done. In this case while I wanted to reblue I didn't really want to change the surface itself. Disassemble, spray all needed parts with brake cleaner, then after dry wash with Dawn dish soap. As the solution was coming up to temperature I then dipped the parts in muriatic acid to strip any remaining finish, rinsed thoroughly, then hang on wires and into the bath.

Og mentioned the acid bath for stripping, and a Helpful Commenter sent me an e-mail with some good information which included that a 'pre-pickling' in an organic acid could help lead to a faster, deeper color. I damn sure doesn't seem to hurt.

Second try at bluing

Decided to try it on another couple of pieces the other day. Pretty simple, put the salts & solution in the pot, water in the rinse pot and start them heating while cleaning/degreasing the pieces. At proper temp hang the pieces in and boil for 25 minutes, maybe a couple more(lost exact track). This time everything had a bit of the red 'smut' on them when they came out, but brushing in the hot water cleaned it right off. Oil and let it sit overnight. Overnight's probably not necessary, but actually managed to leave it this time.

I'd heard that bluing salts 'creep', and they do. I'd stored the stuff in a plastic tub with a snap-on lid. When I poured the liquid into the pot I found the salts very thin in the center, very thick in the corner and they'd crept halfway up the sides. Soft, and easy to scrape out into the pot.

One of the pieces I did was another knife blade, I'll post pictures later on(busy evening, bad night, I'll get to it). So far this stuff works really well.

By the way, to the holders of the Human-Caused Global Warmering, 30% my ass. 30% was the chance of some scattered thunderstorms in this area last night. Which means it stormed and rained from about midnight to almost ten this morning. God knows how much rain, my gauge was on the ground so no measure; if I'm decipering the NWS listing they officially show about 1.75". I repeat, they can't predict this crap but they claim they can tell what the weather will be in 50-100 years?

And for a different timeline on earth's history,

take a look:

* 4003 B.C.: Earth still largely molten , Adam and Eve cover their shame with asbestos waders

* 3714 B.C.: The first biotechnologist, Cain, patents cyanobacteria.

* 3554 B.C.: Komatiitic lava floods Earth's earliest crust ; Noah's Ark incinerated.

* 3264 B.C.: Methuselah begins to notice passage of geological time.

* 3124 B.C.: Archaean copper deposits form , kick-starting Bronze Age.

* 3004 B.C.: Y1K crisis averted : Gilgamesh unable to count as high as 1000.

and so forth.

The 3/2 Stryker Cav

A couple of years ago Kim started the Walter & Adam fund to provide equipment for some guys in a sniper unit.

Now he and the Mrs. have set up to give assistance to men of the 3/2 Stryker Cav, info here and here.

Give if you can.

And Kim? My profound apologies for not getting this up sooner.

I have to agree with Tim,

these people are freakin' insane.
Home Office statistics suggest that there are 12 such murders each year. However, according to research, the true figure is much higher. At a conference in Southampton last week, police chiefs revealed that they are re-examining 2,000 deaths and murders between 1996 and 2006 to establish whether they involve honour killings. So far, 19 have now been found to be honour killings. A further 20 involved some element of “honour violence”.

I include in the 'insane' part both the islamic murderers and the British politicians and officials who've had a big hand in things getting this far. Do you really think they'd be having these problems, at least at these levels, if they'd started stomping on it when it first cropped up?

Hell, no.

But a bunch of politicians- which I guess would include the appointed and hired officials in, for instance, law enforcement- who'd rather be called a child molester than insensitive to islamists- kept making excuses for the swine, and threatening and abusing those who yelled about it, and now they're here:

A team of 20 prosecutors are to be based in London, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Lancashire. Each one will be trained by a number of different agencies including the police, the government’s forced marriage unit and the independent victims group, the Southall Black Sisters ...

Nazir Afzal, the CPS lead on honour-based violence, said that such crimes are often elaborate, pre-planned and can involve many suspects.

One in nine honour killings in the UK is carried out by hit men, he said. It is also common for the youngest member of the family to carry out the murder, with the others playing a lesser role.

And let us also note Tim's update, wherein the islamists once again become the victim of something done for someone else:

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the decision to praise the “apostate” showed Islamophobia among British officials ...

Mr Hosseini told a press conference: “Giving a medal to someone who is among the most detested figures in the Islamic community is ... a blatant example of the anti-Islamism of senior British officials.

Freakin' bozos have indeed taken the PC attitudes into account: paint yourself a victim, no matter what, and the idiots will make excuses for you.



















"Those people are nuts, boss"

Got some old cartridges

from Dad, stuff he'd picked up/found/been given over the years. Some I recognize, some I have no idea what they are. I'm going through the box and doing some cleaning, mostly headstamps so I can read them. Thought I'd post a few of them here.

First up, some rifle ammo:


















The first two I don't know. #1 has a paper-patched lead bullet of about .44 caliber, #2 a lead bullet of .427" at the case mouth.

Here's the headstamps:










#1, the central portion of the head surrouding the primer is raised, then the head narrows to the rim. It has a 'D' at the top, '11' on the left side and '87' on the right and '*' at the bottom.
#2 has 'A' at the top, a 'S' on the left and '5' on the right(looks like, and they're laying on their side; hard to read) with '78' at the bottom.
#3 is REM-UMC at the top and '30 USA' at the bottom, which I think makes it .30-40 Krag.
#4 is W.R.A. Co on top, .30 U.S.G. at the bottom, another .30-40 Krag.
#5 appears to be .303 British softpoint, 'R', then an Brit broad arrow, then 'L' at the top, going clockwise the date 1939, then 'G II'.
#6 is .30-06, 'Western' at the top and '1917' at the bottom.

