A fine evening out there;

you can start on the analysis, I'm going out to scratch dog ears for a bit

An experiment,

just because.  To be tried in the mini-Sharps:

                                            162-grain cast semi-wadcutters

                                                          Paper patched

                                    Wiped lightly with lube and sized to .358"

     A snug-fitting paper wad(cut from a tea bag box) inserted, then the bullets seated

over the minimum charge of 2400.

This is because, after all that research on paper-patching, I wondered how it'd work in this application.  The wad is probably unnecessary, but worth trying.  If these shoot accurately, I'll try some without it and see if it changes things.

'Global Warmering/Climate Change/Etc.',

bullcrap.
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
So what is the goal of environmental policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.
Yeah, this has come out before; I think it needs to be brought back up regularly.

Speaking of,

So, no boots on the ground...

Fatisah (Syria) (AFP) - US forces on the ground in northern Syria are helping a major offensive against the Islamic State group in its stronghold of Raqa province, Kurdish-Arab fighters battling the jihadists say.

Near the frontline north of the IS bastion of Raqa city, American commandos climbed onto a low rooftop carrying US-made anti-tank missiles.

"These are US special operations forces and this is why you cannot follow them or take many pictures," said a fighter with the Syrian Democratic Forces, which announced on Tuesday an assault on the jihadists north of Raqa.

The Pentagon is not happy with the pictures.  And the questions.
The Pentagon Thursday denied the presence of U.S. troops on the front lines in Syria despite photographic evidence showing special operations troops fighting alongside Kurdish forces in an offensive to retake Raqqa from the Islamic State.

Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, maintained the Obama’s administration’s claim that ground troops in Syria are solely serving in advisory and assistance roles in the war-torn region.

“They are not on the forward line. They are providing advice and assistance,” Cook said during a testy exchange with reporters. “That mission has not changed, their role has not changed. They are not leading this fight. They are supporting those forces that are at the leading edge of this fight, and they are doing it in a very effective fashion.”
'Not on the forward line', does that mean they're barely behind, or in front of it?  And 'supporting those forces' could have several meanings, now couldn't it?

Could be wrong, but I suspect this is Dear Leader's minions playing as much as possible his "No American boots on the ground(unless I flatly can't deny them, and I really want to because I said we're out of there)!" games.


Oh, and the Turks are pissed because of the patches some of those troops are wearing:
Turkey on Friday lashed out at the United States after images surfaced apparently showing U.S. soldiers in Syria wearing the insignia of a Kurdish group opposed by Ankara. 

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during an international conference in southern Turkey that it was "unacceptable" for soldiers of a Turkish ally to use the patches of the YPG — the Kurdish People's Protection Units which are fighting the Islamic State group in northern Syria.
I doubt the Turks would be happy with the response I'd give them.
Pics of the patches in question here.

And don't piss off your camel,

might be bad for your health

Threatening storms again;

stay in, stay dry, and check the information for clues to what makes the world go 'round

And it only took CNN this long

to discover this...
CNN showed how Islamic State terrorist fighters are blending in with legitimate refugees and traveling to Europe in an exclusive report Thursday.
Wonder if they'll have to call themselves anti-immigrant or something now?


DePaul University, enemy of free speech.
And the local cops need retraining as to what their actual job is; for one thing, it's not being enforcers for some academic asshat.


This.  This isn't good, it's excellent.  More, in more places, please.


“My relationship with that group started downhill when I refused to let them bring phones and computers into my office [at the Special Operations Command],” Johnson recalls. “It was really an eye-opener to watch them stand outside using nonsecure comms [communications] and then bring messages to the secretary so she could then conduct a secure [call] with the military” and the State Department.
They truly care about nothing except what they want, when they want it.

Awww, poor Bernie, someone asked him a question

about his house of worship and he didn't like it.

LEÓN KRAUZE, UNIVISION: I am sure that you know about this topic: various leftist governments, especially the populists, are in serious trouble in Latin America. The socialist model in Venezuela has the country near collapse. Argentina, also Brazil, how do you explain that failure?

BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: You are asking me questions…

LEÓN KRAUZE, UNIVISION: I am sure you’re interested in that.

BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: I am very interested, but right now I’m running for President of the United States.

LEÓN KRAUZE, UNIVISION: So you don’t have an opinion about the crisis in Venezuela?

BERNIE SANDERS, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: Of course I have an opinion, but as I said, I’m focused on my campaign.

