They pulled the last of the miners out last night,

all in good health. Hell of a piece of work.

Speaking of politicians who deserve to be hanged,

Ma'am Boxer is right up in the lead.

Busy the last couple of days, so little free ice cream

as the Geek puts it. But I do have to bring this up; it's directly connected to Tam's "Are they TRYING to turn me...?" post, though in this case it's a bit more "Are they TRYING to get dragged out of those offices and hanged?"
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous "Guaranteed Retirement Account" (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci.

(You can find the blistering interview with Guilarducci by radio talk show host Mark Levin in 2007 at the link).

In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.
Even if it doesn't take someone's retirement plan, I guaran-damn-tee you that if they decide to seize the account of their parents or grandparents, an awful lot of people will GROW their wookie suit and pick up the blaster. And lengths of rope.

I said it before: these bastards need to have it impressed on them that even if they're not running for office again or have lost the office, there are things other than voting that can be done about- and to- them.

There are times I find myself wishing for things

that are not good.
This Saturday, one of Greece's most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation's largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider. . . .

Greece's National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.
Change you can hobble after. If they'll bother to help you get- or ALLOW you to get- a tin foot; otherwise it's Change You Can Crutch To.


'Proud to be a traitor'. Ok. I'm proud to help pay for the JDAM or Hellfire that'll roast your sorry ass.

I have to admit I didn't quite get all the heartache over the kill order on this clown. Yes, he's an American citizen; he's openly committed treason and is actively helping the enemy. So if he's whacked while in enemy territory committing further treason...



The lead Mexican investigator hunting for an American man who disappeared after he and his wife were ambushed on Falcon Lake has been beheaded, a Texas lawmaker claimed today.

The severed head of Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was delivered to the Mexican military in a suitcase, Aaron Pena said today.

Flores was leading the Mexican side of the investigation into the disappearance of David Hartley.
...
Tamaulipas state prosecutor's office spokesman Ruben Rios confirmed that Flores, the head of state investigators in the border city of Ciudad Miguel Aleman, was killed.
I this case, I'm thinking a CAP over some areas with planes carrying CBUs. A lot of the local Mexicans would probably be delighted.



The mother of three, who lived with her sons in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, had been separated from her husband, Rashad, 45, for several years.

She was taken to Stoke Mandeville hospital on Saturday night after a relative raised the alarm and died shortly afterwards, at about 8pm.

The 16-year-old was also hurt during the incident and was treated for minor injuries at the same hospital.

A friend said: 'Her husband does not live at the house. We have been told that Mrs Shahzad had been seeing other men.'

Another added: 'Assia was a strong-minded, independent, modern woman.'

Police said they were treating the horrific incident as 'domestic-related' rather than an honour killing.
Yeah, Deity Forbid you call it that, right?
The Sun reported that Usman did not approve of his mother seeing other men.

But police dismissed rumours the death was an "honour killing", saying it was related to a "domestic dispute".

Reports say Mrs Shahzad's hands were severed in the attack.
Here? Oh, hanging by a pigskin rope sounds good.


That's about all that I can take for one evening. To remove some of the bad taste from your mouth, I suggest watching this:

I linked to it once before, but it's to friggin' beautiful not to watch. Thanks to Rodger for reminding me of it.
Remember, those are 8.7 pound rifles with fixed bayonets.

Ok, this isn't just Reasoned Discoursetm,

it's idiocy. And dishonesty. And, from reading what's available, from a seriously disturbed individual. Possibly two, considering his wife's words.

By the way, madam, just because he's old doesn't mean you're faster than he. Or a better shot. For that matter, if someone walked up to someone in a store and 'called him out', people WILL call the police, and your ass WILL wind up in jail. Where it would deserve to be.

For that matter, having browsed a bit more, I find two things:
My original article satirized the concept of open-carry, and the target of my humorous rant was a fictional character, who didn't even have a name. At that time, the idea of concealed-carry did not really bother me.
Didn't bother you? Really? Why don't I believe that... Anyway, note the 'fictional character' bit, then this from further along:
So, when I posted Gunfight At The Shopping-Cart Corral, I was making fun of some guy's rudeness. What kind of Neanderthal flaunts a gun when he goes grocery shopping? At a natural-foods store? At high noon in an upper-middle-class neighborhood?
Does that sound like a 'fictional character' to you? So, was there really a guy at the natural foods store, or did he make the whole damn thing up? If it really happened, as Kevin notes this clown has real control problems; if he made it up, why?