There's also a bunch of pistol cartridges, here's a few of them:











and headstamps:









#1 is a .455 Webley, 'K42' at the top, 'VIZ' at the bottom.
#2 appears to be a .45acp blank, 'REM-UMC' at the top and '1906' on the bottom. Which, since I think the cartridge was developed by John Browning in 1905, makes it pretty early indeed.
#3 is .45acp, 'REM-UMC' at the top and '18' on the bottom.
#4 is a .45 Auto Rim, 'REM-UMC' on the top, '45 AR' on the bottom.
#5 is a .38 Colt, 'REM-UMC' on top, '38 COLT NP' on the bottom(NP for New Police?)
#6 is a 9mm blank, 'R-P' on top and '9mm LUGER' on the bottom.

The last two(for now) are interesting:























The first is(I believe) a 9mm rimfire shotshell. I've seen them in all-metal cases before, but not a metal/paper case. The second is a rimfire, and appears to be a heeled bullet like a .22 rimfire with external lube grooves. Which would, I think, make it produced in the 1800's. Bullet is .376" diamater, overall length is 1.39". Headstamps:















There's a WHOLE bunch of other stuff in this box, I'll be posting more pictures as I have time and get them cleaned up enough to see what they are.

Found a couple of good columns

from a guy named George Jonas up in Canada. Couple of good bits:
Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens pose little danger to public safety. (Less danger, to be statistically precise, than unattended swimming pools.) In fact, from the point of view of public safety, the worst combination is armed criminals confronting unarmed citizens.

Yet this is all our current gun control laws can possibly achieve: Armed criminals confronting unarmed citizens. The 1993 Brady Bill was no exception. It could do nothing but add some annoyance and red tape to the life of a law-abiding person who wished to purchase a gun.(from here)

and

I visited the home of a police chief in the 1970s. He lived in a big house outside metropolitan Toronto, and had a gun in every room of his home. He also had four or five healthy Dobermans that roamed the grounds freely at night.

"Gee, Chief," I said to him, "look at all these guns and dogs. Why don't you just run a direct line to your merry men?" "They can't fly," he replied, "as fast as a bullet."

I didn't blame the Chief for wanting to hang on to his life or to his silver, but it irked me that he didn't like the rest of us having similar ambitions.(from here)

Found through a link from the Relapsed Catholic

Sometimes 'Mythbusters' makes me want to scream

and yell at the screen. Other night had the chance to see an episode where they tried some firearms stories and a 'can hammers break each other' . Usually I wouldn't go into this, but there were a couple of things that I have to comment on(No, I'm not going to their website and posting on it; I'm sure the points have been brought up, except for maybe the last).

On firearms, they tried to shoot through a scope with another rifle from 100 yards, I think(missed the first minute or two) trying to duplicate that one scene in Saving Private Ryan. They repeatedly hit the scope, but no shot made it all the way through to hit the head of the 'shooter'. I didn't hear them say what caliber the rifle they were shooting was, or what kind of bullet used. The one case of this happening I've read of involved Carlos Hathcock firing at a VC sniper using a 91/30 Mosin Nagant with a PU scope. Hathcock was using a .30-06 firing a 172-grain match bullet; the PU scope has a fairly heavy steel tube. I'd like to see the test done with that setup.

The thing that irritated me here was when their sniper 'expert' said that WWII was the first time scoped rifles had been used in war. Which would be a real surprise to the German and British and other snipers who used them in WWI.

I'll throw in something on ballistics that made me groan in the SPR scene: the distance of the shot. The guy with the Springfield said the German sniper was about 400 yards away, which meant there's no damn way he could have shot lengthwise through the scope to hit the man. As we all know, a bullet travels in an arc from muzzle to target and that arc gets higher over distance: the arc of a .30-06 bullet over 400 yards would mean that- at best- the bullet could hit the eyepiece of the scope on the trip to his head.

On hammers, the question was could a hammer head fragment explosively if struck with another hammer? That testing was fine, but at the end they decided to try to make the hammers as likely to break as possible, so they decided to heat them 'as hot as you can get them without melting' and quench them in used motor oil- "...which is full of carbon..." because that would 'put more carbon in to the hammer head and make it more brittle' and kept referring to it as case-hardening.

I know, I'm being picky, but that's so damn stupid(especially coming from people with something of a science background) and it pissed me off enough that I had to write about it.

When you heat steel that hot, you enlarge the grain structure(bad) and when you quench it you do harden it, but how much depends on the carbon content and the alloy in the steel. A medium-carbon steel, especially with some alloys, will harden but not become brittle. Big thing here, though, is that no matter how much carbon is in the oil it doesn't 'go into' the steel. You actually lose carbon from the surface when you heat above about 1500F, but you cannot raise the carbon content by quenching in dirty oil. The steel cools below the point at which actual case-hardening is possible almost instantly and with in an open atmosphere the carbon has no chance to penetrate.
And I'm even more pissed on this because a: people will believe this crap because Jamie of Mythbusters said it and b: they had already talked to a blacksmith about hammers and he could have told them the facts. So could a lot of others(machinists for example).

The last was when the cast some minie balls for a test involving Civil War-era rifled muskets. They were pouring the lead into the mold and then dipping the mold in water! BAD! BAD Adam!

Aargh.

I think it's called 'karma',

at least in part, when stuff like this happens.
In the past 48 hours 19 Palestinians have been killed, tossed from rooftops, executed at point-blank range, and shot in hospital wards. That number seems certain to rise. More than 80 Palestinians have now been killed since mid May.

Among yesterday's dead was a 14-year-old boy and three women, all killed in a Hamas attack on a Fatah security officer's home.

"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.

Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.

Don't you just love these people? "We're not Jews", which makes this terribly wrong. Whereas if the Hamassholes(thank you for the term, Emperor) were killing Jewish men and women and children, it would be just ducky.

Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN envoy to the Middle East, said: "The picture which emerges is very dark, and apparently getting darker. There are reasons for real concerns in the international community."