Gee, yeah, maybe that's why those cops they were forced to hire

wouldn't do their damned jobs.
The other day:
DePaul University Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a Milo Yiannopoulos event on Tuesday night. They justified their illiberal actions on grounds that Yiannopoulos’s speech spreads hate and violence—which, incidentally, is true, given that the students retaliated by literally attacking him.
In video footage of the event, a female protester can clearly be seen striking Yiannopoulos in the face. This took place during the Q and A, which was interrupted by the female student and another activist, student Edward Ward. They were joined by ten other irate students. Yiannopoulos’s supporters tried to stop them, and police and security were called.
But neither the police nor campus security did anything to stop the activists. This was ironic, because DePaul had forced the College Republicans to pay several hundred extra dollars for security for the event, according to The College Fix.

And we find out
The second lead protester at last night’s event at DePaul University has been identified as Kayla Johnson, the daughter of Juanita Johnson, who serves as the Chicago Police Department’s Director of Administration.

Johnson rushed onto the stage behind Edward Ward, a political science graduate and minister who led the effort to shut down Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ event. From the stage, Johnson shouted at and taunted attendees. Eventually, she grabbed the microphone from an event organizer and taunted Yiannopoulos with it, taking several swings at his head.

Considering the past history of the AG, who would you believe:

the cops who said "This is what we were ordered to do", or the AG?
But Robert Marus, a press officer for the D.C. attorney general's office, vigorously denied that they'd given any such order to disobey the order in the meantime.
Sounds nice.  Except for that past history of the AGs office.  And this from the original post:
Thinking there might be some kind of mistake, I contacted the AG’s office, which explicitly told me if I had a complaint about what they did I could file that complaint online.
You'd think, if they had NOT done it, they'd have been rather upset to find out cops were telling people "The AG's office said screw the court order", considering the possible consequences; instead of 'Go file a complaint online.'

Why yes, I am rather cynical about these people.  They've earned it.

Because I'm hot, tired, and my hands still smell a bit of anti-freeze

No deep thoughts tonight

Someone once said that it is impossible to say something so clearly

that it cannot be misunderstood.

It seems that includes your name, and what the hell you called about.

Kind of amazing, actually.

Katie Couric’s “Gungate” was intentional, willful, and malicious fraud,

and should in Couric’s immediate termination and her being treated as a pariah for the rest of her life.
Fat chance.  She's one of the club, and her fraud served their purpose.  Chances of her paying any real price for this: just about zero.

Why 'Crooked Hillary' is likely to stick

Because she IS crooked.
There's also the matter of Hillary's speaking fees. In just the two years between leaving the Obama administration and launching her bid for the presidency, she made nearly $22 million from speeches. Right after her service to Obama, Hillary Clinton began giving one to two speeches a month at around $225,000 or more per speech. Who wanted to hear Hillary speak? Lots of financial services companies, including Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Fidelity Investments. Goldman Sachs even hired her to speak in South Carolina in June of 2013, and then again in New York and Arizona that October. Her clients included major investors in government projects, like TD Bank, which had major investments in the Keystone Pipeline.
... 
But what does the public find more shameful? Is it the businessman who looks after his own interests, using government to smooth his real-estate business and casino interests? Or the government official, who prostitutes the public offices she uses, not only for personal gain, but sometimes in ways that work to legitimize human-rights abusers in Africa, or enrich shady Middle Eastern business concerns, or give Russian companies greater access to weapons material? We're going to find out.
With zero help from the 'Justice' Department.


Isn't it just friggin' amazing how many federal agencies can't find records when asked?


Yeah, we can trust NPR for unbiased news.  They say so.
Let’s just state the obvious here. NPR took money ($700,000 over a period of several years) from a group that the White House has identified as part of the Iran deal echo-chamber. NPR says that money didn’t influence coverage, and yet one of the outspoken critics of the deal had his interview canceled and, a month later, had his 2nd approach to the network rebuffed. It has all the appearance of bias. For that matter, NPR’s decision to host Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione on two occasions to offer positive (and partisan) political spin for the deal looks a lot like pay-for-play.
And lied about cancelling the critic, don't forget that.


Oh yeah, this is just great!  Unless you live around them.
Researchers have confirmed that three Nile crocodiles were captured near Miami, and they say it's possible more of the man-eating reptiles are still out there, although no one can say for sure.
So are there males and females out there?  Are they breeding?  If they are, big trouble ahead.


But maths is hard!  And this sounds so good!
We will act boldly to move our energy system away from fossil fuels, toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal because we have a moral responsibility to leave our kids a planet that is healthy and habitable. 

And don't get the idea that Bernie is alone in these fantasies.  In the same March speech where she said "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business," Hillary also added that her energy policy would "bring economic opportunity—using clean, renewable energy as the key—into coal country."     

