And since someone started the game, I'll play

What's on my playlist I use while working out, or riding the OKCPV to the library:

Ashrei Ha’Ish

La Grange

The Butterfly Jig

Heartache Tonight

Sweet Dreams

Celtic Circle Dance

Barracuda

Sweet Young Thing

Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked

Sexy & 17

Bad Girlfriend

All American Nightmare

Weapon of Choice

White Lightning & Wine

Sea of Tranquility

Winterborn

Classical Gas(guitar solo)

The Night

Unionhouse Branch

Long Cool Woman

Rhythm of My Heart

Gimme the Prize

Snakedriver

Pickin’ Wildflowers

God’s Gonna Cut You Down

Dead Souls

Let's see, country, rock, Israeli dance... I do have a bit of a mix there

The Guitar Saga, Post VII

This past Saturday I very lightly sanded with 800 finish paper, cleaned, and then put several coats on.  Sunday wet-sanded to level, cleaned, and then the last, very light, finishing coat.  Here's what it looks like now:

Yeah, looks a lot better than with the original finish flaking off.

The lacquer instructions say to let it dry 6-8 days before stringing; I'm going to give it the full eight, so I'll string it Tuesday, and see how it sounds.

Remember all the Fusion Centers? The ones that said the tea party

should be considered a terrorist group, that prepping for natural disaster(in tornado season like they'd said people should, yet!) should be considered suspicious and so on?
Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano repeatedly misled lawmakers about one of her department’s signature initiatives, the special centers where state and local police share information about terrorism with their federal counterparts, a key lawmaker who helped author a damning report on the project said in an interview Thursday.

A bipartisan report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations states that Ms. Napolitano and her department failed to report to Congress serious problems with the so-called “fusion center” program.

“She was not straightforward to the committee about what she actually knew at the time and what had been documented by [the department’s] own look at the problem,” the subcommittee’s senior Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, told The Washington Times on Thursday.
What?  Napolitano & Co. lied?  And covered-up?  Who could have imagined such a thing?

Mr. Coburn said the department had deliberately stonewalled the subcommittee’s oversight function.

Department officials “threw up roadblocks in every area. They didn’t want this report to come out because they knew how bad it was,” he said.
But don't worry, Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler dismissed the report as “out of date, inaccurate and misleading.”
Of COURSE it is, has to be, right?


About all those non-union people connected to GM who were screwed out of their pensions?  Yeah, Obama was connected to that being done.  Anybody surprised?


A lot of people have talked about how bloody awful Obama was in the debate; I wasn't surprised by what I read, for two reasons:
A: Had you ever listened to any of the recordings of him when he went off teleprompter?  Unless he was in a audience of total supporters(and sometimes even then), he's awful; stuttering, hesitating, "Uh, ah, uh," on and on.  Someone would talk about how wonderful a speaker he is, I'd mention those, and they'd either ignore it or dismiss those as 'cherry-picking'.  Well, in a way they were: they were the ones the major media never played if they could avoid it; they didn't fit the image of Obama as The Great Orator.  So a lot of people had either never heard those, or- if they heard about it- dismissed.  So when he did it in the debate...
B: Like everyone pointed out, with very few exceptions the media hasn't actually challenged him on anything for years: they've insulted/dismissed/slandered anyone who did, they've carried his water, so he flat was not prepared- maybe could not imagine anyone daring to- for being hit hard.  It showed.

Obama's not stupid.  Arrogant as the devil himself, insulated, yes.  I'd imagine he'll be a lot better in the next one.  I'd guess the big thing for Romney is to keep not letting him lie and get away with it; challenge him on it when he lies, when he throws out fake numbers.


New Jersey: where the facts and truth don't mean squat.


On the That was upsetting post a few days back, yesterday afternoon I went through that .45 brass; either the case the little piece of brass came from wasn't picked up the day it was fired, or that's not where it came from; none of the primers showed any bits missing.  So that mystery continues.  I did fire that pistol again Wednesday, no problems.

Don't they know they're hurting Mother Gaia?

In linking al-Qaeda to the deadly wildfires, Mr Bortnikov pointed to calls to launch a "forest jihad" by various extremist websites which he said also publish detailed instructions about how and where to best carry out arson. 

He said it was very difficult for special services to find and prosecute such arsonists.


On the 'Only Ones trained enough' front,
Armed Internal Revenue Service agents need more thorough firearms training and they need to be more consistent in reporting accidental firings of their guns, said the tax-collecting agency's watchdog on Tuesday.

"Special agents not properly trained in the use of firearms could endanger the public, as well as their fellow special agents, and expose the IRS to potential litigation over injuries or damages," said J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

A: If' they're 'not properly trained', then why the hell did you turn them loose with sidearms and police powers?
B: Just how many 'accidental firings'(what we call 'negligent discharges') are we talking about here?  Inquiring minds want to know.
C: You maybe get the feeling they're more concerned about being sued than about the other stuff?



Found at the Irishman's


To the ladies out there: why do so many women seem to consider that act of checking tire pressure to be something done, oh, every few months or so?  If they think of it?


Oh, and to people like Tingles Matthews,

Now that's a comment!

From Bob Owens:

Some people eat when they get depressed. I hope Michelle put Bo outside for the night.

Hehehehehe.....


While the USDA- pushed by Mrs. Obama- is telling students to eat like she doesn't,
While students pick at their vegetables, USDA’s cafeteria menus are loaded with unhealthy options for government employees — from pesto chicken pizza to BLTs with cheddar cheese, Cuban pork paninis to Philly steak subs, cheeseburgers to French toast.

“If the USDA demands that 100,000 school districts change their menus and justifies this mandate because schools receive federal money for lunches, then taxpayers should demand that the USDA cafeteria meet the same standards, as USDA operates in taxpayer-funded buildings,” Huelskamp challenged Tuesday afternoon. “Let’s see if they eat enough to function. Let’s see if they like having choices taken away from them.”



A: Why the HELL would you 'need' the SWAT team for this?
B: Nobody on the effing raid could tell the difference between marijuana and daisies?  Really?
People need their ass kicked for this.  And, if they're so desperate for things to do that they're used for crap like this, their SWAT team needs to be disbanded.

Oh, this'll be interesting:
On Thursday, the New York Post reported Zimmerman is suing the Peacock Network. 
According to the Post, the complaint will be filed against NBC News President Steve Capus and correspondent Ron Allen who was the Today reporter involved in the March 27 broadcast. 