My first thought is that things will rapidly get lighter as the terrorists kill each other off. And to quote somebody, it serves them right. The Palistinians knowingly elected a terrorist organization to power, and this is part of what comes after. "...reasons for real concerns in the international community", which means that the UN will have a commission to appoint people to a study to examine the situation and make recommendations as to what the following letters of "Why are you doing this?" should say exactly.

And for more on why they deserve this(at least a LOT of them do), check this out:
A 'music video' broadcast on a Palestinian Hamas TV station on Wednesday had a simple message for its viewers: Carrying out a suicide bomb attack is more important than raising one's children.

The video, broadcast on al-Aqsa TV, was made available by Palestinian Media Watch and can be viewed on YouTube.

I think it was Golda Mier who said there would be peace when the Arabs loved their children more than they hated Jews. Looks like they're not there yet. By a long damn way.

And in other news, Angelina Jolie really is a jerk. Not bad looking, but a jerk.

Reason #216 why Sen. Harry Reid

(Disgusting-NV) is a sorry, worthless, walking piece of crap.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "incompetent" during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.

Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.

Stinking, cowardly, corrupt, vile little excuse for a man. And do take notice of the picture; looks like he's copying the Castro & Co. 'socialism forever!' speechifying.

Among the reasons I like Oklahoma

is the way vets tend to be treated. In this case, the son of a friend, a Marine just back from his second tour in Iraq. Couple of days ago they went to a Pizza Hut for dinner, and a friend of the father who'd known the son growing up saw them, invited them over, and then announced to the place that this man was just back from the sandbox. The whole place gave him a round of applause.

Tonight he said a bit about it. He'd been in Ramadi and said that when his battalion arrived, for the first couple of months there'd been a bunch of firefights; for the last two months not a single American troop in his area had fired a shot. The Iraqi army and police had done all the fighting. From a trickle of information from the locals at the beginning they'd moved up almost to a 'flood' level, tips on bad guys(who and where), weapons and explosives caches and so on.

Also mentioned they'd had a bunch of bad guys who'd gotten sick of the fighting and killing and turned themselves in, often giving information leading to arrests of bad guys and lots of equipment.

He spoke of power restored to neighborhoods, schools and clinics opened and such. Finished with 'there's still bad problems, but they're moving ahead and taking responsibility; it's getting better'.

Oh yes, he got a round of thanks from us, too.

It's not quite 'Let Africa Sink',

but it's definitely 'Stop trying to save us!".

Couple of years ago Kim wrote Let Africa Sink, his thoughts on what might save that continent. This is an interview with a Kenyan economics expert basically saying that "all the aid is making things worse". Couple of key quotes:

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

and on the subject of AIDS:
Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

SPIEGEL: And why's that?

Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa's biggest business. There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

Interesting reading.

So the only time Mexico gives a damn about border security

is when A: it's their southern border and people are sneaking in and B: it's their northern border and they're blaming us for their problems.

Like this one:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday that Washington is taking steps to address Mexican concerns the U.S. is not doing enough to stop illegal weapons from being smuggled across the border and into the hands of brutal drug gangs.

Oh yes, the drug gangs couldn't possibly be getting weapons anywhere except from the U.S. And it seems the Mexican government is getting talking points from the Brady Gun Ban Group:
Mexican officials have repeatedly complained that the U.S. must do more to stop the flow of potent weapons - including assault rifles and even .50-caliber machine guns - that drug gangs often purchase in the United States.
You know, those evil select-fire M16's and the M2 Brownings you find on the shelves at the local gun shop?

Except that ANY select-fire or automatic weapon can only be bought legally after a bunch of federal paperwork and background checks and taxes and fees, and only if it's one that was owned by someone before it was decided(back in the 80's) that no new firearms of the type could be sold to citizens. Which means, besides the cost, there's only so many of them and the authorities are pretty picky about inspections to make sure people still have them. Which means, (wonder of wonders), that the bad guys- IF they're buying them here- are(GASP!) buying them illegally.

And I have to wonder about that, because there's a very few companies that build these, and they have to account for every one built. Not just the completed guns, but the receivers. And even if you assume a company is willing to risk the entire business for the chance of making a few extra dollars sneaking out some pieces to sell, just how many could they manage to make and sneak out?

"The firepower we are seeing here has to do with a lack of control on the (U.S.) side of the border," Patricio Patino, Mexico's top anti-drug intelligence official, said last month. "What we have asked the American government ... is that they put clear controls on the shipments of weapons."

I call bullshit. I don't doubt that there are smugglers taking some weapons south across the border, and if somebody's sneaking them in to the U.S. first and then south, but the numbers they're talking about? And this 'shipments of weapons' crap makes it sound- again- like someone can buy this stuff in stores here and then sneak it south across the border.

And, with all the coastline to land things on and mordida being the way of business down there in so many things, just why would someone smuggle the stuff into the U.S. and then across a second border into Mexico? As much as anything, sounds like another way of blaming the evil, nasty, bigoted U.S. for the problem.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora argued that combatting violence was a cross-border issue, saying: "We recognize that we can't confront this problem alone."

Gonzales agreed, and said he and President Bush were "committed to collaborating in the development of a regional security and law enforcement strategy."

"Regional security and law enforcement strategy", right. When it's about something THEY want stopped and only in a way that(you can be sure) won't inconvenience the people crossing our border illegally.

Hey, I've got an idea! Let's build a damn fence along the border and stop ALL the smuggling going BOTH ways! And when the Mexican government bitches and whines about the northbound smuggling being stopped(people in particular) wave this article at them and tell them to shut the hell up.


Added: be it noted that Mexico has real problems with gangs of various types; I'm just damn sick of the U.S. being in some way called responsible for all of them.

The son has been heard from,

Yesterday while packing up to head out in the field again. They've been training hard(as they should) and spending a lot of time out in the field.