Can anybody around here do basic arithmetic?  These ideas can't possibly add up unless the government subsidies necessary to induce the development of wind and solar power are treated as completely costless free money.  Government as the infinite source of costless free money -- actually that's the essence of progressivism, so I don't know why I should have expected anything else from these guys.
In Clinton's case, who knows if she actually believes this crap or is just buying votes?  In Sanders case,

And what will you EUnuchs do when Poland tells you to kiss their ass?

Maybe a few others tell you, too?
The President of the unelected executive arm of the European Union (EU) has vowed to block all right wing populists from power across the continent, shortly after acquiring the power to exert “far-reaching sanctions” on elected governments. 

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, promised to exclude Norbert Hofer, the leader of Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), from all EU decision-making if elected ahead of yesterday’s presidential vote. 

“There will be no debate or dialogue with the far-right,” the liberal bureaucrat told AFP.
"Your elections do not count unless we approve of the winners."  Yeah, that'll go over well.
However, as of 2014, the Commission was handed a batch of new powers that it could plausibly use to do just this – powers already being mobilised against Poland’s elected, conservative leaders.

The Commission can now trigger a “rule of law mechanism” (Article 7 TEU) against nations it perceives as deviating from “the common constitutional traditions of all Member States.” Ultimately, “far-reaching sanctions” can be exerted, and a country can be stripped of all voting rights in the EU and have funding blocked. 

In January this year, Frans Timmermans, the first ever unelected Commission “vice president,” who is in charge of “human rights,” triggered the mechanism for the first time against Poland’s government which came to power in a record-breaking, landslide election in 2015.
And Poland is basically telling them to pucker up.

Considering Poland- and a few others- have serious concerns about Russia, and probably have military forces each capable of kicking the ass of most of the rest of the EU if need be, threatening them might not be real productive.  They've been under socialist rule, and they didn't like it.  The EUnuchs might try remembering that.

Mixed results from the .357 tests

30 yards, with a so-so rest.*  All loaded with 11.0 grains of 2400.  I decided the max length on each by starting a bullet in, then using the crimp die to get rid of the flare in the case mouth, then seeing if it would chamber fully without actually engaging the rifling.

First the cast wadcutter seated way out to 1.63" oal

No, that didn't work very well.

Same bullet, seated to 1.58"

X-Treme 148-grain plated wadcutter at 1.59"

Now the 162-grain semi-wadcutter, seated to 1.7" oal

The 162, I want to load some more and try it again with a better rest; when three are that tight and the other two mostly vertical in dispersion, that could quite likely be my error.

The X-Treme plated, and the cast at 1.58" I'd like to try again as well.  The plated especially. 

The cast at 1.63", screw it.  That I'm pretty sure wasn't me.

And, since I remembered to bring some more, the X-Treme plated in .38 Special cases:

I most certainly will try these again off a better rest.  It appears the long jump from case to rifling doesn't trouble them.



*and me doing the shooting, but we'll ignore that part right now

Priorities. Dumb ones.

Dear Leader has them.
They can use those funds to combat infectious diseases, if the administration believed there is an infectious disease emergency. In the middle of the Zika epidemic, the administration did use their authority to pull money from foreign aid and spend it, but they didn’t use it for Zika.
You might ask—so what did the administration spend the infectious disease money on earlier this year?
You guessed it… climate change.
In March, President Obama gave the United Nations $500 million out of an account under bilateral economic assistance to fund the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.
He really doesn't give a crap about this country, does he?
Except for wanting to trash it, THAT he cares about.


A: I think these little fascists are feeling the heat a bit.
B: Damn right keep the suit going; the bastards have got to know there's a price for this kind of violation of their oath of office.
Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker has withdrawn his subpoena of the Competitive Enterprise Institute after a rash of criticism over his investigation into climate change dissenters.

Still, CEI general counsel Sam Kazman said Monday that the free-market think tank would still push the court for sanctions against Mr. Walker, one of a 17-member coalition of attorneys general pursuing fraud accusations against climate skeptics.

“We are doing so because Walker’s underlying Virgin Islands subpoena remains in effect and, as his local counsel expressly stated, Walker can reinstate the DC [District of Columbia] subpoena whenever he wants,” Mr. Kazman said in a statement.


What is it with idiots in zoos screwing with the animals?

Katie Couric, Professional Journalist

Watching the video, you hear Katie ask, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorist from walking into, say, a licensed gun dealer and purchasing a gun?” The camera then shows the group members TOTALLY SILENT FOR EIGHT SECONDS. The camera zooms in on one member, who looks down.