A source told the Post, “The suit will be filed imminently against NBC and its news executives. The network’s legal department has put everybody in the news department involved with this incident on notice, telling them not to comment.”
No idea how this'll do in court; to a non-lawyer, looks like NBC could lose its ass over this.

Hillary Clinton: "Please let us put our 'investigation' off

until after the election!"

And in the meantime, while the FBI has been kept away from the 'crime scene', Deity knows what's already been stolen by the bad guys.  And curious locals.  And the Libyan government...

Freaking marvelous

Why it should be possible to fire teachers

The teacher allegedly told the girl to take off the shirt, saying it was like wearing a Ku Klux Klan sheet. The teacher allegedly threatened to use a marker to cross out Romney’s name and that of Rep. Paul Ryan, his running mate.  The teacher also allegedly tried to throw the student out of class.

The teacher also allegedly said that Carroll was "a Democratic school."

Typing with my right hand & wrist wrapped up

does nothing for my speed.  Or spelling.

Did something to my self a few days back, not really sure what; the hand is better(mostly) but the wrist is making its displeasure known on a number of actions.  Like dry-firing; actually having to draw and shoot with speed would not be fun, to say the least.

And, as Tam noted some months ago when her right was somewhat out of commission, I don't have a left-handed holster either.  I guess it's pocket pistol for the next week or two.

And yes, I usually try to get some weak-hand practice in when I hit the range.  Good thing.

speaking of .gov agencies we have no reason to trust,

Environmental Protection Agency officials are keeping mum today about a potential landmine of a lawsuit that claims senior executives there have used secret email accounts to conduct public business without being subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The suit was filed last week by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's senior fellow, Christopher C. Horner, Hans Bader, CEI's counsel for special projects, and Sam Kazman, the conservative think tank's general counsel.

Ih the suit, CEI asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order EPA to produce "certain records pertaining to 'secondary,' non-public email accounts for EPA administrators, the existence of which accounts Plaintiff discovered in an Agency document obtained under a previous FOIA request."
...
Federal law requires all government employees to use only official email accounts. If they do use a private account to do official business, however, they are required to make that available to their employing department or agency.

On that earlier post on 'vertical integration of LE',

something noted at Sipsey,

Mind you, the eTrace system upon which this proposal is based is shot full of chaos and inefficiencies -- multiple traces, administrative traces having nothing to do with crime, etc -- and this proposal would provide trace information to people and organizations who, according to one of sources, "have no business in the law to it." And Arends understands the legal mienfield he is proposing to defeat by evasion:

While the ATF’s policy of not sharing one agency’s trace data with another agency does exist, there are still ways in which multiple agencies can work together using trace data.

Fancy way of saying 'there are ways for us to break the policy and the law, and get away with it.'  Just the kind of crap we've come to expect from these people.

Sharyl Attkisson, apparently one of the only real reporters

in the major media, is getting some recognition for it. 

And, since it also concerns government agencies we've got no real reason to trust,
Vertical integration of all law enforcement under federal command raises red flags citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars warned yesterday in an exclusive analysis, citing an attorney source characterizing it as “the ‘single scariest proposal’ he'd read recently.”He’s referring to a report published in the September issue of Police Chief Magazine, “The ATF’s iTrafficking Program: Linking Firearms Trace Data with State Fusion Centers.”
...
As should a partnership with the IACP, itself a major beneficiary of the notoriously anti-gun Joyce Foundation, a United Nations-approved leader in global disarmament and monopoly of violence maintenance efforts, and a signatory to the Brady Center’s brief against the landmark McDonald case, where the Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment applies to the individual states. 

Likewise, fusion centers themselves have been the focus of concerns, from absurd warnings issued under the FBI’s imprimatur about “domestic terrorism” to include “the purchase of popular preparedness items and firearms accessories as ‘suspicious’ and ‘potential indicators of terrorist activities,” and with Homeland Security adding “Constitutionalists” for good measure. And it’s not like Operation Fast and Furious has given Americans cause to view the Justice Department or ATF as purely-motivated honest brokers of just about anything.
Read it all; along with everything else, there's some- let's say 'sloppiness'- along with the previously-demonstrated crookedness of some of these agencies that ought to scare hell out of anyone who gives a damn about honest law enforcement, and the 2nd Amendment(among others).

The University of Wisconsin lets itself be used fror the Obama campaign

and screw the students.  Except the information they can extract from them for the Obama campaign.
For that, they pay tuition? I could email my notes for the whole semester, but these are students who pay$40,040 tuition per year! ($21,350 if they are Wisconsin residents, a break they get because their parents pay the exorbitant Wisconsin taxes that help keep this stellar university going.)

From an earlier post:
 "President Barack Obama will hold a campaign rally on Bascom Hill this Thursday." Openly announces the University of Wisconsin—Madison. 

After I went to all that trouble to critique the earlier attempt to frame the visit as historical and presidential, when it was really a campaign rally. 

I can't believe the University is shutting down, closing buildings such as the Law School, depriving us of the rooms for regularly scheduled classes, for an entire day, to accommodate a campaign rally. The grounds and the students are provided for a massively intrusive photo-op. Of course, the students don't have to attend. But they will. They've paid their tuition for classes, which they're not getting, and their bodies are repurposed for political exploitation.
Hey, what's losing a day of classes you've been charged out the ass for when they can use you to push The Lightworkers' campaign?

Gordon Lightfoot, just because

Oh, pretties,

I want some.

Damn, I miss making things.

Today, first time in a loooong, time, pulled out the portable forge and lit it; had three knives needed heat-treating(still can't do much in the way of forging).  Right now I still smell like coal smoke; a very familiar scent.

Just stuff

TSA: Taking child molesters off the street by hiring them

First he was fired for allegedly groping young girls, then hired to frisk them at an airport.

A disgraced former priest, defrocked from his New Jersey diocese over allegations of molestation in 2002, was three months later given a job as a TSA officer, it has been revealed.

Thomas Harkins was employed in a role where his duties would include doing pat downs on children, according to local news, after the agency failed to do a thorough background check and offered him a position at Philadelphia International Airport.

So the biggest threat to freedom of speech is people who depend on it

but don't like other people having it; freaking wonderful.
I'm sure they'd object that they don't mind other people having it as long as they don't say anything that causes trouble.  At least, trouble that they don't approve of...