Lots of little tells in this; the insults, the 'steam shooting from the ears', the browbeating of the manager... this guy appears to be a squirrel of the first order.

Perfect fit for the gun bigots, isn't he?

My one comment to Schumer and Bloomberg:

Screw you, you hypocritical bastards. Schumer, YOU'RE the senior Senator, and you have nothing to do with anything? Bloomberg, you're the FREAKIN' MAYOR, dammit, do you have NOTHING to do with ANYTHING except deciding what people will be allowed to eat?
"Put these ballots on the next plane to Afghanistan," Schumer demanded. "There is absolutely no excuse for failing to get this done."
...
"We send our young men and women overseas to fight and die for us, and we don't care enough to make sure they get the right to exercise their franchise?" fumed Mayor Bloomberg.

"That's what they're over there fighting for as much as anything else," he added.
Yeah, get all outraged NOW, instead of when it would have been the right thing to do.

Bastards.

In celebration of Columbus Day(and because I like making noise)

I think I'll hit the range today. In the meantime,
Shouldn't surprise me: sharia-compliant muslim superheroes cartoons are coming.


Obama & Co. are attacking the Chamber of Commerce as 'stealing democracy'; when even the New York Effing Times says it's crap...
A closer examination shows that there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.

In fact, the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce financing may say more about the Washington spin cycle — where an Internet blog posting can be quickly picked up by like-minded groups and become political fodder for the president himself — than it does about the vagaries of campaign finance.


I had come along with hundreds of others because, on Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former UCL student, tried to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear and kill the 278 passengers and crew on Northwest Airlines' flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. After such a narrow escape from mass murder, I thought that no one could deny that the universities needed to confront campus sectarianism. I reckoned without the limitless capacity for self-delusion of British academe.


So much for some scientific developments:
Dr. Calvin Rickson, a scientist from Texas A&M University has invented a bra that keeps women's breasts from jiggling, bouncing up and down, and prevents the nipples from pushing through the fabric when cold weather sets in.

At a news conference, after announcing the invention, a large group of men took Dr. Rickson outside and beat the sh*t out of him.


Can you imagine the media 'reporting' if someone had thrown a book a Bush?


Lovely: "If the Republicans win the election, you'll die!"


Well, yeah, taxes DO affect people; why is this a surprise to some?


I shall now leave you to whatever you were doing.

Remember the big announcement a few days ago

(AP) As the White House stages a first-of-its-kind community college summit Tuesday, the Obama administration is proposing that stronger partnerships between two-year public colleges and big-name U.S. employers such as McDonald’s and The Gap will help better match workers with jobs during the economic recovery and beyond.
Did you have the same kind of "Are you frikkin' KIDDING me?!?" reaction to that that I did?
Go over to Mostly Cajun for a detailed breakdown of the levels of idiocy in this mess.

I have to wonder, do Obama & Co. have any friggin' idea how much of their life depends on people who know how to actually DO THINGS? They think that airplane stays up in the air all by its lonesome?

Geez.

Don't know why I was surprised: the guys who got the shaft through

to the miners were our guys.
Jeff Hart was drilling water wells for the U.S. Army's forward operating bases in Afghanistan when he got the call to fly to Chile.

He spent the next 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out Saturday for 33 trapped miners.

"You have to feel through your feet what the drill is doing; it's a vibration you get so that you know what's happening," explained Hart, a contractor from Denver, Colorado.
...
Within hours after the gold and copper mine collapsed Aug. 5, Chile's government realized the mine's owners were ill-equipped to handle the rescue and asked the state-owned Codelco mining company to take the lead.

Codelco turned to Geotec Boyles Bros., a U.S.-Chilean company, to handle the "Plan B" escape shaft, one of three simultaneous drilling efforts that raced to reach the miners.

Geotec operations manager James Stefanic said he quickly assembled "a top of the line team" of drillers who are intimately familiar with the key equipment, including engineers from two Pennsylvania companies _ Schramm Inc., which makes the T130 drill, and Center Rock Inc., which makes the drill bits.

Hart was called in from Afghanistan, "simply because he's the best" at drilling larger holes with the T130's wide-diameter drill bits, Stefanic said.

I don't even have a place in the house to KEEP it,

but I want one...

But, I thought there was a concensus on this!!!

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate.
From the letter to the American Physical Society released to the public by Professor Emiritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Go read it all, and then tell Algore to fold a copy to eight corners and shove it.