Pretty much everybody's been qualifying with everything, and he made expert with the M240B











.30 caliber machinegun. Also fired the M2 Browning, (only with the plastic bullet practice ammo, alas) and everything else that might come to hand in time of trouble.

He's supposed to have some leave and come back for a visit in the near future, which'll be nice. So far, so good.

If you've got someone joining or in who doesn't have one, may I make a suggestion? A really good folding knife. Gave him one for his birthday a couple of weeks before he shipped out, one of the big CRKT folders, and it's been a very handy tool.

Dealing with police

in a traffic stop is the subject of this post over at Kim's. Read it, and then read the comments. All 122 of them that got in before he closed them.

Something I'd read confirmed about .303 ammo

I'd read years ago that to increase lethality, the Brits had started putting an aluminum insert into the nose of the jacket to move the center of balance further back: the bullet remained very stable in flight and accurate, but on hitting a 'soft' target tended to go unstable much more quickly. This was the Mark VII ball.

Just looked at the Box o' Truth for the first time in a while and found this post testing just such ammo, including a couple of pictures. I'd never tried cutting a bullet in half to check the inside, here's the aluminum insert design:


















And, to make it even more interesting, here's a WWII round with a WOOD insert:


















Better than my describing it, go check out his results with this ammo on water jugs. Impressive, to say the least. A few years ago I wound up with several boxes of WWII Brit .303 ammo, I may have to move it up to my 'grab in case of trouble' box.

Ok, so I lied on one point

and was wrong on the other.

I looked at the parts of the pistol, sitting there all oily and disassembled, and I just couldn't wait. So I put it all together(minus the grips) and here it is in it's new, still very oily glory

















In my case, I can't blame the camera. Mine's pretty good, but I don't have the lighting or the skill to really show how well this came out. It's just as black and even as the knife blade. And if I'd spent an hour or two with a file and some 240/320/400 grit wet/dry paper polishing the slide and frame, it'd be just as smooth and glorious a finish.

This is so damn pretty I will eventually take it back down, polish and re-black it.

The only post I will do about Paris Hilton

It's about damn time she was treated like anyone else would be. Anyone else would have spent time in jail when first arrested for DUI, not to mention the two times she was caught driving without a license after that.

When she showed up late for the sentencing hearing, anyone else would've been whacked for that, too. For that matter, as Lawdog pointed out, anyone else in any other venue, when the parents stood up in court and started mouthing off, they'd have either been whacked with a fine or jail time or both.

My primary thought is the parents need a serious kick in the ass. They raised this kid to believe that because they were rich, she was automatically something special. She became 'famous' for nothing more than being of a rich family, going to big-name parties and flashing her crotch at photographers when getting out of cars, and came to think she was immune to actually having to do things like obey the law.

Paris Hilton was taken from a courtroom screaming and crying Friday seconds after a judge ordered her returned to jail to serve out her entire 45-day sentence for a parole violation in a reckless driving case.

"It's not right!" shouted the weeping Hilton. "Mom!" she called out to her mother in the audience.

Maybe, just maybe, if her parents had held her responsible for her conduct in some real way years ago, she wouldn't be whining and screaming at being held responsible for it now.

The bluing tryout

A while back Og pointed me to this site with a home bluing formula/setup. At the bottom is a link to another, which has the formula I used. Having found the last ingredient needed, and having all the equipment, I gave it a try today. Here's the setup:


















The burner is from Harbor Freight, cast-iron with two burner heads. The enamelware pot I picked up at a flea market, and the stainless pot(for the rinse) from a local store who has them cheap. They're both 16-quart. Not visible is the bottle of vinegar(in case of spill or splash), the heavy rubber gloves and the respirator(just in case). I set this up outside with a breeze blowing, no damned way I'd do it indoors unless I had some kind of fan or ventilation setup; might not be necessary, but I'd feel better.

I went with the second site's ingredients for two reasons. First, I couldn't find ammonium nitrate fertilizer that did not have sulphur added(Fed requirement, aftereffect of the OKC Bombing) and I didn't know how that might affect it. Second, the original site notes that his mix outgasses ammonia badly when you're mixing it, and the second avoids that.

I did have to order the nitrate of soda, as nobody around here carries it(hell, they'd never heard of it) and I thought I'd have to order the lye until I found it yesterday.

I got the two-burner rig so I could heat the rinse water along with the bath, so I lit the burner under the rinse pot while I mixed the ingredients in the other. I'd been afraid the stuff would have trouble dissolving in only a gallon of water, but no, the lye and then the nitrate went right into solution, just add no more than a cup at a time and keep stirring. I shut off the burner on the rinse water about the time the bath came up to heat. According to my thermometer(Wally World, bbq section, $5) by the time I had the nitrate dissolved the mess was already up to almost 200F, and it only took a few minutes to get it up to a rolling boil. It didn't start to actually boil until right at 250F, and with the slide, frame and some other parts in the burner on full kept it at a touch over 275.

I left the parts in for about 25 minutes, stuck them in the rinse and put the rest of the parts in(all hung on iron wire from a rod across the top of the pot). Everything came out a nice black except for the slide, which had an odd-colored section on the left front. It I scrubbed with a steel wool soap pad and washed off, then put back in for another 20 and it came out nicely. I've got everything coated in oil, and I'm going to let them sit until tomorrow before I reassemble. However...

I wanted to try this on a knife, so I took a dagger blade and treated it while giving the slide the second bath. The blade had a 400-grit finish, not mirror but very smooth and shiny























Please note that the tang was left with forge marks on the sides(the better for the epoxy to grab), and the tang is annealed to be easy to drill. I wrapped a wire around the tang so it held the blade horizontal; the solution was getting a bit low and it would not submerge completely if vertical. It got 20 minutes, then a good rinse, then oil. Now, these are not the best pictures, but they do give the idea:























The above was shot in the house. This one was shot outside so I could get the sun glinting on it:























I need to get a better shot, these just do not do the finish justice; it's not just dark, it's gleaming BLACK. The only contrast on it is that there's a bit of difference in the color between the hardened blade and annealed tang for some reason.