Few days back we hit 2000 troops killed in Afghanistan(with, I'll note, no countdown from the media like they did when Bush was President); what does Obama & Co. do?
Team Obama didn’t mark the occasion by capturing or killing Bin Qumu. They also didn’t hold a memorial service to honor the ultimate sacrifice of 2,000 military men and women.
Instead, they gave Omar Khadr, a convicted murderer detained at Gitmo, a one-way ticket to Canada. This is the same Khadr who pled guilty at a military commission trial in 2010 to killing one of those 2,000 troops, Army Sergeant First Class Christopher J. Speer.
Hey, the President doesn't like the idea of actually winning the war, or using the word 'victory'(except when he's trying to claim credit for Iraq, that is), and seems to loathe the military as much as Bill Clinton; you expect him to give a rats ass about the troops?


I'd heard something about a guy 'shooting his son by accident' the other day but hadn't dug up the story; turns out it's not what that headline would have you think.


"How dare you say you're not a racist for posting on this?  That PROVES you're racist!"  Etc. ad bullshit.


Surveillance cameras in the bathrooms and locker rooms... you can't get away from the damn things ANYWHERE...

How did I know that, somehow, the backstabbing Afgans murdering our troops

would be our fault?

If you don’t want to be shot in the back by your Afghan training partners, the Pentagon advises, don’t offend their religious sensibilities. Don’t kick your feet up on a table, for instance, and never ask to see a picture of their wives and kids. “There’s a percentage [of attacks] which are cultural affronts,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said in a recent interview.

I probably don't need to say that the fact that General Dempsey ordered this safety standown makes him a world class tool. Responding to incidents and widespread operational issues like this with our troops with solutions like this further confirms for me the exact consistency of the chewy center of this poopy flavored lollipop; and evidently, I am not the only one who has had to lick this thing...

 “I would like to see a public affairs officer explain to the press where showing the bottom of your shoe to a Muslim or shaking with your left hand was legitimate grounds for murder,” growled one US Army official.
“The cultural affronts excuse is a bunch of garbage,” a senior US Army intelligence official told me. “The Afghans that know we’re doing all this PC cultural sensitivity crap are laughing their asses off at our stupidity.”

I'm at the point of thinking we should take these PC-at-any-cost assholes, ship them to A'stan and leave them there.  Everybody else comes home.  There's a problem there?  Bomb the shit out of it, and anyone connected to it.  I am God-damned sick of having our 'allies' murder our guys and blame us for it, I'm sick of that asshole President demanding more payoffs because of our faults, and I am- while I'm  on it- sick to fucking death of our media ignoring the deaths of our troops as much as they can because Obama's in charge.

That video on the knife attack at a store the other day

triggered some thoughts.
No technique, nothing fancy, just slashing and chopping and stabbing.  Which made me think of that rule 'Open your distance if at all possible, change angles, anything to get some space and grab some weapon.'  Scary as hell to watch.

Note: I saw that bleep-damned Blogger ate the embed in the earlier post.  It's been doing that since they 'updated' things.

Remember that DHS report that the tea party is made of of terrorists?

A large portion of the country, being profiled by their government as possible terrorists, did the appropriate thing and yelled at the government representatives who were still friendly to them, and thankfully, the report was shelved.

It is now nearly three years later and, it’s back.

Well, not so much the report itself. But one of the main authors of the report, Daryl Johnson, was giving testimony to Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) committee.  For those not quite up to speed on committee assignments, that would be the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing was titled “Hate Crimes and the Threat of Domestic Terrorism” and Mr. Johnson got to sit in front of a governmental body and go MSNBC all over the place.
A: Dick Turban is a sack of crap enemy of the United States.
B: Does it double-check me as a terrorist if I say Daryl Johnson is a scum-sucking bigoted fool?

Well, well, a little past history on our noble AG

pointed to by a commenter:
As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.


 'Why would anyone want to carry a gun to the store?'
Maybe because there are nutcases out there?
And salute to the store owner: injured, surprised, still managed to make a solid shot and put the attacker down.
Found at Arms and the Law


 Found at Uncles, revolver speedloader review
Also, a bit of fashion advice on concealed carry.


From Sarah Hoyt: some thoughts on hopefulness, the future, and its enemies:
I can see it.  It’s so close I can taste it.

So can the luddites.  Which is why they’re screaming and thrashing around like banshees and making use of 20^th century communications tech to TRY to keep the future at bay.  It annoys me, because if they succeed the transition will be unnecessarily painful, unnecessarily bloody, and I might not live to see the other side.

What makes me wake up in the middle of the night is the fear that the land I love, and my children born here, will not live as an entity to see the other end of this either.


British judge says "You break into someones' home, you face a risk and that's how it should be"; hoplophobes wet their knickers(again).


And last, the administration doesn't want employers obeying the law when it might cause them problems; so they try to threaten, and then bribe them.

More on Univision doing the job PBS and CNN and

CBS and NBC etc. won't do:
The report also shed more light on a fact that many in the media have attempted to ignore — namely, that Operation Fast and Furious was not the only federal gun-walking operation providing weapons to criminals at this time.
Operation Castaway, run with the same bloody-minded approach as Operation Fast and Furious, provided more than 1,000 guns to cartels via the Tampa ATF. Those guns leaked out across Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela, according to the U.S. veteran who smuggled some of the weapons, Hugh Crumpler:

“When the ATF stopped me, they told me the guns were going to cartels,” Hugh Crumpler, a Vietnam veteran turned arms trafficker, told Univision News. “The ATF knew before I knew and had been following me for a considerable length of time. They could not have followed me for two months like they said they did, and not know the guns were going somewhere, and not want for that to be happening.”

Univision also uncovered evidence of weapons being smuggled from Texas: two gun-smuggling programs similar to Fast and Furious are rumored to have put thousands of additional weapons in the cartels’ hands in operations larger than Fast and Furious. U.S. Senator John Cornyn has repeatedly pressed the Obama administration for information about the documented trail of weapons coming from two Texas ATF areas of operations. The Department of Justice has denied the existence of such programs, despite the physical evidence of guns recovered suggesting otherwise. While the Univision report focused on guns the DOJ ran to Mexican cartels, there is enough evidence to suggest other Obama administration-sanctioned gun-walking plots arming domestic criminal gangs, such as the so-called Gangwalker plot;in Indiana, which supplied Chicago street gangs, and similar rumored operations in California, North Carolina, northern Florida, and elsewhere, which provided weapons to gangs in U.S. cities. Nor has the Univision report focused on weapons that have found their way to cartels via the State Department or the Department of Defense.
So not only did Univision investigate F&F, they took the trouble to dig into the OTHER gunwalking programs which our media won't even mention(of course, it took how long for them to even mention Gunwalker?)...