I'll start this morning with an anniversary: the death of that

murdering little psycho and leftist 'hero' Che:
"When you saw the beaming look on Che's face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad," said a former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez, to your humble servant here, "you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara."
Well, hell, no wonder he's such a great thing to the kind of people who make videos showing people murdered for not going along with the program.


A little something on past history:
A tape recording of the 1970 shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen reveals the sound of pistol shots 70 seconds earlier, a newspaper reported Friday citing the work of a forensic audio expert.

The finding lends support to a theory that the guardsmen thought they were being shot at during a campus Vietnam War protest. Witnesses said at the time that an FBI informant monitoring the protest fired warning shots because he felt threatened.
If indeed the case, the FBI picked a real winner, didn't they?


An opinion on why Obama does what he does:
Why indeed. The answer is deceptively simple: Barack Obama, the president of the United States, is a committed, doctrinaire socialist, and because Marxist philosophy is the foundation of socialism and communism, a Marxist. Many Americans are reluctant to accept this idea, despite overwhelming evidence, for two primary reasons: they don’t want to accept that they helped to elect him, and they’re not really sure what socialism and communism are, or what all the fuss about communism was about.


Found this at Theo:
Title IX Revenue Provisions ”Subtitle A: Revenue Offset
"(Sec. 9002) Requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer-sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employee's gross income (excluding the value of contributions to flexible spending arrangements)."

Starting in 2011 ”next year ”the W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are provided. It doesn't matter if you're retired. Your gross income WILL go up by the amount of insurance your employer paid for. So you'll be required to pay taxes on a larger sum of money that you actually received. Take the tax form you just finished for 2009 and see what $15,000.00 or $20,000.00 additional gross income does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year. For many it puts you into a much higher bracket. This is how the government is going to buy insurance for fifteen (15) percent that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases, but it's not really a "tax increase" as such, it a redefinition of your taxable income.
If accurate, this will screw damn near EVERYBODY; lots of people flat do not have enough money to pay this.

For that matter, I wonder how the IRS is thinking about having thousands of people- lots of them old folks- telling them "I can't pay this, and I'm not going to try; so come get me!" ?
Speaking of the Obama agenda and the fallout,
At one point, he warned his crowd of supporters to get out to vote in order to prevent his own embarrassment in November: “Don’t make me look bad, now.” Since he is not up for reelection, apparently the president means that the slaughter of perhaps 50 Democratic congressional representatives and 8-10 senators will reflect poorly upon himself. Of course it will, but he might have instead phrased his dilemma in terms of worry about his supporters’ fates rather than his own, inasmuch as most all voted for his agenda, despite the fact that almost all elements of it polled poorly with the American people.
He could have; problem is, he doesn't give a rat's ass about them, it's all about HIM and what he wants.


Another reason some organizations want to trash the 2nd and some politicians play along: there's money in it. The American Bar Association is not our friend.


Yeah, the greenie 'kill kids who don't go along' video fits right in with the eco-terrorists.


Why, I thought Arizona HATED immigrants- oh, that's right, it's ILLEGAL aliens they have a problem with...
Only three states accepted more refugees on a per capita basis over the past six years. Arizona took nearly twice as many refugees per capita as its liberal neighbor, California, and more than twice as many per capita as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“In the degree of welcome and receptivity we see, I would certainly put Arizona at the top,” said Robert Carey, a vice president at the International Rescue Committee, which resettles refugees in a dozen states.

The work contrasts with the state’s renown as the scourge of illegal immigrants, whom critics blame for driving up crime, stealing jobs and burdening hospitals and schools.

“We’re not anti-immigrant — never have been,” said State Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican who is a leading critic of illegal immigration “But we expect people to follow the law.”


I'll close this now, have one other thing but it deserves A Post Of Its Own

Piece on journalism from a new and an old reporter

I have just come across an article that, for me, is the last word on American journalism. It accuses journalists of being lazy, cowardly, and meretricious. And it was written in 1924.
You want criticism?
As Mencken notes, there was — is — only one problem with all this self-seriousness: most journalists are stupid. Not just marginally unintelligent, but, in Mencken’s view, deeply, intractably ignorant — “there are managing editors in the United States, and scores of them, who have never heard of Kant or Johannes Muller and never read the Constitution of the United States; there are city editors who do not know what a symphony is; there are reporters by the thousands who could not pass the entrance examination for a Harvard or Tuskegee, or even Yale.” On more than one occasion — and I’m sure I’m not the only one — I have had to slow down for a journalist interviewing me and explain to them basic concepts about the story they are writing. These people just are not intellectuals. Many don’t even read books.
...