The clear implication is that none of the group had an answer for that question and was being evasive and avoiding eye contact.

The truth is, and as you will hear in the audio, below, that the group responded to Katie immediately, with answers to her question! Yet the video shows no one responding. Clearly, when Katie didn’t get the answer(s) she wanted, she changed the group’s answers by replacing them with other video of the group sitting around quietly between questions.
Democrat Operatives with Bylines.  And they profess to not understand why people despise them.

You can't hike or camp in parts of our own country because of cartel activity

and illegal aliens in general, and if you do go to/near some areas, the local LE say "Go armed."  But Dear Leader and the illegal alien suckups assure us "The Border Is Secure."

Lying bastards.

At some point a gang of illegals or some cartel crew is going to wipe out a family, or a group of some kind(with all the trimmings of rape  and so forth), the usual lying bastards will assure us 'there's really nothing to worry about', and this is going to come apart at the seams.  And the lying bastards will blame the locals, and call anyone who demands action a racist and general hater of immigrants. 

Sooner or later, this is going to hell in a big way.

Yes, I can see it

Experimenting, Part the Something (updated)

After the surprising results from the .38 wadcutters in the mini-Sharps, decided to try some things, and did some loading:

From the left: 148-grain cast wadcutter seated to the center lube groove, 1.63" oal, same seated to the first groove, 1.58", 148-grain X-Treme plated wadcutter seated to 1.59", 162-grain semi-wadcutter seated to second lube groove, 1.7".

Yes, those are a ways out; I want to see if minimizing the distance the bullet moves before it engages the rifling might have an effect.  Those .38 Special wc loads, the bullet had to make a looong jump, this puts the bullets from a short jump to almost touching the rifling.  And yes, I did check them in the rifle, all will chamber fully with no problems.  Which is something you can do with a single-shot rifle: these are way longer than I could use in a revolver, or a repeating rifle.

Speaking of, when I first got the Hornady FTX bullets that this rifle likes so well, I had to dig around to find load data for them, and it included this: for use in revolvers or lever-action rifles, you have to trim the cases shorter than standard due to the overall length of the cartridge because of that nice polymer nose.  But in a single-shot, no problem with them being full length.

I did run into the interesting problem that my manuals show no data for a wadcutter in .357 Mag.  However, the bearing surface- the area that actually engages the rifling- of the wadcutters is close to the same as for the semi-wadcutter, and I'm using a minimum load of 2400 in all of these, so I don't foresee any pressure worries.
Update: On the Hodgdon/Winchester site, they do have some info for 148-grain hollowbase wadcutters, but not solids.

Now for a chance to go see how they work.

Reason #48 to get rid of the EPA:

the corruption and secrecy.
Two committees consisting entirely of EPA officials meet behind closed doors twice annually to decide how the agency spends those funds on highly polluted – and often dangerous – Superfund sites. All reports to and from the groups, as well as the minutes of their meetings and all other details, are kept behind closed doors.

“The National Risk-Based Priority Panel and the Superfund Special Accounts Senior Management Committee engage in pre-decisional deliberations which are internal to the agency and not open to the public,” an EPA spokeswoman who requested anonymity told The DCNF.


Damn.  Just the description is painful.


Yes, Gunwalker(and all the OTHER operations that don't get talked about) are still paying dividends.  If you consider piles of bodies a dividend.
The deadly-but-forgotten government gun-running scandal known as “Fast and Furious” has lain dormant for years, thanks to White House stonewalling and media compliance. But newly uncovered e-mails have reopened the case, exposing the anatomy of a coverup by an administration that promised to be the most transparent in history.

“At least 20 other deaths or violent crimes have been linked to Fast and Furious-trafficked guns.”

A federal judge has forced the release of more than 20,000 pages of emails and memos previously locked up under President Obama’s phony executive-privilege claim. A preliminary review shows top Obama officials deliberately obstructing congressional probes into the border gun-running operation.
And nobody is surprised.  And Democrats will still call it a 'fake controversy and scandal.'  And the bodies will continue to pile up.  And AG Lynch(Holder II) won't do a damn thing about it.

Of course, she's busy dealing with her crooked lawyers,
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen denounced their conduct as "unseemly and unprofessional." Their lies, the judge noted, conned the 26 plaintiff states that were suing to stop the executive action, into "foregoing a request for a temporary restraining order."