Last night I happened to turn PBS on, just as a commercial began for  their coverage over the next month of the debates and such; and it included various journalists talking about how important their jobs are, how they're the 'filter' between the news and us; I wonder if it's ever occurred to these clowns that their 'filtering' is a big reason we don't trust them?

As if there weren't enough reason to say 'F*** Afghanistan

and every child molester in the country' already...
So, this is how I’m hearing that the attack happened this morning. A sergeant first class and a contractor approached an ANA checkpoint and struck up a conversation with the officer in charge of the outpost. In mid-sentence, the ANA officer shot the contractor and the sergeant first class, who went down returning fire.

As the sergeant first class was shot, the entire 17-man Afghan unit opened fire on the US convoy which was passing through the checkpoint. Three other soldiers were injured, and one is critical.

That means that there were 17 m’er f’ers who had slipped through the system that we were assured was in place to weed out the goat raping thugs who planned on killing Americans. 17 of them in one unit.
A WHOLE FUCKING UNIT of our 'allies'.
Gee, I wonder how much Obama will hand over to Karzai this time to assuage his hurt feelings over the nasty things we'll say about the corrupt little shit and his friends?

Two more things and that's it for the night,

and both involve government bullcrap.
First, I remember when it was decided the military would go to the Beretta 9mm for a sidearm; seems the decision process was even more of a swamp than I'd previously heard.


The second, remember the "How to ignore posse cometatis  and use the Army if the tea party takes over a town" crap?  Well, it appears some people really want the military to hate people like us(long post copied from Sipsey):

Meet Arie Perliger, West Point professor now dabbling in "domestic extremism."

Many thanks to the reader who forwarded me the link to this article: "Identifying Three Trends in Far Right Violence in the United States."

The author, Arie Perliger, is, according to his own bio:

(T)he Director of Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His research focuses on political violence and extremism and the principal ways democracies respond to these challenges; the politics of security and the radical right in Israel, Europe and the US.

He is the author of four books and more than 20 articles and book chapters. His work has appeared in peer reviewed journals such as Social Forces, Security Studies, PS: Political Science, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Armed Forces and Society and others.

Dr. Perliger is the co-editor of the journal Democracy and Security and is a regular reviewer for Columbia University Press, Chicago University Press, Routledge, Polity Press, Political Psychology, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, Armed Forces and Society and other journals.

And what, you may ask, is the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point?

Mission

Situated at the nexus of theory and practice, the Combating Terrorism Center serves as an important national resource that rigorously studies the terrorist threat and provides policy-relevant research while moving the boundaries of academic knowledge. The CTC’s distinguished scholars, international network of experts, and access to senior U.S. government leadership set it apart from any other like enterprise.

We Teach: As an institution, we embrace the unique responsibility to prepare cadets to think critically about the challenges they will face during war and peace. To this end, the Center directs multiple graduate-level seminars on Terrorism and Counterterrorism and administers a minor in terrorism studies. In addition, the CTC directs counterterrorism educational programs for four partner government agencies.

We Research: The CTC’s research program produces path-breaking analysis on the dynamic and evolving terrorist threat. The Center’s deep intellectual capital and ability to apply theory to practice creates a unique research model that not only informs strategic counterterrorism thinking but moves the boundaries of academic knowledge.

We Advise: Due to the Center’s unique position at the nexus of academia and practice, the Center leverages its deep expertise to contribute to discrete advisory efforts for federal, state, and local governments including: strategic analysis, operational support, and organizational strategy design.

Take a look at the CTC's personnel list. These are some serious folks.

Now, all of Perliger's previous research and experience has been in Israeli "right-wing extremism," see here, here, and here.

Apparently, however, Perliger is now branching out, into a subject about which he apparently knows exactly . . . dick. First evidence? Look at his sources listed on his website:

Predictably, under "Relevant links" lists The Southern Preposterous Lie Center and under "Datasets" lists SPLC's "Hate Incidents."

Also, given his sources listed at the end of the article in Note 2: Richard "Abens'" American Militias; Joel Dyer's Harvest of Rage; and Kathlyn Gay's Militias: Armed and Dangerous, it is not surprising that his paper reflects "The Narrative of 1995" critiqued by historian Prof. Robert H. Churchill in his book To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement.

Heck, this West Point "professor" schmuck didn't even get Richard Abanes name right. Here is what Prof. Churchill has to say about the quality of Abanes' and other "Brown Scare" writers of the 90s:

The militia movement has been the subject of at least a dozen books and hundreds of articles, yet it remains one of the most poorly understood political movements of the twentieth century. In the months after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by Timothy McVeigh, civil rights organizations issued at least a dozen published reports on the militia movement, and civil rights activists offered "expert" commentary in hundreds of news stories. Within a year, books by leading figures associated with civil rights organizations, including Morris Dees, Kenneth Stern, and Richard Abanes, offered a coherent narrative of the origin of the movement.

What America learned in these months was that the militia movement was an outgrowth of the racist Right. Civil rights activists portrayed the militias as the armed wing of a much larger "Christian Patriot" movement. They warned that Christian Patriots numbered in the millions and that Christian Patriotism called for restoration of white, Christian, patriarchal domination. The Christian Patriot movement as a whole, and the militias in particular, were antidemocratic, paranoid, virulently anti-semitic, genocidally racist, and brutally violent. Much of this literature suggested that Timothy McVeigh was the movement's highest expression. In this narrative, the militias and the Patriot movement took on the guise of the perfect racist "other," and the threat they posed was best articulated by Morris Dees' apocalyptic vision of a "gathering storm."

This "narrative of 1995" produced by civil rights organizations, coupled with the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing, triggered what Steven Chernak has referred to as a moral panic. Through published reports, their influence over the news coverage of the movement, and testimony at prominent public hearings, leading militia "experts" injected their portrait of the movement into public consciousness and popular culture. In news coverage, popular novels, episodes of Law and Order, and movies such as Arlington Road, the public became well-acquainted with the archetypal militiaman, usually protrayed as warped by racial hatred, obsessed with bizarre conspiracy theories, and hungry for violent retribution.