The pistol doesn't look like it'll be quite this marvelous, simply because it wasn't polished. I went over it and smoothed everything very nicely, but did no actual polishing. If this blade is any indication, if you do take the finish to (I'm guessing) a 240-grit or above, the result should be just as pretty as this blade.

Overall, this seems to work very well. It's supposed to be good for another 5 guns minimum, which makes it pretty cost-effective. I was going to use the knife to test out how well this finish wears, but it came out so damn pretty I hate to mess with it.


Notes:
I had to use the wire it was hung on to hold the frame on its side; one gallon of solution in this size pot wouldn't let it submerge completely if you had it vertical.

Before putting the slide in for the second time I thought I'd add some water to bring the level back up from what had boiled off: Don't Do That, it is a Bad Thing. If I hadn't been standing well aside I WOULD have been spattered when the stuff spit. Wait until it's cooled off to add water.

It take the bath several hours to cool down, mine had sat for about two and it was still very warm when I put it in a plastic container for storage.

Do remember, lye will mess you up if you get careless with it.

Ok, Timmeeee, here 'tis

Lye has been found

at a local store. Ace Hardware, to be specific.

Understand, I'm glad to have found it. I just wish I'd found it a week ago. When I was in this store and asked, and they said "We don't carry that".

Just happened to be passing by on my way home from work and decided to check the plumbing supplies(just in case) and there, among the other drain openers/cleaners are 16oz. bottles of 100% Lye.

Moral: unless you KNOW the guy, and are certain he KNOWS the stock, go look.

Stock finish/refinishing Link added

There's lots of ways and lots of stuff to use, right now I'm going to hit one. I got the original information on this from a string at The High Road, but they've been unavailable for the last week or so and I can't find the thread to link to.
(update: this is the link)

The stuff I used here is Minwax Antique Oil Finish. Really nice finish, and there's no stain involved so it won't change the color of the wood. And being an actual oil finish, it soaks into the surface of the wood, fills pores and/or grain and once it cures it's a very hard, protective finish. Easy to repair if damaged, too.

Start with a stock that's been sanded, grain raised, etc. Use a soft cloth and put a generous coat on the wood. 'Generous' does not mean 'dripping off', just covering the wood nicely. Put it aside for a day to dry.

After dry, get the steel wool out: the first few coats are to seal the wood and fill in the grain, so you want to clean the surface off for the next coat. So use the wool to cut the finish off, down to the wood. That'll leave what's in the grain. Then put on another coat, set aside for a day, repeat as necessary. Depending on the wood, it can take anywhere from 2-5 coats to fill the grain most/all the way.

Now you're at the point the grain is completely or almost completely filled, so for the next stage you put on a light coat, let it sit a few minutes until it gets sticky and then buff it with a soft cloth, then set aside a day, then steel wool it off. This stage is to finish filling the grain and level the finish, so repeat as needed.

At this point you've got two options: you can go for a matte finish or the full-out gloss. If the matte, two ways to do it. One is to put on the final light coat, let it dry, and then wool it down to the wood; the stuff is soaked into the surface and will give good protection, and this gives a dull finish. The other is to put on a final very light coat, and buff it all off, as much as possible: this gives a bit more shine than the first, but not as much as the gloss finish. In either of these cases, after putting the final coat on let it sit for at least two days so it can cure hard.

For gloss, wool it down to the wood and then put on a very light coat and, after it gets sticky, buff lightly with a soft cloth. You don't want to remove much, just leave the last coat very thin and smooth. Again, let it cure for at least two days, and then buff it with a pad made of burlap.

Done right, this stuff makes a beautiful finish, very hard and protective. And if it gets scratched or otherwise damaged, you can sand or wool it clean(whichever is needed) and repair it by putting on a couple of coats.

The M1 Carbine I built turned out very nice, and the stock Og found is a very nice piece of walnut which I decided needed a proper finish. So I smoothed it a bit, then treated it with this finish. Here's the result













This is the semi-gloss finish. Took about two weeks with the drying periods, and came out flat beautiful.

It wasn't the NOR shoot, but

since I had some time yesterday afternoon the lawn went unmowed and I went to the range. No loads to test, just took a couple of rifles and pistols to shoot. Which was nice.

Rifles, took the M39 Finn and the M1 Garand, pistols a Ruger Single-Six .22 and a S&W .357. And except for a sight check/adjustment I didn't use a bench, shot the rifles sitting and prone(note to self: elbow pads are nice, but I do need a mat of some kind for the prone stuff).

It was fun. I really do need more practice in general, and in the different positions as well. This is about my average for prone at 100 yards with the M39:























And yes, it will do better than this. I couldn't decide if I kept pulling a bit to the right or if the adjustment was off, so I took a rest and fired two:




















Adjusted the front sight a touch, and it was dead center in windage, with the next two equally tight. This is one of my favorite rifles: good sights, excellent trigger, smooth action. The Finns did a wonderful job on these.

On to the M1. Again, I need more practice, this was about as good as I got:




















The one way off to the left was a called flyer, I knew it was off as the trigger broke. I was using Greek HXP ammo, which(from a rest to cut down on my error) will usually give about 2.5" groups in this rifle.

I need to make more time go to out for stuff like this, I really enjoyed the hours.

Course, I really need to make sure I get to the next NOR shoot, too.

And of course there's nothing more important

for the Ministry of Defence to worry about than somebody, somewhere, possibly being offended by the nose art on a Harrier:

The Ministry of Defence has decreed they could offend the RAF's female personnel.

Officials admitted they had no record of any complaints from the 5,400 women in the RAF.