Judge Hanen witheringly noted that he did not have the power to disbar the lowlife lawyers, and it is an astounding rebuke that he would mention that possibility. But he did "revoke the pro hac vice status of out-of-state lawyers who act unethically in court," meaning that the attorneys in question will no longer have privileges to practice law before courts in the state of Texas.
...
Only a month ago, an appellate court judge in the Sixth Circuit similarly excoriated Justice Department attorneys for unethically dragging out the discovery process in another lawsuit, in which they were defending the Internal Revenue Service. In that case, the judge criticized the lawyers' "studied obstruction," and repeated use of transparently bogus arguments to drag their feet in the lower courts.

Judge Raymond Ketheledge wrote pointedly that "lawyers in the Department of Justice have a long and storied tradition of defending the nation's interests and enforcing its laws ... in a manner worthy of the Department's name. The conduct of the IRS's attorneys in the district court falls outside that tradition."
who she inherited from Holder & Obama.  Anybody believe she'll actually try to clean this up?

Which brings me back to two questions that are very damned serious:
Why should we trust any of these people about ANYTHING?
and
If they don't have to obey the law, why should we?

And if the morons in Sodom on the Potomac, and the 'elites' in major cities don't think this is a real problem, they're in for a very nasty surprise.

About that "97% of scientists agree on AGW!" line...

What the president was referring to was a 2013 paper by the University of Queensland’s John Cook. In his research, Cook studied 11,994 papers published between 1991 and 2011 that mentioned the search words “global warming” and “global climate change.”
 
Guess what Cook actually found? Only 32.6 percent of the papers endorsed the view of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. But of that group, 97 percent said that “recent warming is mostly man-made.”
 
And so, by a nice sleight-of-hand obfuscation, the great “97 percent consensus” was born.

Excuse me for a bit, I need to go annoy some people with this

What? A socialist politician might be corrupt

and take money from lawyers who act against the British Army?

Anybody surprised?
Labour's new shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry received donations from a law firm condemned by MPs over its client's false claims that British soldiers were involved in torture and murder in Iraq.

David Cameron has said there are "questions to answer" over Ms Thornberry's links with the firm after a Conservative MP branded the lawyers "immoral, thieving and ambulance chasing".

Jeremy Corbyn's new frontbench appointment accepted £14,500 from Leigh Day & Co, which is now facing disciplinary action.
And why are they facing such action, you might inquire?
A law firm behind hundreds of claims British soldiers abused Iraqis will be prosecuted for professional misconduct over accusations it failed to hand over evidence and paid improper fees of £75,000 to an Iraqi agent handling alleged victims.
...
During the Al-Sweady inquiry it emerged that a key, hand-written document, which had the potential to stop the costly legal proceedings in their tracks, had been shredded.
And other such things, that's why.

Got curious and did a little digging.  Oh, my.

It is understood to be the second Leigh Day Christmas party Ms Thornberry has attended, after accepting almost £50,000 in donations-in-kind from the firm when she was shadow attorney general between 2012 and 2014.

The Labour Party also accepted donations from Leigh Day, amounting to almost £20,000 in "staff costs" in 2012.

Lots of money and connections between this firm and Labour.  Again, anybody surprised?

But does he like

pina coladas?

The geniuses surrounding Clinton...

An advisor to Hillay Clinton said that Heller was “wrongly decided.” But she has absolutely no idea what the case held.

“Clinton believes Heller was wrongly decided in that cities and states should have the power to craft common sense laws to keep their residents safe, like safe storage laws to prevent toddlers from accessing guns,” Maya Harris, a policy adviser to Clinton, said in an e-mailed statement. “In overturning Washington D.C.’s safe storage law, Clinton worries that Heller may open the door to overturning thoughtful, common sense safety measures in the future.”

The critical, constitutional issue, was whether the District of Columbia could ban the private ownership of handguns. The case in no way affected “safe storage laws.” In fact, the District of Columbia still has safe storage laws in effect.
But she'll respect the rights of hunters(nobody else).  Sure. 


And then there's who President HopeyChangey invites to the White House:
We broke this story on Wednesday, that Charles Wade, a Black Lives Matter and Ferguson ‘activist’, had been arrested on multiple human trafficking and prostitution charges for allegedly pimping out a 17 year old girl in a Howard Johnson’s in Maryland. The 7 counts include serious felonies with up to 25 years and $15,000 fines.


So I guess it's not racist or something when a leftist SJB type says "Those stupid Native Americans just don't understand!"



I have to say that researching into black-powder and smokeless loads for .45/70 is kind of fascinating.  In a time-consuming way.  Everything from lubes, to powder, to which F of black, to what kind of paper for patching...