The moral panic over the "militia menace" strongly resembled previous moral panics over the "communist menace" that had swept the nation in the aftermath of World War I and again in the early 1950s. Less well known than these two Red scares is America's "Brown Scare." In the late 1930s, political activists on the left warned that an array of far right opponents of President Roosevelt and the New Deal . . . constituted a fifth column composed of fascist brownshirts . . . (T)he ensuing moral panic facilitated a campaign of repression waged by the U.S. governemnt against the Far Right during World War II. In 1995-6, the moral panic over the militia movement blossomed into a second American Brown Scare.

The literature produced by the second American Brown Scare has had significant impact on academic analysis of the movement, and this poses a problem for continuing scholarship. The civil rights organizations that produced the narrative of 1995 conceived of themselves as political opponents of the militia movement, and these organizations made the legal suppression of the movement one of their central political objectives. That political objective has systematically shaped their reporting on the movement. Their analyses might serve as a primary source base for an interesting analyis of how the activist Left perceived the Far Right at the turn of the millennium. To use this literature as a primary source base in an analysis of the character of the militia movement itself is to allow the movement's opponents to define it.

Unfortunately, much of the scholarship on the militia movement produced in the last ten years has not broken free from the influence of the narrative of 1995. Too many scholars have relied on the reports and books generated by the Brown Scare as primary evidence of the character of the movement. Others who have avoided this first error have nevertheless allowed the narrative of 1995 to unduly influence their research agendas. Finally, even the best scholarship on militias tends to inappropriately conflate the militia movement with other movements on the far right of American politics and to overstate the influence of millennial thought on militia ideology. . .

The final academic legacy of the Brown Scare is an emphasis on the allegedly close association of militia groups with other far right organizations, such as white supremacist groups, Christian Identity ministries, common-law courts, and tax protest societies. The narrative of 1995 lumped all of these disparate far right groups together in the "Christian Patriot movement," a misguided simplification that has led a number of senior scholars to blur the lines between different groups with quite different worldviews . . .

Since the turn of the millennium, three scholars have begun the task of freeing scholarship of the militia movement from the narrative of 1995. . . As an historian, I hope to contribute to this field an insight gained in the study of other partisan political crises in American history: in evaluating the ideology of an insurgent movement, one must not allow the movement's partisan allies, much less its partisan enemies, to speak for it. (pp. 7-11)

It is obvious that Perliger either hasn't read Churchill's work, or, if he has, he doesn't care to let it get in the way of his own narrative. Perliger presents his own "Typology of the American Violent Far Right."

Three major ideological trends can be identified within the American violent far right: racist, anti-federalist and fundamentalist. The ideological characteristics of the various groups impact their operations in terms of tactics used and target selection.

It is the relabeling of the older terms "militia" and "patriot movement" into the "Anti-Federalist Trend" which makes Perliger's faulty analysis particularly dangerous.

The anti-federalist trend (which is usually identified in the literature as the “militia” or “patriot” movement) appeared in full force only in the early to mid-1990s with the emergence of groups such as the Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia. Anti-federalist and anti-government sentiments existed in U.S. society before the 1990s via diverse movements and ideological associations promoting anti-taxation, gun rights, and a “survivalist” lifestyle. Yet most scholars concur that the “farm crises” of the 1980s combined with the implications of rapid cultural, technological and normative changes in American society, as well as attempts to revise gun control and environmental legislation, facilitated the emergence of a fairly ideologically cohesive movement, as well as its rapid growth.[2]

Ideologically, anti-federalists are interested in undermining the influence, legitimacy and practical sovereignty of the federal government and its proxy organizations, such as the U.S. military or Federal Bureau of Investigation.[3] This rationale is multifaceted, and includes the belief that the U.S. political system and its proxies have been hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a New World Order (NWO),[4] in which the United States will be absorbed into the United Nations or another version of global government; strong convictions regarding the corrupted and tyrannical nature of the federal government and its related natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civilian lives and constitutional rights; and finally, perceptions supporting civilian activism, individual freedoms, and self governing the way they were manifested in the frontier culture in U.S. history, especially during the Revolutionary War and the expansion to the American west. Hence, anti-federalist groups see themselves as part of a struggle to restore or preserve the United States’ “true” identity, values and “way of life” and as the successors of the country’s founding fathers.

Recent research conducted by this author shows that in the case of the anti-federalist trend there is compatibility between ideological tenets and operational characteristics. Two-thirds of the attacks by anti-federalist groups were directed against the government and its proxies, such as law enforcement (65.8%); while attacks against minorities (11%) and infrastructure (6.1%, which could also be seen as attacks against the government) comprise most of the rest.

The article doesn't given us the statistical evidence upon which Perliger rests his claims, but if he's counting on the Southern Preposterous Lie Center, that is a slender scholarly reed indeed.

The important point is that Perliger has managed, by describing these "violent right-wing extremists" as "anti-federalist", to expand, elide and conflate these perceived enemies and, I'm sure, to present to the cadets at West Point the specter of "constitutionalist terrorists."

This is dangerous stuff. It may also be argued that the neo-Nazis and "Christian" Identity types which make up the other two-thirds of Perliger's article, are not even "right wing" since their particular collectivisms derive from variants of socialism. The constitutional militias, as Churchill quickly recognized when he did his own original research, were largely libertarian in make up and natural enemies of all forms of collectivism.

As I commented back in 1999:

“I think in some ways Christian Identity is designed for pantywaists who are afraid to declare themselves true Nazis,” Vanderboegh jibed. “These are the folks who have to tell their mommas or their wives, “It’s OK that we hate blacks and Jews, dear, because God and Jesus told us it’s OK. Whereas the Nazis don’t worry about that kind of thing. They’re sort of beyond excuses.

“You know, when you’ve got Adolf Hitler as your standard-bearer, what else have you got to be embarrassed about?” Vanderboegh said.

“They each come to their pus-filled beliefs by different roads, but they agree on the destination.” -- “Christian Identity is for pantywaists” by Jeff Stein, Salon, 11 Aug 1999.

Yet, according to Perliger, we "anti-federalists" (and I surely acknowledge my Anti-Federalism, going back to Founders like George Mason and Patrick Henry) are now one of the "three trends of far right violence in the United States." AND THIS ILL-INFORMED SCHMUCK IS TEACHING WEST POINT CADETS.

Like I said, this is dangerous stuff.