But commanders are erring firmly on the side of caution and "nose art", as it is known, has been consigned to the history books.

Because this is obviously more important than the British Navy being turned into a coastal defense force, and the infantry and air force units being cut down- again- and so forth. Somebody might be offended, and that's all that counts.

I've mentioned differential hardening of blades,

and here's a picture that shows it.

For this process you can do one of two things: one is to bring the whole blade up to heat and quench it to harden, then use a torch or other heat source to heat it from the back so that when the edge section is at the desired hardness the back will be a bit softer; or heat the blade so that only the section you wish to harden is at full heat and then quench it, like this:















The effect is very visible here, with a fairly sharp demarcation between the fully hardened edge section and the softer back. I do one other thing to add to the effect, which is to hold the blade into the quenching oil almost horizontally so only the lower half is in the oil. You do move it up and down just a touch until it's lost most heat, then go ahead and lower it all the way down*.

After tempering this gives an edge that's hard enough to hold an edge well, with a back that's more of a soft/springy hardness; makes a blade that's very tough and flexible.

The GFW reading of the 2nd Amendment,

found here:
The Population of the nanny State, being composed of irresponsible rednecks, rejects, and retards, must not be allowed to have Arms.

Found through The War On Guns

Have I mentioned the Brits

are screwed?

Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.

How truly joyous.

Please note the following:
But the British Medical Association said yesterday that such measures did not go far enough, adding that customers in licensed premises needed better information to raise awareness of the dangers of excessive drinking and drink-driving.

Anytime some nanny-state socialist uses the term 'raise awareness', you know they're measuring you for a shock collar.

If there's anybody in the damn world who lives in a place where cars are affordable who DOESN'T know about the 'dangers of excessive drinking and drink-driving, they're too stupid to be allowed out without a keeper. Of course, this crap gives the nanny-staters one more excuse for assigning a keeper to every damn one of us.

And this from the President of the Royal College of Physicians: “We really need the spotlight more on health. While crime and antisocial behaviour is important it’s too easy to concentrate on that because it’s somebody else causing the trouble."

God, yes. Just stop worrying about the assaults and murders and rapes and terrorists, you bloody peasants, and worry about a real problem.

On the subject of changing tires,

ever had the desire to find the idiot with the impact wrench at the tire store and use the wrench on him?

While back came across someone with a flat. This was on an old Oldsmobile full-size car with the old-style jack & lug wrench that doubled as a jack handle, which gives you a lever damn near three feet long to remove the lug nuts. I weighed about 175 at the time, and I actually had to bounce on the end of the wrench to break three of the nuts loose; this was an old couple and there's no damn way they'd have been able to change that tire.

New tires, mind you(sidewall blew out on the flat), put on two weeks before. I told them to go back to that store and get the tire replaced, and tell the service manager to make sure an average human could get the damn nuts off without having to play acrobat.

A question for the chemically knowledgeable out there

I'm putting together the stuff to blue by the same method Og used here. You'll notice one of the ingredients is lye, which is proving a bitch to locate around here.

Here's the question: the formula notes 'sodium hydroxide' as the lye. I found a place nearby that has potassium hydroxide, which(from what I read) is also considered lye. Anyone know if they're basically the same, or if they're different enough that I should not try this stuff?

A bit more on do-it-yourself

This reminded me of something. Couple of years back, one of the open-mike nights I used to hit was usually run by a guy who was a speech teacher during the day. One night he was griping about the trip to a contest last weekend. Two cars, he drove one and one of the students drove the other.

The second car got separated- due to traffic, he thought- so a ways down the road he pulled in to a station, parked where the car could be seen from the highway, and they sat down to get a coke and wait. About an hour later the other car showed up and parked. First question, as you'd expect, "What happened to you?"

"We had a flat."

"It took you an hour to change a flat?"

"No, it took a while before someone stopped to change it for us."

He was dumbfounded, along with most everyone else listening. Five in the car, three boys, and none of them knew how to change a tire or were willing to try. Most had the same background: if you, a guy from twelve or thirteen on, had confessed to having to wait by the road until someone could change a flat for you you'd have been laughed out of the room. Only an injury or medical condition would have exempted you from that. Where/when I learned to drive, most of the girls that age could change a tire if they had to(rural area, might be a while before someone comes by), they just didn't like to.

This is one of those things that's also a safety matter. Weather might make it a bad idea to just sit a while hoping for assistance, and some people who stop might not have 'offering assistance' in mind, especially if the one broken down is a woman(This used to drive me nuts with my first wife. She'd never let me show her how to change one: "Someone always stops to help me with a flat.").
Again, you might not enjoy something like changing a tire, but you should damn well know how.

New postal match up

at Sailor Curt's place.

The previous post got me thinking about writing,

and authors, which made me think about the first time I met some authors. And about how someone's work gets fiddled with over time.

That time was the Fourth World Fantasy Convention in Fort Worth, 1978. First Con I'd ever been to, and my first real trip without parents involved. The big thing that caused a friend and I to buy tickets and save up for the trip was that the Guest of Honor was a gentleman named Fritz Leiber, who wrote(among other things) the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, just about my favorite sword & sorcery fiction pieces then and now. So the chance to meet him, and maybe chase girls(shut up) sent us south.

Very nice weekend in a number of ways, though finding the hotel was not one of them(note: do NOT trust directions the con staff send you) Met Leiber(not for long, he was rather in demand as you can imagine), met Andrew Offutt and a few other writers. In the dealers room found all the Fafhrd and Mouser books(all but one collections of short stories) I didn't have and got them all, and the drawing of them in the schedule, signed by Leiber. Met the wife-to-be. And was introduced to the works of Robert E. Howard.