They also are deeply insecure and will brook no criticism — “in general journalism suffers from a lack of alert and competent professional criticism; its slaves, afflicted by a natural inferiority complex, discountenance free speaking as a sort of treason.” True in 1924. Truer today.
Kind of a look from the inside.

This is the kind of crap the hoplophobes dearly want to see here

Police raided the Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords and three other locations Wednesday on suspicion of illegally possessing some 400 unregistered samurai swords, police said.

The society voluntarily submitted the swords, excluding decomposed ones, after finding 592 of mostly rusty Japanese swords without registration cards in February and March last year when they checked storage areas for repair work, the society said. Under the Swords and Firearms Control Law, owners are required to have their swords registered as art objects at prefectural boards of education.
Got that? It's basically a friggin' museum, but Deity Forbid they have something that isn't registered with the gummint; that's just not tolerable!

What the hoplophobes want: objects blamed for and banned for what people do; partly because "It's just right!" and largely because it makes people easier to control.

Rust blue and the Martini receiver

So I disassembled the Martini, stripped and degreased the receiver, did a little light cleanup with 220-grit wet/dry paper(wet, of course), washed it again and then hit it with the browning formula. Waited a couple of hours and hit it again, then let it sit overnight. Got a nice light rust so boiled it, then carded with steel wool and repeated. This is after three cycles and soaking with oil after the last
The rusting was much more even than with the other mix, and this is MUCH more even color than before. Quite happy with it.

For what it's worth, my clean & degrease process was to put it in a small tub with mineral spirits and work it all over with a toothbrush to get rid of oil and grease, then after it dried washed with Dawn and warm water. Then to the glass plate and abrasive, then wash again with Dawn and start the rusting. I do wear gloves whenever using the spirits and when washing just before starting the bluing. When cleaning the piece off after boiling I didn't wear gloves, in this case for the final scrub used my fingers inside the receiver to hold it. Yes, it would be better to wear gloves whenever handling it.


Added: Few days back I was baking a revolver in the oven to soak grease into the parkerizing; today I was boiling a receiver on the stove. I ever get serious about a lady again, she's going to have to have a tolerance for crap like this. As first wife used to answer "What's that smell?", "Firehand is baking knives/gun parts/something again."

If you have a Beretta Neo,

check this out: recall has been issued
Beretta U.S.A. Corp. has discovered a potential condition with Beretta .22 caliber NEOS semiautomatic pistols in which the pistol will fire even if the safety is activated and, in some cases, the pistols may fire if the safety is moved from the OFF to the ON position. Chances of either of these situations occurring is extremely remote and no injuries have occurred because of this condition, however, because of safety concerns relating to this situation, Beretta U.S.A. Corp. is immediately implementing a recall of Beretta .22 caliber NEOS semiautomatic pistols. For more information, download a pdf copy of the Recall Notice.

Among the reasons I started calling the place Californicated

is that they hire clowns and criminals like this, make laws that prevent them from firing the bastards, and the bastards just keep going when they're caught.
In December 2008, CARB enacted a sweeping set of regulations of diesel engines. It was based on the claim that 3,500 deaths a year occurred from the diesel particulates in the air [PM 2.5]. Not only was the claim itself proven to be bogus, [zer∅ deaths per year*] the person in charge of the CARB “study” was revealed to have purchased his cum laude doctorate online for a measly $1,000. His name is Hien Tran. CARB can not fire him, or even re-assign him [say, to filing or mens’ room cleaning] because of CA labor laws and public union regulations.
...
Well the CARB morons have been caught again. [see also: need for free press]

[CARB] grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state’s clean-air standards ...by 340 percent.

...The staff of the powerful [oh yeah] and widely respected [is that a bend-of-the-knee I see?] Air Resources Board said the overestimate is largely due to the board calculating emissions before the economy slumped…

Independent researchers, however, found huge overestimates in the air board’s work on diesel emissions and attributed the flawed work to a faulty method of calculation - not the economic downturn.

Imagine the result in private industry if one’s research turned out to be “miscalculated” by 340%?

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, ...was recently asked why the air board estimate of a nitrous oxide source was off by at least a factor of two - air board scientists have since revised their numbers, and data show the estimate was off by 340 percent. Nichols’ response: “I can’t answer that for you.”

And the enviroweenie bastards want desperately to force this crap on all of us; and most of them don't seem to give a damn whether the 'facts' they use are true or not.

Can you imagine how it felt

when that drill broke through?

Ain't it the truth?

Some serious questions about the lake shooting

Bunch of information at Malkin's place.

So what IS going on?