Have a little time now, and I'll start with the Univision report

on Gunwalker:
Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.
More on the report at Legal Insurrection.
Yes, I know, the media and people like Cummings will start yelling "We need more laws!"; I still wonder if this might cause the major media to pull their head out and start actually, y'know, reporting on this...


Also,
Congressional Republicans are threatening to subpoena a White House official who declined to speak to them in their investigation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gunwalking operation: Fast and Furious.
This should've been done a long time ago.


Remember that bullcrap story(literally a 'story', here) in  Fortune?  The one that 'explained' that Gunwalker was all a Stupid Party plot to attack Obama & Holder, etc.?
Scooping other media with an exclusive story, Dylan Byers of Politico today reported he had obtained a copy of a letter dated yesterday from Robert N. Driscoll, the attorney for ATF whistleblower John Dodson, written to Fortune managing editor Andrew Serwer, that demanded retraction of a report by Katherine Eban the letter calls “demonstrably false in many respects.”
 Which in plain language is "Eban lied her ass off, we've got proof, we want a retraction."

 Ignoring all the other stuff, the way the media has carried Obamas' water on Gunwalker is flat disgusting on its own, and a lot of us have wondered if ANYTHING would be enough to make them actually start imitating reporters... we'll see.

More Mexican reporters doing the job American journalists won't do

Somebody sent me this link, a CSM story  that Univision- whose reporter actually asked Obama real questions- has a story coming up on Fast & Furious.  Then ran across this:

Watch More News Videos at ABC | 2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

which story includes
Additional guns, previously unreported by congressional investigators, found their way into the hands of drug traffickers across Latin America in countries such as, Honduras and Colombia, as well as the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. A person familiar with the recent congressional hearings called Univision’s findings “the holy grail” that Congress had been searching for.

So; if you paid attention only to the Official Media, you'd never have heard of Fast & Furious and the crap involved at all; if you listened only to them, you'd have been told that all you heard elsewhere was nothing but partisan political crap- and racist at that- from the Evil Republicans(ignore the conservatives and libertarians, they either don't count or count as Stupid Party members).  And now, while our media is chasing anything Romney says that might count as a 'gaffe', and ignoring anything bad Obama says or does, Mexican media actually investigates something our media could have- SHOULD HAVE- been digging into for years at this point.

Somebody said one reason the media really needs Obama reelected is that if he isn't, they're screwed by their own actions; sounds about right.

Maybe more time to yell about things tonight, but this I had to post on.

Can you say 'Aid & Comfort to the Enemy'?

I think you can.
Second, because of this massive change in policy (and complete change in mission) all U.S. forces are forbidden to actively patrol their AO and are to remain on their respective COPs/FOBs. There are only a few exceptions to this rule and they all pertain to “hardening” highway 1 in our AO. We have received orders that clearly state that all CF will no longer be allowed to drop air to ground munitions within the country of Afghanistan.
Troops in trouble?  No air support; it might upset someone, might cause problems for the bastard in the White House trying to keep his corrupt, treacherous ass in that chair.


Somebody pointed me to this, and I wanted to get it up; otherwise, tied up

Probably very light on the posted bitching

and yelling the next couple of days or so, so to get some stuff out of the way:
Some thoughts on the 2nd Amendment, including
This wording - and there is no reasonable way around it - also suggests through the use of the term Militia, the entire population of able bodied adult males of an age to bear arms and organized or organizable into groups of combatants, that the right to keep and bear arms is for a collective purpose.[1] To accept that the Second Amendment serves a collective purpose, however, is not to concede that it is merely a collective right. 

Consider, for example, the First Amendment, or rather those clauses of it concerned with freedom of speech and of the press. These rights are exercised individually, by newspapers, other media, the individual members of their staffs, and individual citizens. Its purpose, on the other hand, is to secure the liberty of the collective by giving widespread airing to even unpopular or anti-governmental views. 

There is, therefore, no obvious contradiction between the exercise of an individual right and the service of a collective purpose. As with freedom of speech and of the press...or of other guaranteed liberties - free assembly, freedom of conscience through freedom of religion, the right to have one's home free of spies in uniform, the one can serve the other quite handily: individual freedoms, freely exercised, preserving the freedom of the group and of each member in it.
I'm not all the way through this, so far it's interesting.


I'd not heard this before; I like it:

Some stuff I'd not heard about Morris Dees, of the SPLC; not in any way flattering.


Another nasty virus discovered in Africa.


A response to Samuel Jackson(NSFW):


A Democrat pollster has something to say about the MSM ignoring ethics, honor and duty:
 “First of all, we’ve had 9 days of lies…If a president of either party…had had a terrorist incident and gotten on an airplane [after remarks] and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified…it should have been, should have been, the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment. But nothing was said at all. Nothing will be said. [...] It is [unacceptable] to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know. [The MSM] has made themselves the enemy of the American people. It is a threat to the very future of the country; we’ve crossed a new and frightening line on the slippery slope, and it needs to be talked about.”


And someone else on the media not-, hell, AVOIDING any questions if they at all can:
There are so many unanswered questions, not just about Libya, but also about Cairo. Who is it that Rice thinks “widely disseminated” this “movie”? Surely she can’t believe that the Egyptian Coptic Christian who made the video had the capacity or even desire to put it in the hands of the people who did the inciting. Also, has the administration noticed that the mob in Cairo, so spontaneously upset about the video, just happened to be carrying an Islamist flag to hoist over our embassy? On 9/11. What a massive coincidence.
...
 We know now that before the attacks on 9/11 that killed 3,000 Americans, more attention should have been paid to attacks against the U.S. overseas. These were warnings of what was to come. They say curiosity killed the cat. In this case, lack of curiosity on the part of the American media very well may kill more Americans.


And last, in The Guitar Saga,
Having had a few days to dry, I looked it over very closely; the finish came out beautifully, but I fear it needs to be thicker.  Count it as not researching/asking more questions sooner, but I assumed(I know, I know, shutup) one can would do it.  May not take a whole second can, but I think it'll be a stronger, better finish if it gets a few more light coats building on what's there now.

The second can should be here tomorrow; I'll get some pictures and post them before I do any more spraying.  I'll say this, it looks like new, better than it has in a long time.  The further coats, a day or so to dry, wet-sand to level, a final light coat, then 6-8 days before can string it and see how the sound held up through all this.

It wouldn't be the same,

but there's potential

Found over at Borepatch

Tab clearing

Some of what's been going on in Mexico is worse than previously admitted.  Which makes it pretty damned bad.