Yes, the creator of Conan, and Bran Mak Morn, and Kull the Conqueror and Solomon Kane and others. My previous acquaintance with his work had been glancing through those godawful comic books: no matter the weather, enemy or place Conan was always in a breechclout and boots, etc. The Con was actually dedicated to Howard and his writing, and I'd wondered why. No, I didn't take the time to dig up one of his books and read it before the Con. The introduction to the actual Howard stories came through hearing them.

Saturday night the main event was a couple of readings. Harlan Ellison read two of his shorts, one funny as hell and the other equally creepy, and then Leiber walked to the podium. Leiber was about 6'4" or so, slim, with a mane of white hair and a deep, resonant voice. He'd been an actor at one time and it showed, with the hall quiet he could be heard fairly well even without the amp. Then all the lights in the hall went down except for the candelabra on the wall behind him and the small reading lamp, and he began to read.

The story was The Phoenix on the Sword, the first of the Conan stories and one Howard said he wrote 'as if Conan were standing behind me telling the story'. And Leiber had the gift of reading so that you felt you were in the story, watching and hearing instead of just sitting and listening. It was bloody awesome. And it started me reading Howard.

His Conan was very much a wandering barbarian mercenary, pirate, thief, whatever filled his purse. When it was cold he wore furs, when it was hot and sunny he wore pants and a shirt, or a robe, whatever was found where he was. And he wore armor. Not the character I'd expected from those comics. I've still got the books I picked up after that.

That was some weekend. Meet authors, buy books and get them- and that drawing- signed by Leiber, meet wife. Definitely interesting, and with long-term consequences in a variety of ways.

(I'll throw in something about the books: Karl Edward Wagner edited some of them, and did it the right way: corrected obvious spelling errors, set it up properly for paperback format as opposed to the original pulp magazine columns, and otherwise left the stories the hell alone. Read one as originally written, and compare it to the same after it had been 'edited to make it better'; you can really tell the difference. Which is why I'm still ticked at L. Sprague de Camp)

I think I could call this a 'spike in traffic'

I looked at Sitemeter for the numbers for the last seven days. Here's visits:























And here's visits and page views:
























Guess which day Insty linked to my post?

Of course, the day after it's a big drop downward(ah, fickle fame...) so I'm back from a tall soapbox to a standard size with a saggy lid.

Wow, Instalanche!

over the post on using your hands.

To address something Bruce said in comments:
No, if you're a lawyer/doctor/software engineer working on a $200/hour job, I don't think it's generally a good idea to drop everything to fix the furniture yourself. And not everyone enjoys working on the car, or fixing the lawnmower or whatever.

I do think it's a Good Thing to be able to do some of that, for a variety of reasons. It makes you less dependant on someone else for some work(I'm not fond of crawling under a house working on something, but knowing how to fix the problem in question saved money I couldn't afford to spend), it can save time, and, what may be the big one, people I know who can fix some things on their own are generally proud of it. May just be small things, but they like being able to take care of it. And knowing they can fix that makes them more likely to fiddle with something new and either fix it or figure out exactly what's wrong(which can save time and money when you take it to a pro).

I would flat hate taking the top off the truck engine in the driveway, especially some times of year, but it's comforting to know that I could find a manual and do it if I had to. And I'll admit that if I had to call someone to change a tire because I couldn't figure out how I'd be embarrassed as hell(which happens often enough, I don't need it over something like that). I'd much rather read, or screw around on the computer, or go to the range than fix the mower; but fixing it has saved money and time over taking it to someone else. And the kids knowing how to do some things on their own has helped them out.

Side effect for the kids? Cuts or scrapes or small injuries were generally seen as something to gripe about a bit and get over, because they were in the way of what you were doing, not obsess over. Which, in the long run, is a very Good Thing.

What Congress does with your money,

which they say they don't have enough of to do things like this:
Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars soon could be flowing into the National Council of La Raza, an organization that advocates for civil rights for Hispanics and has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest of the nation.

If you haven't read anything about La Raza, I'd suggest you do. And especially check out MEChA, a group just as warm and cuddly as the Nation of Islam. And just as racist. Then start yelling at your Congresscritter about this.

What goes around,

do indeed come around. Current/former hippies dealing with drugged-out people acting- oh, like they used to.

"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior." Well, just maybe. Here's the bit that sums up the whole attitude:
Panhandler Jonah Lawrence, 25, insists it is residents who need civilizing. "They say, 'Get a job!' " he said. "And I say, 'You got clothes for me? Or a place I can take a shower so I can look for work?' It's so bogus to tell me to get a job if I have nothing."

Well, try this you little bastard: stop spending what you have on drugs and booze and you'll have something to use to clean up and find a job. Assuming you actually want to try.

Found through Michelle Malkin

Things

gotten intotaken care of while not at the NOR shoot.

Ex-wife had a plumbing problem, loaned her some money for a plumber to root out the line. She e-mailed that the problem in the sewer line was a 'humongous' hair clog(she & the daughter both have long hair).

I sent back 'Stop shedding so much'.

I don't think it went over all that well.

The NOR shoot begins tomorrow,

and here I sit. Dammit.

I half thought about retiring when it turned out I couldn't get the leave time for this.

Have fun, you bastards.

Yes, the lack of 'use your hands' knowledge is bad (link corrected)

Really bad.

My daughter's first year in college she got a job at the museum in Norman, and one of her big selling points was when the asked if she could use 'basic hand tools': they meant like a screwdriver and hammer, and when she said "Yes" they were delighted. They were tired of hiring people who had to call building maintenance when they found a loose drawer pull.

Couple of years before that, some people I knew were building a three-level stage at a Ren-fair somewhere back east. Lots of local volunteers, almost none of whom could do anything with tools, including measure: they told one guy they needed a piece of plywood 48x60", and he(and those around him) couldn't figure out how to get that out of a 4x8' sheet. They had to give a short class on measuring, hammering and cutting to get the damn stage done.