Interesting, and possible; it would make that video deliberately made to be used as an excuse for more rioting and calls for "You people have to start censoring yourselves, or else."


What's scary about this: not only does she ignore restrictions already placed, that line about even as we place reasonable limits on arguably more valuable rights like the freedom of speech and due process, is scary; just what 'reasonable limits' does she want?


Why People Don't Trust The Media, Part 372


"What?  You helped make a movie about whacking bin Laden?  Don't you know how much trouble that can cause?" Yeah, but this might be excusable, since it's to make Obama look good before the election.

About that "My safety trumps everything" traffic stop

mentioned earlier, just ran across this thanks to a tip:
In this case – as in other “situations” of its kind – the officers have themselves to blame for the fact that the public hasn’t seen “their side” of the story, since the dashcam recordings of the encounter have mysteriously disappeared. 
Isn't that interesting?

And, a little earlier in the article,

“Your safety does not trump my right and my liberty,” Pierson tutored the deputy.

“When I stop you, yes it does,” asserted Bassett.

“Your personal safety is more important than all the laws, the Constitution, and every one of my personal rights and liberties,” summarized Pierson, his voice heavy with disgusted incredulity.

“When I’m in a traffic stop, yes,” declared Bassett. “I’m in control of this situation.”

we have to operate as if we are on the border

In Chicago.

They also bring this up:
During his initial court proceedings, Zambada-Niebla made a number of explosive allegations about Operation “Fast and Furious” and an alleged immunity deal between the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, the DEA and other federal agencies.
and the article has this 'denial' from DEA:
 When asked for the DEA’s official response to the allegations, Riley said, “It’s an ongoing investigation. He hasn’t been brought to trial, and I can’t speak to that.” However, he did say of Zambada-Niebla’s claim, “It is not DEA policy and in my own personal opinion, I just don‘t think it’s accurate.”
Call it reaction on my part to all the other crap that's happened the last few years, but that's not only not a denial, it's a "Please ignore that, don't ask us about it, we really don't want to give ANY answer" response.

Not confidence-inspiring, is it?

“We’re told every day, our safety is first,” he said.

“We’re here to come home every night.”
Um, no, you're not.  You're SUPPOSED to be doing the job of a lawman, risks and all, and if you think your personal safety is always first, then either you were badly trained, or you're a sorry lawman.

No, I don't know everything, this may be a lot more involved than the story lets on; that line still indicates a real problem.
 Bob Owens, his opinion on the matter as well.


Last night, at Belle Isle Brewery with some friends, one of the screens had CNN on and one of the crawls was about the 'crime scene in Benghazi still not secured'.  Well, it took how long for the people in charge to admit it was a planned attack, not about that idiot video?  So how long might it take them to actually do something about 'securing the crime scene' that everybody in town has apparently been wandering through?


Last night proved once again: it's been dry, you badly need rain?  It won't come as a nice, gentle rain, it'll lightning and rumble and pour like the cow on a flat rock.  But it was rain.

This has the potential to be real interesting

Among Maehr’s contentions is that while the government has the legal authority to tax, the Internal Revenue Service has used “unlawful, unconstitutional, unfair and biased” manipulations to assess income taxes on that which is not income – essentially salaries and wages.

Basing his argument on 10 years’ worth of research into tax law, he concludes that salaries and wages are the result of the mutual agreement among participants to exchange labor for money – and that’s not income.

Let's see... Iran hangs homosexuals

(slowly, can't have a quick death), abuses women for various reasons, supports terrorists, wants to commit genocide, demands submission to their state religion(or they'll kill you or make you a slave), etc., etc., but our Constitution is the law of barbarism...

Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani, you are hereby invited to bend over and kiss our collective ass.  Assuming you can find time when you're not abusing people, planning crimes against humanity or molesting children.  And by the way,

How well does this form of people control work?

Not very damned well, it seems:
I want you to stop and think about that for a second. Two countries who heavily restrict guns still have enough gun crime that I can find a new story every single day for a year. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the failure of gun control, I don’t know what does.

This is what they want:

"Freedoms must not interfere with the freedoms of others," said Ahmadinejad. "If someone insults, what would you do? ... Is insulting other people not a form of crime?" 
and
"We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they (the Israelis) represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."
and, not forgetting a long-standing death threat,
"Where is he now?" Ahmadinejad asked of Rushdie. "Is he in the United States? If he is, you shouldn't broadcast that for his own safety.

If they'd start properly calling it the Religion of Submission, there's be a lot less misunderstanding

Just a slight mistake, I'm sure...

The Federal Voting Assistance Program website published an incorrect deadline for the return of returning military ballots in Wisconsin. Had this error not been corrected, thousands of Wisconsin servicemen and women could have been disenfranchised in this key swing state this November.
Just a slight mistake, I'm sure...


Well, let's see, the DoJ IG managed to stretch the Gunwalker investigation out for over a year and it was still incomplete when it was released; how long do you think Clinton can drag out this one?  I wouldn't want to wait on it either.


It's a LEGAL system, not a JUSTICE system


So let’s get this straight:  Our President may have deep ties (personal and financial) not only to black nationalist extremists, but also wealthy Arabs who publicly floated the idea of financing, among other projects, the top-flight education of young black Americans who might (hopefully) one day share their hatred of America?


New York Effing City:
A grown adult cannot legally purchase a soft drink over 16 oz.

A minor can be given, without their parent's knowledge, a ' morning after pill'. A medication needing a prescription if under the age of 17.

How exactly does this make sense again?  
Don't forget, they don't want you to make a bad choice(from their point of view) from a friggin' vending machine, either.


 If this is true, then everyone involved- from the doctors to the Organ Donor Network people, should be prosecuted; you're actually talking about killing people so you can get their organs.


That's about all the news and crap I can take for one morning

'Freedom of Speech is overrated' says someone who depends

on it; gee, I wonder just what all he'd censor in the name of 'being sensitive to others'?

By the way, I have no idea whether the foreign policy clowns were urging civil rights reform in order to counter Soviet propagandists’; if they were, it shows a rather nasty side of the bastards(I also object to the implication that state's rights means 'you can keep beating up blacks').

I'd prefer you read it yourself, for the full flavor of crap, but I'll quote this from the end:
And so combining the liberal view that government should not interfere with political discourse, and the conservative view that government should not interfere with commerce, we end up with the bizarre principle that U.S. foreign policy interests cannot justify any restrictions on speech whatsoever. Instead, only the profit-maximizing interests of a private American corporation can. Try explaining that to the protesters in Cairo or Islamabad.
Think about that(aside from the usual 'liberals care about people/conservatives care only about business' crap).  Somehow I doubt that this clown would have the same 'foreign policy interests justify censorship of what might upset someone' when Bush was President.  And if he did?  In either case, he's still a slimy little bastard who'd chop up the Constitution in the name of 'being sensitive to others'.  Eric Posner, you're disgusting.

A: "We have freedom of speech, but I want to make you miserable

if you dare to exercise it."

B: Screw you, you miserable socialist shit.

In our latest celebritute idiocy

we have Madonna kissing Obama's ass.  What really annoys me?  This is the bitch who announced she was going to raise her kids in Britain 'because the culture in the US has become so coarse', and this is how she speaks?

The Guitar Saga: Post VI

Yesterday sprayed six coats, letting it dry 1-2 hours between(I know, that's real precise; the can says 1-2 hours between coats, it was at least one hour between all but the last, and two before the last coat).  Today was wet-sanding to level, and right now it's hanging up waiting for the last coat.

If you've looked at the S-M site, you may have noticed at that the bottom of an item display you'll see several tabs, sometimes one is 'Instructions'.  There's one on the sampler pack page, and it covers the finishing papers and wet-sanding.  You better believe I read every word, and found this:

Most professionals prefer mineral spirits or naphtha for wet-sanding lacquer finishes, and use water for synthetic polyurethanes and esters. Water can be used with caution when wet-sanding lacquer, but be very careful near exposed unfinished wood surfaces such as F-holes, volume and tone control holes, screw holes, neck pockets and routed pickup cavities. If water penetrates bare wood, splitting and lifting of adjacent lacquer can result; nor should exposed wood be soaked with mineral spirits or naphtha, although these lubricants are more forgiving.

which I found very interesting.  Because I was nervous about using wet sandpaper on that instrument to start with.  However, this being a lacquer finish, I had the mineral spirits option, and I had some.  So I stuck a piece in some spirits this morning to soak and about half an hour ago I took the guitar down and did the sanding.  And that was easy.

There were only a few patches that weren't smooth, so I'd pull the folded paper out, shake it to get rid of excess, and gently work it over a surface, dip and shake once or twice to keep the paper wet(in the wind the spirits evaporate fast), then wipe it off with a soft cloth.  The whole surface is smooth as silk.  Right now it's hanging back up; I'm going to let it sit for a while to make sure all traces of the mineral spirits are gone, and then I'll shoot the finishing coat.

This is the one I used, by the way.

One more: a real drop in crime:

The trend toward privatization of security in Russia is likely to grow as a result of President Medvedev’s recent initiative to reform the country’s militia – that is, its police force – by purging about 200,000 officers from the ranks. Sociologist Mikhail Vinogradov, who estimates that one-third of Russia’s police force is composed of alcoholics and psychopaths, points out that in 1991, the militia was reduced by about thirty percent – and the result was a sharp reduction in the crime rate. 

 During the past decade, the crime rate in the United States has declined, terrorism has been all but nonexistent – and the country has been transformed into a fair approximation of a high-security prison, complete with full-spectrum surveillance of the population and undisguised militarization of “local” police departments. At the same time, the political elite in charge of the former Soviet Union is addressing a legitimate crime crisis by drawing down the police force and recognizing (however tentatively) the right of citizens to armed self-defense. 

For all of its problems, Russia clearly is no longer the land of Lenin. For all of our advantages, it’s just as clear that the United States of America is no longer the Land of the Free.

Tab clearing

while waiting for the barrel to soak, after having stripped the slide to check EVERYTHING:
A picture of a Kerry bog slide

That's a big piece of territory on the move


However, the reality is that we would have a far safer society if “Only The Criminals Had Guns.”
Fair warning: I think I lost some brain cells just reading the piece he links to; more on that later after the daze lifts


Found by Uncle: Salami for the troops


Clinton's State Department A: doesn't have answers(that they're willing to give) and B: REALLY doesn't like being asked the questions.


Yes, I also think Romney sucks in some ways: THIS is part of what you'll be helping to elect if you sit the election out.
Note Axelrod has the standard attitude: "This didn't work, so we need to do it harder and MORE!"


Gun Culture 2.0: last times I've been to the range I saw women, families- kids and all- and people of assorted colors; a very good sign that we're winning.  Endangered by the above link.


Anti-gun fundamentalists; it does seem to fit


Why should civilians own military-grade weapons and be proficient in their use? To make sure the various governments of the United States (federal, state, or local) face the credible threat of lethal force from the civilian population, so that there will cannot be the wholesale slaughter of innocents by the government on these shores.

This need didn’t end in 1781 when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, or in 1865 when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, or in 1946 when the McMinn County Sheriff’s Department surrendered in Athens, Tennessee.

As long as men dream of lording over other men, civilians must have military-grade small arms.


"Oh no you don't!"
(dammit, effing Blogger keeps not adding videos, if I can find the thing again I'll try to add it in)

And last, they don't mind Obama not saluting the flag, but think you should pledge yourself to him

THAT was upsetting

Got to the range this morning, set up a target, stuck a mag in the .45 and chambered a round, set it on the bench; grab, aim, thumb off safety,
click.
WTF?
All kinds of thoughts run through your mind at a time like that, the first being "Didn't I chanber one?"  Dropped the magazine and kept it pointed downrange for about 30 seconds, then- holding it with the ejection port away from me- racked the slide, and a round popped out.  I checked it, and there's a very faint, very large circular mark on the primer.
WTF II?
Locked the slide back to look, and the firing pin hole is plugged with what looks like brass; reached in and with a fingernail scratched at it and it popped out(of course it fell on the floor and disappeared), staying in sight just long enough for me to see shiny brass in a tiny disc.

I have no idea.  Last time I fired it, about week-and-a-half ago, every round went bang.  All I can figure is the last round, a bit of the primer cup must've somehow jammed in the hole.  I think I've still got that brass in the same bag todays went in; before I feed it to the tumbler I'll look at every damn one to see if can find such a damaged primer.

A US Attorney tells the ATF office he won't work with them;

the real backstory in this would be interesting as hell.  Either you've got a Attorney's office playing games, or the ATF office/agents did some things that REALLY pissed them off.  And Grassley's involved, which means it could feed into the Gunwalker investigation...