God, I am so glad for the times I made the kids help do things around the house. And yard. And car, and forge...


As to the screwed-up link, I guess 'general idiocy' is more than just a post label...

Damn, I'm glad I bought a case when I did!

7.5 Swiss, that is. Late last year my favorite ammo dealer had two cases and I bought one, figuring A: it'll keep and
B: won't get any cheaper.

I was right on both counts. The stuff has been hard to find, and I just looked around and found the price per case to be $240, a lot more than I paid just a few months ago.

And the Socialist Senator from NY speaks again

and on this speech the major media doesn't think it's worth reporting. Or just doesn't want to spread around what she said.

Buying a gun vs. illegal alien applying for Z visa

Have you noticed that if the NICS check is having problems they have three days to decide if you'll be allowed to buy a gun, but the IIABAN* bill gives 24 hours to decide if someone gets the visa? And if the check can't be completed by that time, they get it automatically?

Back when I was a dispatcher, one of the things you had to deal with was that there was no online way to check if someone with a Mexican drivers license had a valid license, or find out if they were a wanted criminal in Mexico. The way an official put it one day was that 'there's no way we're going to interface our NCIC system or NLETS directly to Mexico'. You see, among the requirements of people using these systems is requirements for security of access to the data and respect for privacy law in the use of it(consider the corruption in Mexico and think of them having access to those systems).

Now consider that this bill would give one whole day to find out if someone has a criminal or other record that would disqualify them, when there's no fast way to check on this stuff into Mexico, and no way to know if the information from there is accurate and true.

But Chucky Schumer & Kennedy & Co. think the government needs three days to decide if you'll be allowed to buy a gun.

Just friggin' wonderful.


*Illegal Immigrant Amnesty By Another Name

MOLLE light

Saw a review of these in Shotgun News last month, and thought it looked pretty neat. So I checked it out, and ordered one









I'll state right off that I'm still a bit ticked off at PentagonLight who make it. Ordering it involved a delay("I didn't get a confirmation for shipping like the site says to expect." "We're backordered, it'll be a week or so."), then more delay, then a couple of unanswered e-mails, then a "Tell me where it is or cancel the order" from me followed by "We're sorry about that, yours should ship Monday at the latest".

It shipped Tuesday. Yeah, it's just one day, but it was damn near a month after I ordered it. So while I'm hoping that this was an exception for their service, I'm still ticked.

MOLLE is short for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment, the system that replaced the old ALICE gear(no, I don't remember what it's short for). This light looks kind of like the old military right-angle flashlight. This one is small(3.5" tall) and light(1.5 oz) and uses a single AA battery. Instead of a bulb, it uses a .5 watt LED with about 40 lumens output, and can be had with blue or red filters that screw onto the base for storage and over the lamp for use. It's supposed to fit inside one of the loops on the MOLLE gear(don't have any to check that) and has a spring clip that allows it to be hooked on a belt, pocket or whatever.

A bit unhappy with the company or not, so far I have to say this is a very good light. Not as bright as my Surefire G2, it's a very similar white light with no shadows or holes in it. The switch is on top: press down a little for momentary, down all the way for constant on. It's supposed to run about three hours constant with a fresh battery, soon as I get a chance I'll stick a brand new Duracell in and try it. It'll sit upright on the base, and I've hooked it on pockets and belt; the hook does swivel so you can aim it.

Overall I rate it as a good piece to have.

Further on the Christian/Newsom murders

here and here. The reports of mutilations are now reported by the authorities as false, which- assuming they're not downplaying things- leaves a bloody, horrible case of kidnapping, rape and murder.

It's being(unfortunately) used by apologists for the dirtbags and some white supremacists and some general 'these rumors are just because the suspects are black' weenies to push their viewpoints. And we're still stuck with the simple fact that if a gang of whites had done this to a black man and woman, the major media would've been screaming about it from the start.

Lots of thoughts on this mess, but I'm going to have to work on them a bit.

Memorial Day Updated

Over the years, I've known a bunch of people who were currently in uniform, or had been in the past. Family, friends, people who(in CAP) taught/trained my son.

This is the first Memorial Day since son joined up. He's currently in a quite nice place; in a few months he'll be in a somewhat less nice place. He's had good training, in Basic from people freshly back from the immediate war zone* and since with people who've been there; a bunch of people in his unit have been there before. They're prepping hard for it. There's a certain amount of concern, of course, but knowing that does make this a bit less difficult to deal with.

What'll I do today? The flag is up out front, at least unless('until' by the look of the clouds) it starts raining again. I'm not going shopping. There's things I'll take care of in/around the house, and when I take a break I'll check around on the web on the State Of Things, and I'll be thinking about people I know and don't know who're out on the sharp end. I'm uncertain about God, in that while I think He's out there, sometimes I'm not too fond of Him, but I'll probably do a bit of praying(can't hurt).

This is a marvelous country we live in. Because a bunch of people of all social classes were willing to put their lives and families on the line to create it; because a lot of people have fought for it in many ways since, many losing everything. Someone once asked how, if I liked this country so much, I could be so distrustful of the government and I said it's because I love this country and I don't want the muck-sucking politicians and their buttmonkeys to screw it up because I wasn't watching. There are a bunch of people in ACUs all over the world as well as here, some actively fighting the bad guys and the others training for the time, and it's to keep this country going without the bad guys killing and torturing in the streets here.

From those in graves in many places to those old ones who fought in the past to those currently out there, we owe them. A lot.


Update: Kevin has a list of places where you can donate to help the troops and the families of the fallen.


* I call Iraq and Afghanistan the 'immediate' zone; I think we're in the 'warm to cool' zone, depending on what part of the country(as in "What's nearby they'd like to hit?") you're in. As to training, in Basic every member of the training cadre had been in one or the other immediate zone within the past six months; the Army has been taking the top few percent of noncoms coming back and rotating them to training duty.